Duck the fastball

I’m standing on the mound eyeing the first batter closely. This is the first game that my Little League coach has allowed me to pitch. My brother Jim is the catcher. In practice I have demonstrated that I have a wicked fast ball. My blazing speed is beyond my years. There is one problem. I do not have control. This may be because I am left handed and yet I pitch right handed. I don’t know how that happened, but suspect that my first baseball glove was a hand me down from my brother and he was right handed. Maybe not because I bat right handed too.

At any rate my first pitch goes about four feet over the batter’s head and nearly went over the backstop. If it would have hit him in the head, it probably would have knocked it off, because I threw it with such velocity. My brother retrieved the ball and pointed at his glove a couple of times to let me know that his glove was the target and not the top of the backstop. Hmmm Thanks for that Jim; I thought it was the top of the backstop. Jeez!

The batter now has genuine fear in his eyes. He does not want to get hit by my fast ball. He has stepped back from the plate significantly. I eye him for a moment, wind up, and then deliver. The next pitch is right down the middle and there is a loud pop as it hits the catcher’s mitt. The umpire yells, Steeee-rike!

Unfortunately I did hit thirteen batters that game with my blazing fastball. Fortunately though, we did indeed win that game in spite of my wild pitching. (I suspect that our success was due in no small part to the other players being too afraid to stand up there and try to bat for fear of being hit.) I earned the starting position as the first string pitcher for our team and even made the all star team! I went on from that Little League experience to become one of the top pitchers for the Babe Ruth league and later I pitched for our high school team. In fact one of our high school teams made the state championship playoffs and I pitched our opening game. I also made the all stars in every league in which I played, every year that I participated.

My father attended that first Little League game. It was the only baseball game in which I played that I can ever remember him attending. He laughed until tears streamed down his face at how wild I was. He has ridiculed me to no end about pitching that game literally for years and has never forgotten it and still brings it up now and then and laughs about it.

I’m sure that he did not realize how important that game was to me and how badly I wanted to make that position on our team. He had no idea how happy our teammates were at the time to win that game and how much it meant to me to personally to win the first game that I ever pitched. No doubt he did not understand that his words hurt more than he will ever know. To him it was no big deal, just some insignificant Little League baseball game with a bunch of kids. I was wild as a “March hare” and he thought it was hilariously funny to see me throwing pitches over the backstop and batters standing up there trembling in fear wondering if my next pitch would nail them in the back or worse their head. What he did not realize was that at the time of that game it meant everything to me. I was proud to have earned the starting pitching position. I was serious about trying to win the game and so were my teammates.

I was thinking of that game this morning and it reminded me of how seemingly insignificant comments particularly to our children can be hurtful and destructive. My father made fun of me all of my life, not only about this incident but lots of incidents. It was just good natured ribbing to him, but it went a long ways towards destroying my sense of self worth as a small child. I have noticed that I often make fun of others in similar fashion. If someone misses catching a fish, or mispronounces a word or whatever I will make fun of them for the rest of the day. As with my dad, it is all in the spirit of good natured fun on my part, but after remembering this incident and careful consideration, I think I will try to be more careful in the future.

In the end we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us. I cannot take credit for that saying; it is just more great advice from a great God. No one likes to be ridiculed and made fun of.

If you are or have been the object of derision and it is eating away at you, shake it off. I did not like my father making fun of me, but I did not let it get me down either. Keep it in context. The Bible actually tells us to bless those who engage in it. Hmmm…

I hung in there and kept on keeping on and in the end was very successful. Remember he who laughs last, laughs loudest. On the eve of his confirmation into the United States Senate after the bruising political battle of his life, 70 year old Senator Burris, who will take President elect Obama’s Senate seat, said it best at his news conference as he stood there basking in his victory, “It is always darkest right before the dawn.”

Endure!

1 Cor. 4:12
Being reviled, we bless;
being persecuted, we endure.