Rev. Joseph Boyd
My father would regularly read me stories before I went to sleep, and I only remember two out of the countless books that he read to me: the Bible and Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof. Eight Men Out documents the season of 1919 in Chicago White Sox history, where the greatest players of that era cooperated with gamblers to lose on purpose to bolster their personal earnings that year. The odds were so much in their favor to win, that any bet against them that won would rake in great amounts of money. It’s a story about how eight players on the Chicago White Sox, including the great Shoeless Joe Jackson who had a batting average of .340 was banned from baseball for life, never allowed to play the game on a professional level again. I remember years later watching the film Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner, and remember thinking more deeply about this story and about my own father.

Baseball was a significant part of my life growing up. I was driven 3 ½ hours from my hometown on a fairly regular basis to see the Seattle Mariners play. I was taken out of school to travel to Florida to watch spring training, and keep an eye out for promising rookies. I’ve met great baseball players, and got their autographs: Roger Clemens, Ken Griffey Jr., and many others. It was more than a casual pastime for my family. I look back now and see more clearly things that were said by my father in passing, that I kind of brushed off or didn’t really take in then. My father, like me, was born and raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, and this was an all-consuming lifestyle for him. Unlike me, my father was a gifted first baseman. He was the ideal build – 6 feet and a lefty (left handed) with quick reflexes and a powerful swing. I remember my father telling me in passing that he played in high school, and was told he should play college baseball or go to the minor leagues, and see where that would lead.

The faith tradition I grew up in discouraged higher education and playing professional sports, so he never explored either one. That was around the time he dropped out of high school, never graduating. I remember playing baseball with my father as a kid and taunting him a little asking: Was he as good as me at that age? He would always smile and say “better, I was much better.” And I look back now, and see I think he was telling the truth. Like my father I grew to the height I am now at age 12, and thus had a power advantage in sports during those years, but no scouts called for me, and no coach encouraged me to go further. I was a perfectly adequate player, but not a star player, not by a long shot.

I look back now and wonder about my father now. The strangeness is he followed a commitment to religious leadership and public speaking, something I actually had a knack for at a young age, but something that was a lot of work for him. I wondered what it would’ve been like if circumstances were different, and he was allowed to play the game he loved, baseball. Perhaps I wouldn’t be here today. Who knows?

I’m probably thinking about this because father’s day is coming up, and don’t worry I’ll have another sermon for you then. This is about baseball, but I think baseball for many of us is inseparable from the relationships we have or had with those that loved the game, at least for some of us.

I promised myself I wouldn’t get too metaphorical about baseball, but I’m not sure I can help myself. Baseball is about trying to get home, and you spend most of the game, if the game is going well, running, stealing, trying to be safe. Trying to get home. It’s why in my opinion, it’s probably the perfect game. You can’t help but see the poetry in the game – it’s poignant, sometimes draggy, often surprising. It’s about trying to get home, and facing obstacles in that journey head first or feet first, whatever gets you there.

I remember my first year as an intern, and the senior minister told me in his office that ministry was like baseball – if you’re hitting .400 you’re a hall of famer, meaning if you succeed in what you do less than half the time, you’re doing a great job. It’s a game of failure, of getting comfortable with failing, and still playing like your life depended on it.

The story of Eight Men Out is told two different ways, depending on the storyteller, and their prejudices. One way of telling the story using the facts is to tell of eight players who had great promise, who loved to play the game, and who threw all that away for greed. They got what they deserved, and God cut them down. They got what was coming to them, and were rightfully banned for life from professional baseball, because who could trust them again after losing on purpose for profit? The Chicago Tribune recorded a kid on the south side of Chicago crying to Shoeless Joe Jackson: “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” My father, like the father in Field of Dreams loved Shoeless Joe Jackson, not just as a baseball player but as a person. Which seems funny, since Shoeless Joe was indicted for gambling, but my father loved him. We flew to Cooperstown, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Upstate New York, so he could show me Shoeless Joe Jackson’s shoes. They wouldn’t admit Shoeless Joe into the Hall of Fame because of throwing the 1919 World Series, but they let his shoes in.

I think what my father loved was the personal details about Shoeless Joe. Shoeless Joe couldn’t read or write, and signed his name with a X. My father could write, but didn’t like to. He liked working outdoors and fixing things, and he found writing really tedious and difficult, especially since he was dyslexic. It would take him a long time to digest information that was written. He would often ask me to read something, and paraphrase to him what the gist was, to save himself time.

I feel very fortunate to be able to do something I enjoy and that utilizes my gifts. It’s hard for me to imagine not being allowed to do what I love. I think that’s the second way to tell the story of Eight Men Out, and the telling that most resonates with me. It’s a tragedy, about baseball players that in those days were paid very little and often were forced to work a second job along with playing baseball while the owners of the team reaped the profits from ticket sales. It’s a tragedy about understandable short-sightedness given the circumstances, and the aftermath of banning people from doing what they were born to do at the highest level.

In many ways, I think stories like this paved the way for what would become the baseball star, a baseball player who was independent and could negotiate salary based on their contribution to ticket sales, memorabilia, and general profit for the organization.

Any time you underpay people you depend on, you’re asking for trouble. That is most certainly true on an everyday level with teachers and many professions we depend on, but under-resource. And even if trouble never comes, you’re not encouraging people to bring their best, when they are underpaid to do something worthy and essential.

But the greatest tragedy of the story is not about the money. The tragedy is about people who couldn’t do what they were naturally able to do at the highest level. I think this is true for a good number of people, not just these eight players, why I think the story still resonates. How many people do you know who because of circumstances felt they couldn’t do what they could do to its highest potential?

As I get older, I know a good number. In his own way, I wonder if my father was one of them. Maybe he never would’ve been good enough to go pro, but he never felt he could have the chance to find out. It was an unlived part of him, something he channeled in different ways. If he was alive today, I’m doubtful he’d say he regretted it, because that was just his personality – he never talked about regret or what could’ve been.

But we know that these eight players regretted what they did – their regrets are recorded. They wished they would’ve made different choices, and because of that yearning, Shoeless Joe Jackson became almost a legend, a mythological character. He was someone that people swore they saw playing in minor league baseball teams, playing wherever he could. According to legend, he couldn’t quit playing. The passion never left him.

I think that’s why baseball is called America’s pastime. When we sit and watch a game, we are living past time. We are in eternity, merging with our past, the past, seeing a game that is inseparable from our relationships with those who loved the game. That’s the heart of it. It’s a relationship with the players, with the fans, with the announcers, the opening music for each player. That’s something that Field of Dreams got right. We step out of time for a bit, and we live with all those who played and loved this game.

I still feel like that. When I walked by Yankee stadium in the Bronx, I was alive with Mickey Mantle who my father idolized as a kid, with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig. Baseball was always a reflection of our culture for better and for worse. Baseball was the place where racial integration was tried and persisted amidst violent and disapproving fans.

It was the place where Doc No No Ellis would pitch an entire game for the Pittsburgh Pirates on LSD in 1970, a no hitter, meaning not one batter could hit what he threw over home base – a rare accomplishment. Baseball has been a story of immigrants – of players in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere who saw a life for themselves in the States – through the game of baseball. It’s a story about legendary teams that are sold and move cities, and mourned for generations, like the Brooklyn Dodgers.

It’s an American game. Which is why it has a lot of crime, usually revolving around trying to get ahead by cutting corners: gambling, performance enhancing drugs. The high and low of our culture – it’s all there. I think it’s a nostalgic game, and I understand those who can’t stand watching baseball. I know for some it’s too slow, not enough constant action.

I also know I probably haven’t named the most attractive qualities of those who have played the game, but that is why it’s so American – it’s a game that lifts up and mythologizes the outlaw. It makes a player’s flaws public, and in a few years, we can’t seem to forget them: not in spite of their flaws, but because of them. Shoeless Joe Jackson is not famous because he hit .340. He’s famous because he worked with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series, and was punished. That story gets told not because he was innocent, but because he was guilty. And we can see why someone would think he deserved it. And that’s what makes it tragic – it seems like his life couldn’t go any other way.

 But where there’s poetry, there’s imagination. Some of those hearing the story of Shoeless Joe and seven other players can imagine them still playing, they can imagine what their life would’ve been like if they were allowed to keep playing baseball.

That’s why I still love the story. I can’t help imagining the alternative. My father couldn’t stop imagining either – what if they were allowed to keep playing a game they were so good at. For certain at least one of them would be a Hall of Famer. When we saw their shoes, we would see more than what could’ve been. That’s why the Hall of Fame keeps Shoeless Joe’s shoes – the public can’t stop from imagining what could’ve been.

For those who really dislike baseball, I hope this sermon hasn’t bore you too much. This time of year I like to be outside in my short sleeves and catch a ball game, and I felt like exploring that feeling this Sunday, in all its personal nuances for me. I like a game that reminds me of what was and what could’ve been. It makes me think of living past time.