Today marks the opening day of Major League Baseball season. As fans of baseball (and spring!) here at Gender Blog, we begin the week with a well-done two-part series by David Prince on baseball and biblical manhood.

I heard the words blare from the car radio and received them with that uneasy pang in the pit of my stomach, the kind that comes when you hear really bad news. The radio show host said it without hesitation as if nothing was at stake, “America’s new favorite pastime . . . football.” The worst part was, as he ran through his list of reasons for asserting that football is more popular in America than baseball, I knew he was right.

It is likely that you receive this news with a yawn, but not me. I enjoy football. I used to coach high school football, and there is certainly something special about Friday night lights. The pomp and circumstance of a college football Saturday is a sight to behold: marching bands, fight songs, cheers, grilling out and watching a game with 70,000 friends who all decided to wear the same color is its own unique pleasure. But while I enjoy football, I love baseball. My delight for the game is close to that of George Will when he asserted that “Baseball is Heaven’s gift to mortals.”

Famed Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver when he was being interviewed by a reporter concerned he might need to leave the dugout so Weaver could give his pre-game pep talk replied, “This ain’t football. We do this every day.” There is a rhythm and pace to baseball that synchs up to the rhythm and pace of real life. Baseball rewards persistence in the face of managed failure. The rosters of the Major League All-Star game are filled with hitters who fail seventy percent of the time. There are no perfect seasons in baseball and that ought to be one of the treasures embraced by every fan that drives, walks, or rides a bike away from the park.

Baseball is not played in something as impersonal as a stadium with a playing surface possessing the exact, cookie cutter, dimensions of every other teams playing surface. Rather, baseball is played in a park, on a field which shares the beauty of its diamond with every other baseball field, but which possesses its own unique character as well. The pre-game ground rules are a declaration of the glorious individuality of every ball park whether it has a green monster, a short porch, or a hole in the chain link fence.

Even in the wake of baseball’s steroid era a glance at the players who compete at the highest level serves as a constant reminder that the key to success is not monstrous height or superhuman body mass. It was only a handful of years ago that the world watched as the World Series M.V.P. trophy was hoisted by 5’7” David Eckstein who is listed as weighing 175 pounds, which, if true, must mean he was weighed wearing full uniform and spikes.
Read More: http://www.cbmw.org/Blog/Posts/Diamond-Dads-Baseball-Fatherhood-and-the-Gospel-Part-I