The gospel of baseball

This is a blog post I've been wrestling with for a week or so now.  What exactly it means for me, and how to express it.  But the story goes like this. 

I love Tiger baseball.  And by love, I mean love. We, my family and I, went to the games when we weren't good.  When we lost 120 games in one season. When you could get a ticket for $8 and sit in the front row because no one else came to watch.  When you could park a few blocks from the ballpark for free. 

So when the Tigers made the playoffs this year, you can bet I was excited, even from half way around the world.  I hung Tigers gear in my classroom, and my students started asking what it was for.  So I told them. I told them about the game, about Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera and Papa Grande.  And so we watched, together, as the Tigers defeated the Yankees, and we celebrated.  My students became fans.  They wanted to know the score as badly as I did, so we paused, shamelessly, in the middle of class to check. And we went on to play the Rangers, and our fandemonium increased.  It was all they could talk to me about- at break, at lunch, and they tried- in class. 

There grew four groups of students.  The first group was mainly comprised of Korean boys.  These guys knew baseball before I came around, but they weren't all that into it.  I liked talking to this group.  I could tell them it was the bottom of the 5th, and they knew what I was saying- I didn't have to translate it into "a little more than half way through".  They knew the lingo. 

The second group was mostly American and other expat kids. They knew of baseball, and knew a bit about how the game generally worked, but they had never given it much thought until now. One of them, an eighth grade girl, came up to me one Monday morning following a rain delayed Sunday game.  "I missed the end of the game!" she exclaimed.  "The cut away to a Rugby game when the baseball game ran long because of the rain. I've never been interested in baseball before, but now I am, because of you." 

The third group of kids knew nothing about baseball, and really, still don't.  They ask me a million questions.  Why does NY have more H's then us?  What counts as an error?  When will the game end?  Can you score when you're pitching?  Hits. Runs, Errors. Innings.  None of it meant anything until I explained it.  They don't know baseball, but they became, in many ways, the most rabid fans.  They cared, because I cared. 

The fourth group of kids were rather amusing.  They were comprised of a small group of boys who went out of their way to cheer for whoever the Tigers were playing, just to goad me.  They were Yankees fans for a week, then Rangers fans.  They worked hard to reject anything I liked, and we had lots of fun going back and forth about it.  When they named their Jeopardy teams the Yankees and the Rangers, I wrote them on the board as "Yankees Stink" and "Rangers Stink". 

But at some point last week, my aunt put the following comment on our family blog: "Clare your students' enthusiasm for baseball is a good example of the power of modeling, I'd say. And also a good example of why children can not be taught primarily by computers...The relationship with the teacher is a big factor."  She was commenting more about the power of the human being vs. technology in teaching, but she inadvertently got me thinking.  In her comment about the power of modeling and the relationship with the teacher I realized that though I came here as a missionary of Jesus Christ, for the past two weeks I have been preaching the gospel of Detroit Tiger baseball.  


WHAT IF?  What if I shared less of my passion for sports (or tea or pink) with my students, and more of my passion for Jesus?  What if, when they asked me about my weekend, I told them how excited I was about what God is doing in my life?  What the Spirit of God in me shone as brightly as my love for baseball?  


I imagine I'd end up with four groups of kids not unlike the four I have now.  One group that knows all the lingo, all about God, but needs to connect with him in a real and passionate way.  Another group that knows of him, but has never given him much consideration before.  Another group who has little idea what the whole thing is about, but they know that they want to know more because of the passion they see in me.  And, a group who sees him and fully and completely rejects him.  But even in their rejection, they engage with him...


My goal this week?  Share my passion for Jesus.  Let that invade my mathematics and Spanish teaching.  Let that flow out of every pore.  Let them see my heart, and see what happens...