First Pitch

Hurray, baseball season is upon us! Over the next few months I plan to spend some time writing occasional articles about two of my greatest passions, baseball and religion. Here is my first installment




I was really captured by the photo above the fold on the sports page of last Sunday's New York Times. It was taken in a rural village in Zambia, Africa. The photo was of a group of African children and two young, white Americans, comfortably nestled together. Everyone was grinning. Their smiles were of friendship and sharing So here's the catch, and the reason it was in the newspaper. Los Angeles Dodgers ace, 22 year old pitcher Clayton Kershaw, and his wife Ellen were the young Americans in the photo. Karen Crouse of the Times opened her article with:
The Los Angeles left-hander Clayton Kershaw held the audience in his sway from the first pitch. A world removed from the grandeur of Dodger Stadium, the barefoot children stood in awe as they watched Kershaw’s curveball spin and dip.
Kershaw’s pitching, as much as it delighted the children had a serious purpose. He was getting in a few precious minutes of training. Any young pitcher with a great career ahead of him knows that training time is vital. With the season just weeks away Crouse reports that the biggest anxiety the young pitcher had with the trip was that he would miss a week of training. For most people who go on this type of mission trip, money is often the biggest cost. For Kershaw it seems to have been time.
Probably the reason the picture piqued my interest so is that it reminds me of hundreds of similar pictures I have seen, and even been in It's about those countless people, young and old who don't have fabulously fit bodies, fame or fortune, but who can't wait to take that next short term mission trip to Haiti, or Kenya, Colombia, New Orleans, or Appalachia.
In early January I was getting on a plane in Washington DC for my trip to Liberia. I met a young woman, with a great big backpack, traveling alone to do a mission in Tanzania. Her trip, she told me would include, not just the plane ride, but also a rigorous two day bus ride. I think about the young people who I have shared trips with, challenged physically, or emotionally, yet who worked uncomplainingly in hot dusty places to bring the good news of God’s love, and themselves, to help others. I keep hearing from these travelers about how they get much more from those they go to serve then they give. All effective mission trips are about the transformation of the missioner more than about the project.
It's wonderful when a baseball star like Kershaw “gets it” and makes it to the sports page of the New York Times. It's also wonderful that there are so many selfless individuals who put themselves out there for the greater glory of God.