Dr. James L. Snyder
The great pastime of America throughout the years has been sports. Americans
have been ingenious in turning something simple into a sport for everyone to
enjoy. I must say I have enjoyed my share of sports.
When younger, I was a baseball fan. I went to as many games as possible. The
Stadium in Baltimore Maryland was just a few minutes from my house so I
could visit it often, and I often did. I did not really care who won the
game as long as it was a good game played, not to mention the hotdogs.
The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage accused me of going to ball games
just to eat hotdogs. Whenever I would return from a ballgame the first
question would be, not who won the game but, “How many hotdogs did you eat?”
If the truth was known, and you will not get it from me, many a hotdog
sacrificed itself at a ballgame. After all, when you are watching a
ballgame, who has time to keep track of how many hotdogs you are eating?
I did have a moment of anxiety once when my wife threatened to weigh me
before the game and then weigh me after the game to see if I had eaten too
many hotdogs. When she first mentioned it I laughed, but I noticed she was
not laughing, which caused me some deep concern.
Fortunately, for me it never got to that but came perilously close.
Nothing is more relaxing on a Saturday afternoon than sitting in a ballpark
watching a ballgame in progress. Somehow, all the cares of the world seem to
flutter away while watching the game.
It all ended for me one summer.
I had come into the house from some chore and my wife greeted me by saying,
“Do you know your ball team is on strike?”
I looked at her, laughed and said, “I know. They get three strikes and then
they’re out. That’s the way they play the game.” I winked at her and laughed
good-naturedly. “Finally,” I said to her, “you’re coming to understand what
the game is all about.”
“No, you don’t understand. Your team is on strike.”
“I get you, and this Saturday I’m going to go and watch them strike again.”
It took me a while but finally my wife got through the thickness of my skull
and got me to understand the strike she was talking about was not the strike
I was talking about. It is always nice when people are on the same page.
In a marriage situation, the biggest challenge a couple has is staying on
the same page. Even though the husband and wife might be reading the same
book, for some reason wives have the ability to read three or four chapters
ahead. When a husband tries to correct her she impatiently says, “We were on
that page last week. Try to keep up.”
Try as we might, it is a rare husband who can keep up. But we try.
When I got up to the same page as my wife about the baseball team on strike,
I was feeling rather low. “What do you think about your baseball game now,”
she taunted.
As it turned out, the baseball team was actually out on strike and if I
remember correctly, we missed the whole season that year. They were on
strike for, you will never guess, more money.
Up to that point, I thought the players played because they loved the game.
Boy was I on the wrong page with that. I went to games because I love the
game and it did not matter to me who won or lost as long as it was a good
game.
Now, to find out that my heroes, if you can call them such, were primarily
interested in money was disheartening. I have never been able to watch a
game since with the same excitement I did before.
Why can’t we just have fun? Why does life have to be such a battle? Why
can’t we have a baseball game just for the fun of it?
Recently, I attended a baseball game at the local high school. I thought I
would just go and enjoy the game. I did not know any of the players; I just
wanted to enjoy the game.
Then I met an unfamiliar phenomenon of high school baseball. Parents of
baseball players!
The game started as normal but soon the air exploded with shouting and
yelling in the stands. I did not quite understand what all the noise was
about at the time. Two women, imagine that, got in a fistfight over the
ballgame! They were mothers of two of the players on opposite teams.
That was just the beginning of the shouting and the yelling that afternoon.
As I walked away, I sadly shook my head and said to myself, “Why can’t we
just have fun?”
I believe the Preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes explains it well. “I have
seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all was vanity
and vexation of spirit” (Ecclesiastes 1:14 KJV).
