A Theologian and a Baseball Fan: What Could Go Wrong?

Contents

Introduction

Section 1: How Did We Get Here?

Chapter 1: A Journey to the Promised Land

Chapter 2: The Importance of Mmory

Chapter 3: A Dream That Shapes Us

Chapter 4: Generational Bonding

Section 2: A Social Cultural Context

Chapter 5: On the Edge

Chapter 6: Inclusive or Exclusive

Chapter 7: Fair or Foul

Chapter 8: The Best Seat

Section 3: The Straight and Narrow Path

Chapter 9: The Error of Our Ways

Chapter 10: The Sticky, Tricky Stuff

Chapter 11: Unwritten Rules

Chapter 12: Don’t Look Back

Section 4: Pitching

Chapter 13: Perfection

Chapter 14: Wild Thing

Chapter 15: Starting and Relieving

Section 5: Mash Up

Chapter 16: Scouting

Chapter 17: What’s in a Name?

Chapter 18: Managing

Chapter 19: Going Long

Chapter 20: Ghosts of the Past

Chapter 21: The Calm Before the Storm

Section 6: The Sacraments and Baseball

Chapter 22: Baptism into the Community

Chapter 23: The Eucharist as Remembrance

Conclusion

A Valuable Resource for Theologians Who Love Baseball

References

Introduction

If Genesis 1:1 were written for baseball, it would have read as, "In the big inning, God created." Central to my theology is that God created the universe, or the universes, and continues to create, offering new possibilities in each moment of our lives. One of those moments for me for which I am eternally grateful is the introduction of baseball into my life.

I remember that moment vividly. I was sitting in my elementary classroom in Compton, California, when a man came in seeking kids interested in learning and playing baseball. While God may have created baseball in the big inning, I had never heard of it. But I signed up, and that moment of time became the beginning of enormous pleasure in a sport, which outside of my faith, has achieved central focus in my life.

I learned the fundamentals of the game of baseball in California. When my family moved back to my birthplace in Cozad, Nebraska, I knew I wanted to continue playing baseball. From my fourth-grade year on, my summers (and much of my fall months) were dominated with baseball, and with considerable success. I had scrapbooks of newspaper clippings about no-hitters and one-hitters I had thrown. I wasn’t a bad hitter either, but pitching was my first love and clearly my path to a future in the game.

I was dedicated to the extent of keeping extensive notebooks of statistics—that is, batting averages, singles, doubles, triples, and home runs, and about every pitching statistic I could calculate myself. I remember being selected on all-star teams as a little leaguer and playing all-star teams from other towns. By the time I was in the eighth grade, I had surpassed my peers in ability, such as being able to throw a baseball through a car wash without getting it wet. After little league in my hometown, the better players would move into a program sponsored by the America Legion. The first level was Midget baseball, which took you to about age fifteen when you were moved up to the America Legion team until you aged out at nineteen. While most of my peers did not get a chance to play with the American Legion team until the summer between their sophomore and junior year in high school, I began playing American Legion baseball right out of my eighth-grade year.

You know you are really invested in a sport when you build your own baseball field. It wasn’t as fancy as the field of dreams (a reference to the 1989 movie), but it was impressive. My brother Steve and I used some grassy land east of our house to build the field. We constructed a backstop out of wood we could find around our farm. We cleared the grass for a small diamond and limited outfield and scraped grass bare for base paths. We even hauled in dirt to build a mound. When we placed the bases and fastened the pitching rubber to the mound, we were ready to go. We spent hours on that field taking turns at pitching and hitting, but most of the time, we stayed into the late hours of the evening trying to find lost baseballs in the midst of the tall grass surrounding the field. The bats were splintered, and the baseballs we used were torn with flaps hanging from them, but my brother and I had many hours of fun on that makeshift baseball field. It truly was our field of dreams!

I played both baseball and basketball when I went to Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. My basketball skills were limited for the college level. I was six foot six, an in-between size for college basketball. They wanted me to play shooting guard or small forward. I had only played with my back to the basket in high school, but in college, I was facing guys several inches taller than me who dominated the middle. Hence, I decided early on to concentrate totally on baseball.

I only played college baseball for two years and, during the summer months, played for a team sponsored by the Boston Red Sox. It was a D league team that had some washed-up or injured former major league players, and a few players the team sponsors were hoping might prove good enough to break into their system. That was not my future. My playing days were over.

My love for baseball was not over. Baseball was still in my future, just not on the field.

With my fastball grounded, I began concentrating on what I perceived to be a call to ministry. From Morningside College, I entered the seminary at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas. While baseball was fun, I had been seriously invested in academics in high school and college. In college, I had a double major in philosophy and speech, and little did I know that my speech major would bring together my call to ministry and my passion for baseball.

Morningside College did not have classes in broadcasting, and as a speech major, I was interested in learning about broadcasting. I called the program director of a local radio station in Sioux City (KMNS Radio) and asked if I could visit. He invited me to the station on a Friday afternoon when he was the announcer on duty. We had a great visit as I sat watching him spin records and play commercials. I was surprised that night when he called to say his weekend man had just resigned and he wondered if I would be interested. Needless to say, I jumped on the opportunity. It began with six-to-midnight shifts on Saturdays and Sundays, but it quickly grew over my next two years at Morningside. By the time I moved to Dallas, I had acquired enough broadcasting skills to work my way through seminary at a Dallas radio station.

I graduated from Perkins and accepted an appointment in Broken Bow, Nebraska. At every one of my appointments, I found ways to become involved in the community. In Broken Bow, it included coaching the American Legion team and working with a high school English teacher named Don Davis to create a Saturday morning radio program for students. The program called Concord gave students a taste of broadcasting, and some of them pursued careers in broadcasting.

While in seminary, I became increasingly interested in higher education and wondered if my real calling was to teach or do administrative work in college. I applied for and was accepted to a doctoral program in higher education policy studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. That degree gave me opportunities including teaching, research, and administrative experience, including becoming the dean of students at Kansas Wesleyan University (where I also coached the baseball team). In 1978, with the job market in higher education limited, I moved back to Dallas to take a job in news at the same station for which I worked during seminary. Two years later, baseball came back into the picture.

I got a call from Mark Holtz, who was sports director at WBAP radio, the home of the Texas Rangers and the new NBA franchise, the Dallas Mavericks. Mark had moved to Dallas from Denver to be the first play-by-play voice of the Mavericks, but his first love was baseball. The Rangers’ play-by-play position was coming open, and he had been named the new voice of the Texas Rangers. He asked if I would be interested in moving to WBAP to be the sports director. I was, and I did.

I became close friends with Mark and his partner, Eric Nadel. I began doing morning drive sports but soon began hosting sports talk shows around the Rangers and the Mavericks. From the success of those wraparound talk shows, we decided to try a full-time, seven-day-a-week sports talk show that we called Sports at Six, and I eventually served as its host for several years, one of the first sports talk shows in the country. ESPN did not begin radio sports talk for another ten years.

The time on the air was fulfilling, but my real joy in my job at WBAP was the time on the field at Arlington Stadium prior to each Rangers’ home game. The Rangers had been in Arlington for only ten years, and the former double-A stadium was barely adequate for major league baseball. But it was, again, my field of dreams.

Prior to the games, I had an opportunity to talk with players—such as, Jim Sundberg, Al Oliver, Buddy Bell, Larry Parrish, Rick Honeycutt, Danny Darwin, Billy Sample, Charlie Hough, and many more, in addition to the visiting players who came through Arlington. I also spent many hours sitting on the bench and soaking in the stories of baseball’s past from former players and managers like Bobby Bragan and Don Zimmer. And then there were the colleagues in the media such as Tim Kurkjian, Jim Reeves, Randy Galloway, Blackie Sherrod, and Frank Luksa.

I can still smell the freshly cut infield grass, feel the soft southern breezes blowing over the walls, and the smell of tobacco in the dugouts. It wasn’t unlike the experience of Dr. Archibald Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams (Robinson 1989, 1:27:26), except that I wasn’t given the opportunity to play.

To me, baseball is magical. Baseball is a dance of life and the beyond. It’s a convergence of a rich history of players with strange names who make fond memories, a maddening array of statistics, and the artistry of talented pitchers who can throw a baseball through a car wash without getting it wet, speedsters who steal bases, fielders who have unbelievable reflexes, and hitters who can make a baseball disappear into the clear blue summer sky. It’s baseball, and it’s my field of dreams.

I probably experience baseball a bit differently than most people, given my eclectic background. I have an understanding of the game from one who played. I appreciate the game as a God-given creation that brings us closer to understanding the Creator. And I appreciate the game because, for me, it portrays my theology in motion. Each moment in baseball, as in life itself, is God-given.

I returned to pastoral ministry, to my calling, in 1985 where I remain today. Ron Sleeth, my homiletics professor at Perkins School of Theology, was fond of saying a sermon was not complete without a sports illustration. I would be more specific and say a sermon is not complete without an illustration from baseball. I have often wondered if my life is characterized as one who has followed the call of Christ and loved baseball as a hobby. Or, if my love of baseball has a purpose in my call to ministry.

I hope to share some of my theological interpretations of the game I love. The game speaks of errors and forgiveness. It speaks of a past that informs the present. It speaks of a future—a home plate, the promised land. And it speaks of character.

You will share my passion for this wonderful game and how it points to my faith, in the following stories. Enjoy!

Dan L. Flanagan

Field of Dreams. 1989. Universal Pictures.

Section 1

How Did We Get Here?

Chapter 1

A Journey to the Promised Land

Baseball Reference

The title of Tom Boswell’s book Why Time Begins on Opening Day is imaginative and accurate for baseball fans (Boswell, 1984). With any seasonal sport, there is