Neatsfoot: Memories as the Mid-Summer Classic approaches

Yours truly was not the worst baseball player ever to don a uniform but at the risk of mixing metaphors, the game was not in my wheelhouse.

I'm thinking of my youthful exploits on the diamond, such as they were, as Major League Baseball's All-Star Game prepares for first pitch at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 11, in Seattle.

Recollection

My 1960s-era Little League manager didn't know where to play me.

Since my father coached first base, I had a starting position.

I was the living incarnation of inept but got a lot of playing because a dad's volunteer time is worth a lot.

I'll confess I used to pray for rain on game days because my production was awful.

How bad?

Let me count the ways.

Outfield was out because of a decided lack of depth perception.

If a ball was hit in the air, this columnist had little notion of where to stand to make a catch.

Playing the infield wasn't much better as grounders seemed to elude me.

I was a sure out in the batter's box save for one glorious game in Oakdale, Pennsylvania.

Closing my eyes, I swung at a pitch during a late afternoon contest and made good contact.

Stunned, I didn't start running until the manager's entreaties got my legs moving.

Remarkably, my eyes-closed swing produced a triple.

It was the only hit this writer ever recalls making in organized baseball.

Due to a lack of options, the manager would put me on the pitcher's mound, and I do recall being able to get the ball over the plate.

At that level, sometimes control is what's most needed.

Frankly, pitcher was the only position for which I felt any degree of confidence.

Putting aside the aforementioned, my overall memories on the diamond are pleasant ones, despite my poor play and accompanying silent prayers for rainouts.

The smell of chalk along the first and third base lines is recalled.

The sound of a bat connecting with a baseball during warmups is remembered.

The feel of neatsfoot oil on my ball glove is fondly called to mind.

My dad was a big proponent of oiling gloves, touting the softening, conditioning and preserving properties of neatsfoot on leather.

Analogy

Since I've spent the largest portion of my adult life in the pastoral office, I'm wondering if the church needs the ecclesiastical equivalent of neatsfoot oil.

What follows won't please all readers and that's okay with me.

• Softening. Inflexible attitudes in recent months have triggered hardening and have produced recent schisms and expulsions in two of the largest Protestant denominations in the U.S. Tribalism is triumphing. I would pray for an embrace of unity.
• Conditioning. Context is required when the Bible is quoted. Clergy can bring this perspective because they have the training. Encouraging folks to read the text without making allowances for the era in which Jesus lived, can produce poor conditioning in the believer. Improperly conditioned athletes don't have the stamina needed when the going gets rough. I would pray for a reconsideration of the times in which Jesus and the apostles lived. They had fierce opposition and went the distance. Theologically, we're often out of shape. I would pray that we don't accept religious ideas simply at face value and without examination.
• Preserving. There's no substitute for more attention to God's written Word, which for those in the Judeo-Christian tradition is preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament. If I don't get into the gym some regularity, my body will soon show the lack of effort. I would pray for some focus on the Bible, even if that means reading a daily devotional. Simply too many of us are delegating our own personal religious work to others. Church folks, we need some ecclesiastical neatsfoot oil because the cracks are starting to show and our collective witness to a hurting world is being diminished.

Field of Dreams

James Earl Jones' character in this splendid 1989 film makes a riveting speech close to the end of the movie worth recalling in this space.

The one constant through all the years has been baseball.

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers.

It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again.

But baseball has marked the time.

This field, this game, is a part of our past.

It reminds us of all that once was good and could be again.

Great words. Stirring speech. I like it.

With apologies, however, the church was here long before Abner Doubleday's dream first bore fruit on a sandlot.

Baseball has made changes. Eliminating the shift and establishing a pitch clock are two of the most recent alterations.

The church can make similar adjustments without losing the basic message.

Yes, Jesus is timeless but the church lives in this time and we need some neatsfoot quick as a curative for hardness, inflexibility and lack of unity.

Where will we find it and if found, do we have the courage to use it?

Enjoy watching baseball's best on Tuesday.