Tickling the Ivories

…writing to figure out what I think

I happened to come home today just in time to see a bit of baseball on the tele

Normally, if I’m home at 4 p.m., I like to watch Pardon the Interruption on ESPN, but today I found the tail end of the Red Sox - Athletics game in its place. Baseball isn’t near my favorite sport to watch, but that seemingly constant presence on just about every channel, the scrolling news ticker, informed me that Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling had taken a no-hitter into the bottom of the 9th inning.

Now, I make no claim to baseball sage-hood, but I know that no-hitters are the diamond’s equivalent of a shooting star—long droughts persist between viewings, if you ever see one at all. Yet, no-hitters are not so uncommon as to relieve them of their significance, as say perfect games are. About all I can say about a perfect game that it is “perfect.” Something which is “perfect” must be pretty important, but since these so-called “perfect” games only seem to occur (in the majors) once a decade or so, I’d rather not bide my time hoping for one—it’s kind of like waiting around for Haley’s Comet to appear&mdashso instead, I’ll happily settle for the next rung down on the pitcher’s list of amazing accomplishments, the no-hitter—the shooting star of the diamond.

I went up and stood in front of the tele and began to pay more attention.

So Schilling (who, incidentally, seems to be as, if not more, known for his opinionated tongue than for his pitching) gets the first batter in the bottom of the 9th to ground out to the shortstop.

1 down, 2 to go.

Schilling (who, incidentally, had never thrown a no-hitter) gets the second batter to ground out to the shortstop in a replay.

2 down, 1 to go.

Schilling (who, incidentally, waved off the original pitch called for by his catcher) throws a single fastball to the next batter and has his no-hit attempt unceremoniously ended by a single to center field.

I could insert some complaints here about how disappointed I was by this, but they would be lies. The truth is that I thought it was comical. The moment the bat touched the ball for the first and only time in the whole game, I had actually turned my head away from the tele. When I looked back, the ball was rolling into the outfielder’s glove and the magic of the game had dissipated. Now instead of watching for a shooting star across the diamond, I was watching for a monumental collapse (it was only 1-0, Red Sox, after all). It reminded me that when one watches any sport, there are essentially only two events to watch for: success and failure.

Even though it was the prospect of great success that tuned me into the game, I left with the reassuringly comic truth of failure.

Schilling’s spectacular effort ended in simple failure. All I could do was laugh.

It seems like there must be theological gold somewhere in this story.

More thoughts from NT Wright .

“…the way to Christian growth is often to allow oneself to be puzzled and startled by new apparent complexity. There is great simplicity at the heart of this picture, but it is costly. The price it demands is sustained attention to the specific, and to us strange and perhaps even repellent, first-century ways of thinking that characterized Jesus. Is it after all Jesus we want to discover and follow, or would we prefer an idol of our own making?”

A great deal of the world prefers one sort or another of an idol. Truly knowing Jesus requires a level of self-abasement that very very very very very very very very few people aspire to.

After all, followers of Jesus are called to be perpetual losers of the battle. Our minds don’t have a category for ideas like this—except for that circular file in the corner.