Walking to his first baseball practice, my 7-year-old son clacked in his cleats across the parking lot to the field. He wore a cap on his head and a glove on his hand. He was ready.
Neither one of us knew a soul on the team. While he played catch with teammates in the outfield, I lobbed the usual get-to-know-you questions back and forth with fellow parents. We made connections and caught smiles. The weather was perfect, the kids were laughing. I’d never been to this field before, yet it was like coming home.
The poet Donald Hall wrote, “Baseball is a country all to itself.” There are neither borders nor boundaries of time. The past is caught, then tossed to the next generation. The country of baseball resides (to borrow a biblical phrase) “wherever two or three are gathered.”
My son and his teammates divided into three groups to practice fielding and throwing. Their coaches kept them moving and passed along instructions: bend your knees, point your shoulder where you want to throw, keep your eye on the ball! Most importantly, they had encouraging words for each player. In the country of baseball, coaches, particularly of the young, teach not only the basic skills but a love for the game itself.
In an effort to appeal to younger generations, Major League Baseball has instituted new rules to speed up the game, like a timer between pitches. But the country of baseball lives in the heart, not just the mind. It evokes what the Greeks termed kairos, or “time out of time.” This concept came from the ancient sport of archery. Kairos was that moment when the arrow thumped into the bullseye. In baseball, it’s the crack of the bat.
As we gathered in the country of baseball that evening, I knew that there were tragedies around the world, from Turkey to Ukraine, and suffering in our own community. I remembered the first game after 9/11. The New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza homered in the eighth inning to propel the home team over the Atlanta Braves. I am a Braves fan, but that night it felt like the crack of the bat brought the country together.
Ping! My son’s metal bat connected with the pitch. He froze, watching the ball sail into the air. His coach laughed, “Run!” My son took off toward first base like so many players before him. I cheered and, for a moment, we were all home in the country of baseball.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church. His newly-published book is a collection of his columns for the Chatham News + Record titled “Hope Matters: Churchless Sermons."
