All-Stars

The Major League All-Star Game will be played next Tuesday in St. Louis. I watched my first all-star game in the summer of 1954. We were spending the summer in Natchitoches, Louisiana, where my mom was working on her Master’s degree at Northwestern State. She sent me down to Ackel’s Grocery at the end of the block to get some milk, and the all-star game was on the television in the store. We had no television so I was captivated by the game. By the time I got back with the milk, it was out-of-date.

In the summer of 1995, I got to see an all-star game in person. Blake, Dan and I sat in the upper deck of Ranger’s stadium in Arlington, Texas, in sweltering heat, to watch the greatest players on earth play the game. It was quite a thrill.

I enjoy all sports. I am like the guy who said that his wife was always complaining about how he was a baseball fanatic. He said, “My wife says that baseball is all I ever read about, think about, or even talk about. I think she’s way off-base.”

Most of us are better at talking about baseball than we are at playing it. We are like the Little Leaguer who, in spite of his father’s aspirations, did not have a baseball career in his future. During a season filled with disappointing performances by his son, the father had to miss one of the games. As soon as the father got in that evening, he asked his son how the game went. He was startled and excited by his son’s response. The boy said, “Dad, I was responsible for the winning run.” His dad said, “Son, that’s great. Tell me how the winning run scored.” The boy said, “It was the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied, the bases were loaded, and one of their batters hit a pop fly to me in right field. I dropped the ball, and they scored the winning run.” Most of us former right fielders are familiar with the play.

That’s the way life is. Nobody’s perfect. Even in all-star games sometimes errors are made.

One of the things about being an all-star is that it is primarily a matter of grace. A player with all of that ability has been blessed by God with some unusual physical talents.

Many baseball players enjoy talking about the hard work that they have done in order to be the ball players they are. There is some truth to that, but it is not all of the truth.

Don Hall, a writer by vocation and a baseball fan by avocation said, “If I had practiced twelve hours a day, at my physical peak, I would never have hit a line drive off a major league pitcher.”

So much of life is grace. In all the things that matter the most, we are not self-made persons. We are the recipients of incredible grace.

For all of us non-all-stars, I take great comfort from Abraham Lincoln who said, “God must have loved the common man. He made so many of us.”