Baseball season's underway...time to get ready for a brand new day!

Over the past three years, I've become a pretty dedicated Cubs fan.  It's funny; I never really appreciated baseball when I was growing up.  This might have to do with my growing up in Astros country; to be perfectly frank, there is nothing inspiring about a team with origins in my parents' lifetime that is, in general, pretty crappy.  Not that the Cubs have the world's best record, either, but at the very least there's over a century of history and heritage.  Also, southeast Texas is one of the least pleasant places to live that I can imagine, whereas Chicago is (in the words of Frank Sinatra) my kind of town.


Beyond my confused sense of "what is home?," I've come to appreciate baseball itself as a sport - and more than a sport, a metaphor for life.  Baseball season is born as life starts coming back at the dawning of spring, and it ends when the leaves turn colors and fall to the ground.  It's a long season, full of daily struggle - you don't get too many days off in-season.  You're not expected to win every day; if you're winning more than half of the time, then you're sitting pretty.  Time is different than in other sports; namely, it isn't kept.  You play until the game is finished - if that means extra innings, then you play the extra innings.


As a player, you're doing a great job if you get a hit every third time you come up to bat - that means a good game is typically two, maybe three hits.  When you fail to do your job, it's an error - and everybody makes mistakes.  You might slump...and people tend to be forgiving in the end.  You have a bad day...people tend to be forgiving in the end.  There is almost always a chance for redemption - the player who is booed while taking the field (coughAlfonsoSorianocough) might just be the one who hits the game-winning home run...and you can bet he's not going to be booed again for a while after that.


And, at the end of the season, most our teams won't be headed to the playoffs (unlike certain other sports).  You grieve, you drink a beer more than usual, and you move on, hopeful that next year will be the year.  Baseball, more than any sport, is a sport which showcases grace and hope.  No wonder that the theologian in me loves it so much...