{"id":6526,"date":"2012-07-20T11:17:41","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T16:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/?p=6526"},"modified":"2015-03-13T16:50:12","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:50:12","slug":"everyday-spirituality-coaching-little-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2012\/07\/20\/everyday-spirituality-coaching-little-league\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Spirituality: Coaching Little League"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

That\u2019s my son and me. (Photo by Courtney Perry)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Part of an ongoing series on Everyday Spirituality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

For the last several summers, I\u2019ve coached my son\u2019s Little League baseball team. Now, I love baseball, as readers of this blog are surely aware. In fact, it\u2019s really the only sport that I have any affinity for. So when I first got into coaching Tanner\u2019s team, I was expecting to have some fun with it.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s become so much more.<\/p>\n

For one thing, the time with my son has been tremendous, and healing.<\/p>\n

For another, I\u2019ve become great friends with two other dad (and their spouses) with whom I coach.<\/p>\n

Those relationships, alone, are worthy of spiritual reflection. But there\u2019s something about coaching baseball itself that, I think, has become deeply spiritual for me.<\/p>\n

Baseball has a rhythm that\u2019s unlike any other sport. It\u2019s more like the rhythms of the Christian life than it is like other sports<\/strong>. And I\u2019m not the first to notice this. NY Giants catcher, Wes Westrum, said,<\/p>\n

Baseball is like church: Many attend, few understand<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve found coaching baseball to be a lot like the many years that I taught confirmation classes to adolescents<\/strong>. I have to teach them about the rhythms of this way of life \u2014 about where to move when the ball is hit here, versus when it\u2019s hit there; about how to encourage your teammates; about how to call a pop-up and how to take a sign to bunt, steal, and take. A couple players on this year\u2019s team even got a lesson in how to run the bases after a homerun.<\/p>\n

After each game, my fellow coaches and I gathered the boys in the outfield, where they each took a knee, away from parents and opponents. We gave out a couple game balls, talked about how the game went, and taught one bit of baseball vocabulary: Texas leaguer, diamond cutter, battery, can o\u2019 corn.<\/p>\n

About the game, the great Bob Feller said,<\/p>\n

Every day is a new opportunity<\/strong>. You can build on yesterday\u2019s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That\u2019s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that\u2019s the way baseball is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s the other thing we said, particularly after a loss: it\u2019s a long season, there are always ups and downs, and you\u2019ll always get another at-bat.<\/p>\n

It was a great season. We came in second place, losing in the championship game in our league.<\/p>\n

Not unlike the liturgical year, the rhythms of baseball will fade with the summer, but next spring they\u2019ll be back. So will the particular way of life that is baseball.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part of an ongoing series on Everyday Spirituality. For the last several summers, I\u2019ve coached my son\u2019s Little League baseball team. Now, I love baseball, as readers of this blog are surely aware. In fact, it\u2019s really the only sport that I have any affinity for. So when I first got into coaching Tanner\u2019s team, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6527,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,34],"tags":[73,964],"class_list":["post-6526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity-in-america","category-spirituality","tag-baseball","tag-everyday-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\nEveryday Spirituality: Coaching Little League<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Part of an ongoing series on Everyday Spirituality. 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