Why Baseball is Better than Politics (and Why All Pastors Are Crazy)/ Jeff Heidkamp

We had something about sports a few months ago, and I think we need another one in honor of baseball opening day. Or, at the least, I need something to distract me from my Twins getting pummeled by Canadians last night.

So, if you've known me for about the last couple years, you know I'm a big baseball fan. The last fifteen or so books I've read for pleasure have been about baseball (two tied for best honors, The Last Hero by Howard Bryant and Men at Work by George Will). But what you might not know is that it's a recent thing. I hadn't followed baseball since I was a kid until two years ago. And it's actually been a pretty healing experience to get back into it.

Last season I was trying to convince my eight year old to watch a game with me instead of play a video game on the computer, and she had a classic line. "Dad, I just don't get baseball". I argued with her that she did. We'd watched enough together that she understood the mechanics of strikes, balls, outs, and runs. "No," she responded, "I just don't get why you care." But I actually think that's kind of the point. Sports are good for us precisely because they don't matter, and they probably only get unhealthy if we start to think they actually do matter in some real way. 

I gave up on baseball because I was an insecure middle-schooler. There were jocks, and there were geeks, and then there were, in our arts-centered school district, the music-geeks. I was bad at sports, and the geeks got beat up, so I decided to try to be a music geek. Other than being reasonably talented (which I was), a way to gain entrance into the music-geek club was to declare undying hatred for sports and athletes. So I threw away my sports section, returned my Yogi Berra biography to the public library, and took up with scales and arpeggios.

Music geekdom had a clear premise. We considered ourselves superior to athletes because, as we liked to remind ourselves often, sports didn't matter. Sports was just a bunch of people playing games. But music? Music mattered. Music was life and death. Music was about the soul. Music was true art. Blah blah blah. (Though, for the record, I did play some pretty good music, and a bunch of the people I played with have gone on to do things like open for Wynton Marsalis at Lincoln Center and sing backup vocals for Norah Jones).

But one of the things I realize looking back was how unhappy music made us. It was a harsh taskmaster. And it was precisely the fact of how much we were convinced it mattered that made it so dire. If you couldn't play a part, make an audition, or impress a conductor, very real failure hung over your head.

I moved on from music geekdom to ministry, where we are more convinced than ever that everything matters. And it's this endless mattering that can at times make ministry an impossible burden. This brings me to potentially charlatan brain science. I read this thing about brain science once in a book, and for some reason I believed it. I have never been able to confirm that it is true, and I can't remember the name of the book, so I'm going to type it because it has been experientially helpful, even if the science is questionable.

The brain science said that there was some part of your brain that fires up when you think about things that are ultimate. When you are considering life, death, truth, God, meaning, etc., that part got "hot". And what the researcher said was that in mentally unhealthy people, this part of the brain was often "hot". And in mentally healthy people, it was generally "cool". Which explained to me, regardless of physiological reality, why all pastors are crazy.

And it also explains to me why picking up baseball as a hobby (instead of politics) has been so healthy for me. For a couple hours at night, or while reading, or conversing, I become engrossed in something that even an eight year old can clearly see does not matter. And yet, it does matter. Because it is fun. And God made us not only to steward his creation, but also to enjoy it. And is it a good and beautiful thing to be moved by the fact that a 30 year old man has spent most of his life learning how to hurl a tightly wound ball of yarn 95 miles an hour at a tiny square in such a way that another 30 year old man can't hit it over a wall with a stick? I think it is.

Unhealthy spirituality would probably reject baseball as a waste of time because it takes away from doing the things that really matter. Healthy spirituality lives in a humility that allows us to celebrate rather than castigate our creatureliness.

 

So- do you have hobbies that don't matter? Do they do anything good for you? Do you ever struggle with guilt because they are a waste of time? And how much prayer and fasting are you willing to invest against the Yankees this year?

Comments

[John West]

Hey Jeff,

Great Post I love this:

Unhealthy spirituality would probably reject baseball as a waste of time because it takes away from doing the things that really matter. Healthy spirituality lives in a humility that allows us to celebrate rather than castigate our creatureliness.

This post gave me the opportunity to reflect on a talk I gave this past Sunday, and upon reflection to repent (reorient my arrow towards Jesus).

I was talking about Justice and how we can get overwhelmed by the statistics having to do with world hunger etc. And how a natural reaction is to want to distract ourselves and ignore the need.

I got on this unplanned riff (occasionally these work out well, but I don't think this was one of those occasions) about using the Tigers as a distraction.

I think I revisited this idea about three times with varying degrees of harshness - with the basic implication being "If you are following the Tiger's you probably don't love Jesus and don't care about the poor." (This might fit the definition of unhealthy spirituality you give above - on a side note it might be fun sometime to have a discussion of our best and worst unplanned riffs).

I wish you could find the reference to questionable brain science, because I think it makes a bunch of sense, and I will certainly use it at some point in the future. As it stands you will be my source. I think it explains why Sportscenter is way more fun to watch than world news tonight.

Here is what I have been thinking. Maybe in order to pursue things that are ultimate we need a healthy mind, and paradoxically, maybe part of having a healthy mind is not letting our minds overheat on ultimate things. Maybe having some some non-ultimate pursuits (embracing our creatureliness) is a crucial way of staying healthy for the marathon of pursuing what ultimately matters.

Thanks for the inspiration. I'm going to follow the Tigers this year and join a hockey league.

[John West]

OK obviously I don't understand how to use the HTML tags. My quote of Jeff ends after the first paragraph.

[Jeff]

Yeah, this happens. Usually Littauer figures out how to fix it.

Hey, I love your bit on unplanned riffs. They can be powerful sometimes, and sometimes so dangerous. I've probably done that bit about TV or something myself. It's kind of true, but then we have to admit, kind of cheap. Thoughtful stuff.

[Taylor Vander Aarde]

I'm not sure "fasting" and "Yankees" have ever been in the same sentence together. You should join a rec softball league if you get a chance. That's my hobby that doesn't matter. We spend hours discussing our batting order and defense and send YouTube videos to rally the troops (this usually starts about two months before the season begins). Then, we spent 60 minutes once a week sliding on gravel while wearing shorts, nervously watching any clouds that look they could produce rain, generally over-coaching each other. When the game is over, we go and search around for the best drink specials after then game and dissect every pitch and how the umpire was terrible and how the other team was a bunch of arrogant punks (like the Yankees). I even spend hours doing stats for my teams and I love every minute.

[Dan Nelson]

This comment made my day. Taylor, I don't know who's going to bad 3rd with you gone...

[Dan Nelson]

Jeff, I will spend the rest of Leap of Faith fasting and praying against the Yankees. God has a lot of strongholds to break if we're ever going to beat them.

[Brent]

Well, I do think baseball is a waste of time, but just because they waste so much time in baseball. I mean, can't we get like a 'pitch clock' introduced the way basketball has a shot clock? When I occasionally watch baseball, I'm constantly thinking 'Good Lord, don't you know the rest of us have lives to get on with???'

I also think your story is interesting from another perspective: I tend to think sports is really just about our need for belonging. We play and follow sports because it gets us into a club. And clubs are often exclusive (except for the 'hate the Yankees' club, which accepts all applicants). Interesting how you gave up one club for another as a kid, motivated by that need for belonging, and have now found a way to go back.

[PB]

Vince and I have often felt guilty about one particular habit... it started out as just a one-time occurrence, then it was fun, then it became a habit, then we denied its status as habit, and then we enjoyed the endorphine rush as we'd run as fast as our legs could carry us. Sometimes we'd wear costumes for fun... But now I think we're at peace with it, I mean, the bank tellers are generally pretty generous, and almost always give us the combination to the safe.

[Doug]

I think I'm having a hard time tracking this post as I have a wide variety of experiences that, to me, don't really say anything about wasting time.

Like Jeff, I also was not exactly loving the jock scene in school and I was I pretty hard core music geek. I played several instruments in high school, competed at national levels in marching band, got paid gigs for jazz, and had a brief stint with orchestra. But nowhere along the line did I think music was any more or less important than sports. I suppose that's just what I was predisposed to do given my family influences and obvious talents.

But then later in my adult life I took up hockey both to play and watch. I would say that I put at least as much energy in that as I did music, and I competed with a traveling team. A few years later I became a Bruins season ticket holder, which drastically changed the way I felt about spectator sports, and started playing fantasy hockey. Overall, I found that I could place as much importance in music as in sports. I also found that I could be equally depressed and elated by both of them.

I guess I could also say the same thing about my occupation, which is also my hobby. Just yesterday I found out I won a programming contest run by Google and I get to go to this year's sold-out Google I/O conference for free! Awesome! Yet on the other hand, nothing has bothered me more over the last year than crappy job situations, which I am trying to negotiate.

There have also been times of ministry involvement in my life that have been thrilling and exasperating, as I'm sure many people reading this now would identify with.

For me, in the end, any one of these things can create "hotness" in my brain. Usually it's just one thing to the exclusion of others, but not always. None of these pursuits I feel like were at all a waste of time. They are all life experiences that validate my humanity, and the lessons learned in one area I can apply to the others. And I can't wait to see what comes up next for me. Probably some kind of entrepreneurship and hopefully more ministry...

[Jeff]

Just noting, tonight at Yankee Stadium, the good guys beat the bad guys. I'm sorry. i can't help myself.

[Dan L]

Yeah, unfortunately Typepad likes to protect the integrity of your comments, so I can't go in and edit them. My only options are "unpublish," delete," or "mark as spam," which is what I normally have to do with Jeff's comments! But it really is too bad I can't edit what you actually say...

When playing around with the html, just make sure you if you start something in <> you close it with </>or it will continue on. It's not great, but the "preview" button will help to check your comments before you post them, and you can usually edit your comments for up to 5 minutes after.

[kp]

Total tangent - Jeff, what instrument(s) did you/do you play?

[Jeff]

jazz piano mostly, i can play some guitar and bass, used to play trombone which is definitely earths most dorky instrument

[PB]

Unless you're JJ Johnson; then you're just a bada** :D

[Vinceation]

I think it's because you're so charming, even with the masks on

[Crispin]

I remember reading an interview with U2 in the late 80's. Bono and Co. were facing a bit of a crisis of feeling as if the band had become so associated with social causes and faith that they'd lost the fun and more whimsical side of just playing rock music. I think everyone who does anything from a place of passion will bump into this at times and realize that while taking life seriously is good sometimes we need to take ourselves a little less serious. I lead a good bit of worship in church as well as preaching and pastoring. For me what I like to do is play occasional gigs of blues and roots music in local venues to just to have fun-no preaching, no spotlighting social causes just funs with music and friends. But what's cool about this is that it somehow seems to energize the other more serious stuff a bit.

Great post Jeff. By the way, I almost didn't read it because it was about baseball (never been much of a fan there).

[PB]

For me, I think it's -only- with the masks on :D

[Brianjeansonne]

Loved this post. I struggled with many aspects of my life for quite some time feeling as though I was wasting time on 'unimportant' matters. However, upon a deeper understanding and movement towards the idea that God created us as human beings and desires that we be fully human and enjoy our humanity, I have found amazing pleasure and satisfaction in the things that previously did not matter. For this reason, smoking my pipe, running and shooting guns have become amazing outlets for me to simply enjoy other people, alone time and downtime. All of which lead to greater overall passion and life.

[Matt]

I went to Covenant Seminary thinking everyone was crazy for being in training for ministry with seemingly little interest in 'ultimate things' outside of the classroom. Now I realize it was me who was crazy, not them. I should've taken more pleasure in the Cardinals-- I did see Manny Ramirez, that was when he was on the Dodgers.

[Cheap Coach Watches]

so great it it! love it.