The Boys Of (late) Summer

The Boys of (Late) Summer

April baseball is all about expectation. June baseball is ripe with possibility. By August (according to a friend of mine who is a sportswriter), unless you are within ten games of the division leader, you’re as good as done. September baseball often holds a surprise or two—and my hometown team is one of them.

In August the boys of summer were languishing in the most disappointing way. If someone had told me then that by September these sleepwalking underachievers would be a game and half out of first place, I might have produced a very unladylike snort. But that is exactly where they are today.

Even in a game that is managed by statistics and analyzed into oblivion, there are intangibles. No one is unbeatable, and no long shot is unwinnable. That’s why they play all the games on the schedule. Even when the odds are narrowing, they suit up, go to the park, and play ball.

My hometown team is on a hot streak. I don’t know how far they’ll ride it, or what the ultimate outcome of this improbable season will be—but their heart is impossible to deny. They’re in the hunt, just days from October. And isn’t that exactly where you’d want to be? Because beyond expectation and possibility and promise lies what is. The present is where the game is played. That’s where the glory lies. That’s where anything can happen, where hearts can catch fire and blaze in the most unexpected ways.

From the hometown boys I’ve learned that discouragement isn’t fatal, that defeat isn’t destined to repeat itself. That the long schedule has more twists and turns than you can imagine, and it is unlikely to play out according to any careful preseason plan. But mostly I’ve learned that each day’s game is the opportunity of that day alone and must be met.

It’s almost October. Even in my southern city, the air is getting cooler. And the game is getting harder, not easier. It counts more now. Not less. What is there to do today but take the field and play?

For nothing will be impossible with God.

Luke 1:37, HCSB