Hopeful Expectations: Easter and Baseball

The birds are singing.  The sky is so blue.  Glorious music plays, and flags are flying.  The grass is so green—it’s like never before.  It is a day of wonderful celebration, of hope, of expectation, and newness of life.  No, I’m not talking about the Feast of the Resurrection, commonly called Easter.  I’m talking about the Feast of the First Pitch, commonly called Opening Day.

It has been a long-held belief of mine that there is a direct and intentional correlation between the celebration of Easter and the beginning of the baseball season.  Both offer us something new, something that has replaced the old ways of doing things.  Both are about hope.  And both, ultimately, are about one very simple idea:  coming home. 

The great hope of the Resurrection is the newness of life, the newness of all things.  Christ being raised from the dead has changed the story.  Death no longer has dominion over Jesus, and it no longer has dominion over us.  It is no longer the end.  In Christ we have the promise of something new, that is the sure and certain hope of eternal life. 

And while Christ passes from the cold of death into the warm glow of resurrected life, we pass from the coldness of winter into the glowing warmth of springtime, the chirping of the birds, and the sound of horsehide hitting up against leather.  We too arise from our slumbers and head into the sunshine.  Our teams take the field with new faces, big name free agents who have signed with the hope of winning a title, and fresh-faced rookies looking to make a splash.  Some clubs open up new ballparks in the hope of exciting the fans, while others adopt a new uniform with the optimism that such a subtle change with ignite something inside players that will lead to a championship run.  Everything has been made new and exciting! 

Eastertide brings us hope.  How can we not feel a sense of hope after the wonderfully rousing liturgies that we experienced on Easter Sunday?  There is promise to this season. We have walked the long walk of Lent, done the spring cleaning of our souls, and now we are ready for whatever may come in this season of hopefulness, of joy.

As a Cleveland Indians fan I go into every baseball season with a sense of hope, a sense that this year things will be different.  In April every single team has that hope, even the hapless Chicago Cubs, who haven’t won a World Series since 1908!  The very nature of baseball is about hope.  The fact that the game is not bound by a clock means that a team always has a chance for a miraculous comeback, regardless of the deficit.  Is that not the nature of our Easter?!  Christ has beaten the odds, miraculously turning a shameful cross into a symbol for hope.  And so baseball offers us the chance to hope for the miraculous.  Even if we are Indians or Cubs fans.

Lastly, the Resurrection and baseball are both about one simple truth:  that we all long to come home.  In Christ we have our means by which to reach that home.  We long for the day when we will see our Savior face to face.  We long for the day when loved ones long gone will run to us and hug us so tight.  And we long for the day when all things come into their perfection through Christ.  This is home.  This is our real home.  We are, as Christ says in John’s Gospel, in the world, but not of the world.  We wait for the day when we may go home. 

But the journey home is a marathon, not a sprint.  The baseball season is the same.  Unlike football, baseball teases us, makes us endure.  Even the worst of teams will win every now and then, and even the best will fall.  Baseball, like life, is a grind.  Teams can’t win the World Series in April, and we can’t accomplish all God has for us in simply a day or a week. We grind it out because this season has given us something for which to hope.

 But if we endure (in life and in baseball), if we are as determined as a devil, yet selfless as a saint, if we keep it between the white lines and hit ‘em where they ain’t, if we play for the team, knowing that we will never stand alone, then one day, my friends, one day we will all find ourselves safe at home.