For Advent - "See Ball, Hit Ball"

Rico Petrocelli is one of the most popular players in Boston Red Sox history. He had a 12-year major league career, all with Boston, and was the shortstop for the Red Sox legendary “Impossible Dream” season in 1967 – taking the St. Louis Cardinals to seven games in the World Series.

Rico Petrocelli, like most players from his era,
had a simple approach to hitting a baseball.

Today, Petrocelli co-hosts the weekly radio show “Remember When” with Ed Randall on MLB Radio. The show is basically a couple of old-timers talking about old times with mostly old-time players and managers. It’s no surprise the show’s tone is heavily tilted toward “remembering when.”

One of the more frequent topics is the influence of sabermetrics on the modern game – front office mathematicians quantifying performance in more than two dozen categories to determine a player’s value and role. Instead of baseball coaches and scouts looking at batting average, fielding percentage, or earned run average to determine if a player is any good, numbers crunchers pour over BAPIP, OPS, DIPS, WAR(P), and Pythagorean expectation.

Players, of course, have adapted to this new assessment, and that’s changed the game. For instance, since sabermetrics places a high value on home runs, strike-outs are way up as players swing for the fences. Instead of trying to simply make contact, they’re thinking about bat speed, launch angle, and exit velocity. This led Randall to ask Petrocelli on one recent show to describe his approach when he was hitting.

“What approach?” Petrocelli answered. “I get in the box, make a quick sign of the cross, and try to hit the ball!”

It doesn’t get much simpler than that. Even though the numbers crunchers are able to cook an alphabet soup of acronyms, there’s still no escaping the simplistic “See ball, hit ball.”

This may be a good time of year to transfer that lesson of simplicity to our lives. We’re on the cusp of what is now the Christmas season – it used to be called Advent – when life gets crazy. On top of everything else in our lives, we now face buying presents and planning parties, trimming trees and making travel arrangements, and cooking and baking for armies of family and friends. Before we know it, it’s Christmas night and we’re collapsed on the couch – all before we’ve really had a chance to prepare ourselves spiritually for the birth of our Lord.

And while we’re at it, this is a perfect time to simplify God, too. We’re all aware the Church has many requirements we’re supposed to follow. But most can be summarized in the one-sentence Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” It’s not brain surgery. God loves us; we just need to love him back by the way we treat others. That’s about as simple as “See ball, hit ball.”

Goodbye Hello

If you’re surprised to see another post from me… well, me too.

One Saturday night last June, as we were watching a Netflix movie, Helen noticed my sister Susan had just sent her a “wave” on Messenger. I was a bit surprised – Susan didn’t usually send IMs, and we already had a phone conversation that afternoon. Susan was really looking forward to her visit in the fall, she said; one week on a cruise with husband Ed, then staying another week to spend time with Mom. They hadn’t seen each other since Mom, 95, moved closer to me in Jacksonville more than two years earlier.

“I just want to see Mom one more time before she dies,” Susan said.

“No worries,” I replied.  “Mom will outlive both of us.”

Susan’s 2^nd birthday, March 28, 1962.
I must have given her my comb for a
birthday present.

It was a familiar laugh line we both used often. It was our last laugh. An hour after Helen got my sister’s IM, my brother-in-law called.

“I’m at the hospital,” Ed said flatly, in shock. “Susan died. She’s gone.”

Susan and Ed had also been watching a movie at home when Susan got up, walked toward the bathroom and said to Ed, for no apparent reason, “Love ya, big guy.” She made it as far as the hall. The heart attack killed her before she hit the floor. Family and friends were all stunned. Susan, 58, was managing serious medical issues – diabetes, Lupus – but there was no indication of any imminent crisis.

Of the many Facebook condolences I received, one stood out. Charlene Shirk-Mantarro wrote, “The loss of a sibling is life-changing.” Charlene was more insightful than I originally believed. Due to distance and family dynamics, Susan and I had not been especially close. Yet, after responsibility for Mom moved from Susan to me, we’d found a good equilibrium. She was much more relaxed, I was less guarded.

Susan on a cruise - “The loss
of a sibling is life-changing.”

After Susan died, my vision of the world began clearing, and meaning started returning to relationships – reversing trends that climaxed more than a year ago, when I had mentally and emotionally checked out. I started just going through the motions with little substance and no real direction. One casualty was this blog. Who the hell was I to write about life and God, I concluded.  A waste of time. But Susan’s death shook me as a reminder that reality doesn’t go away simply by walking away from it.

If Susan’s death awakened me, a homily by a ridiculously insightful rookie priest generated some inertia. Fr. John Sollee reminded me that all our desires are actually a desire for God – our pursuit of love is really a desire for God’s companionship; our quest for money is our substitute for God’s security; cultivating friendships is our desire for intimacy with God. These are all forward-looking pursuits and, as such, imply hope. Which is what I had abandoned.

And that’s why I’ve returned to the blog.

To generate new and meaningful posts, I have to constantly keep my antenna up for relevant ideas and examples. That’s a forward-looking exercise that implies hope. So I’ll write to nurture hope in my own life.  If someone happens to get anything out of one, all the better. I thank my sister for that.