T-Ball and the Road of Love

A few years back, singer, songwriter and story teller Bill Harley, was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered.  He told a story of a young girl who ended up rejecting the expectations of those around her because she loved with abandon.  Here is her story as told by Bill Harley.

Last year, my young son played T-ball…Needless to say, I was delighted when Dylan wanted to play.  Now on the other team there was a girl I will call Tracy. Tracy came each week.  I know, since my son’s team always played her team.  She was not very good. She had coke-bottle glasses and a hearing aids on each ear.  She ran in a loping, carefree way, with one leg pulling after the other, one arm windmilling wildly in the air.

Everyone in the bleachers cheered for her, regardless of what team their progeny played for.  In all the games I saw, she never hit the ball, not even close.  It sat there on the tee waiting to be hit and it never was.  Sometimes after 10 or 11 swings, Tracy hit the T ( in T-ball, the ball sits on a plastic tee, waiting for a batter to hit the ball, which happens once every three batters).  The ball would fall off the tee and sit on the ground six inches in from home plate.  “Run! Run” yelled Tracy’s coach, and Tracy would lope to off towards first, clutching the bat in both arms, smiling.  Someone usually woke up and ran her down with the ball before she reached first.

Everyone applauded.

The last game of the season, Tracey came up and through some fluke, or simply a nod towards the law of averages, she creamed the ball.  She smoked it right up the middle, through the legs of 17 players.  Kids dodged as it went by or looked absentmindedly at it as it rolled unstopped, seemingly gaining speed, hopping over second base, heading into center field.  And once it reached there, there was no one to stop it.

Have I told you that there are no outfielders in T-ball?  There are for three minutes in the beginning of every inning, but then they move into the infield to be closer to the action, or at least, to their friends.

Tracy hit the ball and stood at home, delighted.  “Run!” yelled her coach.  “Run!”  All the parents, all of us, we stood and screamed, “Run, Tracy, Run, Run!”  Tracy turned and smiled at us, and then, happy to please, galumphed off to first. The first base coach wave his arms ‘round and ‘round when Tracy stopped at first.  “Keep going Tracy, keep going! Go!”  Happy to please, she headed to second.  By the time she was halfway to second, seven members of the opposition had reached the ball and were passing it among themselves.  It’s a rule in T-ball—everyone on the defending team has to touch every ball.

The ball began to make it long and circuitous route toward home plate, passing from one side of the field to the other. Tracy headed for third.  Adults fell out of the bleachers.  “Go, Tracy, Go!”  Tracy reached third and stopped, but the parents were very close to her now and she got the message.  Her coach stood at home plate calling her as the ball passed over the first basemen’s head and landed in the fielding team’s empty dugout.  “Come on Tracy!  Come on, baby!  Get a home run!”

Tracy started for home and then it happened.  During the pandemonium, no one had noticed the twelve-year-old geriatric mutt that had lazily settled itself down in front of the bleachers five feet from the third base line.  As Tracy rounded third, the dog, awakened by the screaming sat up and wagged its tail at Tracy as she headed down the line.  The tongue hung out, mouth pulled back in an unmistakable canine smile, and Tracy stopped, right there.  Halfway home, thirty feet from a legitimate home run, she stopped.

She looked at the dog.  Her coached yelled, “Come on Tracy!  Come on home!”  He went to his knees behind home plate pleading.  The crowd cheered, “Go, Tracy, Go! Run!”  She looked at the adults, at  her own parents shrieking and catching it all on video.  She looked at the dog.  The dog wagged its tail.  She looked at her coach. She looked at home.  She looked at the dog.  Everything went into slow motion.  She went for the dog!  It was a moment of complete stunned silence.  And then, perhaps, not as loud, but deeper, longer, more heartfelt, we all applauded as Tracy fell to her knees to  hug the dog.  Two roads diverged on a third-base line.  Tracy went for the dog.”

It occurs to me that two roads diverge in each of our lives.  One is the road of hurry, worry and passionless living. The other is the road of love.  A place where we can rediscover the awe and wonder of living.  Where we can take the dull grays of our existence and bring the color alive again.  Will we go for the safe, predictable road society lays out for us, or will be go for the One we love, Jesus who bids us come and savor life?  The world will be yelling “Come on, be sensible.”  Jesus says, “Come unto Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Now that’s awesome!