certainly has a great title. For someone who loves baseball as much as I do, it doesn't take much to convince me to read a book that attempts to link baseball and religion. I have always attempted to ensure that baseball doesn't become my religion, but I also believe that baseball, as with anything in life, is filled with opportunities to see God at work in the world if we look through the proper lens.
Sermon on the Mound tells O'Connor's story of a deep and abiding love of baseball, and how baseball led to his salvation. The narrative parts of his life are interesting, and it's fun for any lover of baseball to join with O'Connor as he reflects about different ideas in baseball that can direct our attention to God. I wouldn't say that anything in this book is earth-shattering or life-changing, but it's a fun read and helps the reader see baseball as a chance to display gifts and talents from God.
I think O'Connor's best reflection is done later in the book, when thinking about the free and easy love of baseball (and sports) in relation to the difficulties we often have transporting that enthusiasm into our worship. He writes:
Why is it, then, I find it so delicious to give myself in wild, spontaneous, rapturous applause to some self-centered, overpaid athlete who just slugged a game-winning homer into the upper deck when it is still difficult to lose myself in the sweetness of a worship service? Why does gravity tug so at these hands designed by God to be lifted wholeheartedly in praise, when, in moments not nearly so regal, they are generously filled with helium?
[...]
So long as I am able to enjoy the excellence I see down on the field and recognize it as a momentary diversion from life's struggles. So long as we remember the true struggles are the spiritual battles waged daily in our hearts and minds, and that the outcome of this warfare will ultimately decide to whom we offer our adulation and for whom we have nothing left but a place on the trash heap with the banana peels and the day-old box scores.
As we near the end of the college football season and the heat rises on the debate about playoffs and champions and rivalries, I wonder how we, too, might reflect on the place of sports in our own lives. Are sports a helpful diversion, an entertainment option? Can we enjoy the spectacle of a game well-played without getting so wrapped up in the result that a loss ruins our day? Or have sports taken over our lives, hijacked our emotions, that the roller coaster ride of a football game tarnishes everything so deeply that we fail to appreciate the inherent beauty the game, so desperate are we for a victory? Can we respect and appreciate those who play without worshiping them? Can we be loyal to a program without building it up as an idol?
Sports are such a massive part of American life--may we have the courage to enjoy them as the artistic forms they are without crossing the line and building them up as idols in our lives.
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