Going Home: Opening Day
Today, I will join my mom at Opening Day for the Texas Rangers. We’ll sit in Home Run Porch, in seats marked “Bentrup Family.” My parents, longtime season ticket holders, have been staples in those green chairs. We texted their ballpark usher last week to let him know my dad had gone home.
You can’t overstate what baseball means to my family.
My earliest memories are of me sitting on the front step of our house waiting for my dad to pull in the driveway after work. Ball, glove, and bat in hand, I would meet him at his car door before he could even grab his briefcase. And there he went, walking out to our vacant lot, still in his shirt and tie, hitting me ground balls until dinner. This ritual lasted through high school.
I don’t remember my dad ever missing a game. My mom tells me it happened, but if so it was a very rare occurrence. Even in high school, when my dad’s work took him to a neighboring town and he lived in an apartment during the week (he didn’t move the family, because baseball…), he would be there every Tuesday night for my midweek game.
Every game, my dad was there. My dad was there keeping score or taking pictures or recording my game on video. My dad was there to play catch any time I needed to warm up. My dad was there to build me any contraption I thought I needed to help my game (we had a full bullpen in our front yard, with rubber and plate, so I could work with my pitchers).
When I was behind the plate, or in the on-deck circle, or celebrating after a win, or ticked off after a loss, my dad was there. I could always look over to the corner of the stands nearest the dugout, and my dad was there.
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Opening Day, of course, is the first day of the baseball season. For baseball fans, it is a time when hope comes alive again, after a long winter of waiting.
It can’t be an accident that baseball always starts around the time of Easter. For us faithful, it means that the long dark nights of winter are over and the slate is clean. All teams, the exalted and lowly alike, are tied at zero wins and zero losses. This, in turn, means that last fall’s fervent cry of “wait until next year” has become this spring’s glorious anthem of “this is our year!” Hope springs eternal.
The key emotion of my baseball experience is hope over despair, which is also the most important meaning of Easter for us as Christians. No matter what happens, no matter how hopeless our situation seems, no matter how painful life can feel, Christians will affirm on Easter morning, “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!” And then we go on living into that hope of the Resurrection, which really is the only thing that ever changes our lives or the world.
Amen. Play ball!
