Baseball Family

My wife, Rochelle, hates the baseball postseason! Not because she loses her husband to late-night, extra-inning games but because she loses herself. It seems that in recent years the baseball playoffs have had heart-pounding, heart-breaking drama.

The much belied slow pace of the regular season becomes palpable moments of pregnant expectation in the playoffs. Each moment hangs like a curveball without enough zip. Cameras pan the pained faces of the crowd as pitch after pitch carries the blessing or the curse of winning or losing. It's agonizing. It's wonderful.

You can't do that in football...it's too fast. It won't happen in basketball...the shot clock is ticking. Don't expect it in golf...it's too quite. Forget soccer...I think we already have!

Only baseball has that magic drama of team against team, and one-on-one.

Rochelle is drawn in, like a moth to a flame to the tense drama only baseball can provide. She sits and watches, rises and falls with every late inning pitch--hoping to death that the Yankees will lose. They hardly ever do.

It is in those moments that I am most aware of family unity. I grew up in a baseball family. I'm an Atlanta Braves fan because my mom was. Rochelle grew up in a football family. Rochelle is a Dallas Cowboy's fan because her dad was. Parents shape us in more ways than we know. Adults pass along their love for sports and sports teams as easily as they pass the bread around the kitchen table.

Working with parents in a church setting, I'm often approached about how to pass down the faith from one generation to the next. We all want to know the magic formula for faithful children. I'm not sure if there is one. There are a thousand theories and none of them are fool-proof. But I think the answer may be more simple that I ever realized: love the thing you love and let your children know you love it!

That's what we do with sports. We might be on to something.