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BEANBALL MATHEMATICS

Today I want to talk about mathematics a little bit, with three stories — a light one, a serious one, and then God’s one.

As you can certainly imagine, professional baseball is a universe where the concept of grudges and getting even thrives in fine form. In George Will’s wonderful baseball book, Men At Work, he interviewed manager Tony LaRussa, who was, at the time, the skipper of the Oakland A’s. And LaRussa confessed quite cheerfully that there was a precise science, a mathematics, to the idea of revenge. It’s common knowledge that if the pitcher on the opposing team hits one of your batters, knocks him down with a pitch, you’re going to get even. Are you going to just forgive this guy, let him off the hook? Don’t be stupid.

But what if your guy gets plunked, and it’s in the eighth inning of a crucial game where you’re just ahead 2-1? All you need to get is three more outs. Are you really going to risk the game itself by hitting one of those three hitters, putting him on base, just to “get revenge”?

“Who should make the decision whether you retaliate?” LaRussa asks. “It’s got to be the manager. Sometimes you walk up to your player who got hit and say, ‘I really believe this guy took a shot at you. We’ll get somebody in the first inning tomorrow.’”

But there’s a bit more to the marvelous mathematics of major-league baseball.
“LaRussa is a stickler for proportionality in punishment,” George Will writes. “‘You try to match, as best you can. If they take a shot at your big producer, then you take a shot at their big producer. If they’ve just cold-cocked McGwire” — who used to play for the A’s back then — “and their first batter in the inning is their light-hitting second baseman, that’s not the guy. If someone takes a shot at Walter Weiss, then you look for their promising rookie or their second-year player who is a big star.”

In other words, you’ve got to pay back by hitting the same caliber player who got hit on your side. Superstar for superstar, shortstop for shortstop, rookie for rookie. By that theory, if McGwire got hit in the seventh inning, and I was Sammy Sosa coming up to bat in the next inning, I’d just as soon phone it in. Because the math of baseball says I’m not going to get a hit — I’m going to get hit.
Well, it’s kind of amusing to read — and you wonder who keeps the records: “Uh, Skip, we owe the Mariners one bop on the thigh and a beanball on somebody’s shoulder in this game. That’s left over from last season when we never paid them back.” That kind of thing. But let me ask you as we get close to the finish line: how often do we live this same way in our own lives away from the base paths? If somebody does you dirty to the tune of fifty bucks, don’t you think about some way to get exactly that even? Fifty for fifty? Like the fictional George Constanza, who says to the pharmacy clerk: “This isn’t over. You have my ten dollars. You may think it’s over, but it isn’t. I will get that money back.” And he devotes his every waking moment to scoring ten dollars’ worth of revenge against that store, by shoplifting it or whatever. If your enemy insults you, you carefully weigh exactly how hurt you are, and you want to hurt him back that much . . . if not a bit more. Slugger for slugger, rookie for rookie. By the way, we’ve spent three weeks here on the radio learning that from a biblical perspective — and we all find it out anyway — this mathematical framework simply does not work. It leaves everybody bruised and battered, both in body and soul. The math of revenge is a universal failure, and in our hearts we know it.

Let me take you to the heavier story, though, from the incredible Christian book, Dead Man Walking, written by Sister Helen Prejean. A man named Lloyd LeBlanc went through the horror of a missing son. No one knew where David was, what had happened to him. Was he just missing? Kidnapped? But then the dreaded phone call came from the police. “We think we’ve found your boy’s body.” Some nameless, faceless, evil monster Out There someplace had done this, killed his son. The love of his life, the light of his existence . . . gone.

Now friend, according to the math of the Oakland A’s, and the other 29 baseball clubs, and the world, Lloyd LeBlanc would have just one choice: to hate and burn with anger until the wonderful day came when he could stick a knife into Patrick Sonnier and see his life ooze away. Until the day when he could take a shotgun and blow that miserable creep’s head off. Until the day, April 5, 1984, when he could watch as prison officials at Angola hit the switch which electrocuted inmate #95281. That’s the math of the world; that’s what this grieving father had. Sonnier killed my boy; now I will participate mentally and morally and spiritually in wanting him dead. Life for life, pain for pain, tear for tear. I will get even; I will balance the scales.

But remember, Mr. Lloyd LeBlanc was a Christian man, not a pitcher for the Oakland A’s. The mathematics of the gospel was supposed to be different for him. Listen, though, if you didn’t see the film, and try to picture the scene in your own mind.

“Lloyd LeBlanc says” — this is Sister Helen writing — “that when he arrived with sheriff’s deputies there in the cane field to identify his son, he had knelt by his boy — ‘laying down there with his two little eyes sticking out like bullets’ — and prayed the Our Father.”

Can you visualize it? Dad kneeling in the dirt over the lifeless corpse of his boy. And instead of thinking of revenge, of murder, he begins to pray the Our Father. He’s a good Catholic man, and the words of the Our Father are what govern his life. At least they’re supposed to. And so he begins: “Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”

It would be hard at that moment not to fall down in the dirt and instead scream at heaven: “My Father? Where were you, Father, when this happened? Why did you let my boy die? Damn You!” But Lloyd prays. “Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread . . .”

(***LONG PAUSE***) And friend, I cannot imagine the universal pause that must have followed next. The angels must have bent low; Jesus must have drawn very near; God Himself must have come down from heaven to that cane field to listen to this incredibly brave man. Would he resort to anger, to the bitterness of hate, to the street mathematics of this battle-weary world? Or would Lloyd LeBlanc finish his prayer? And after a moment, after that pregnant pause, that precious, horrible moment of weighing the cost, Mr. Lloyd LeBlanc went on: “And forgive us our trespasses . . . as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

He said it. He actually said it. In fact, I didn’t really tell it right, because Helen Prejean says that when Lloyd got to that line, he did not halt or equivocate. “Whoever did this, I forgive them,” he said. On April 5, 1984, midnight in the Angola Penitentiary execution chamber, when Patrick Sonnier, moments away from death, said to him: “Mr. LeBlanc, I want to ask your forgiveness for what me and Eddie done,” this Christian man nodded, “signaling a forgiveness he had already given.”

And in our closing moments here, friend, I guess I just want to say this. The Bible doesn’t invite us to forgive because it will make us happier. To use forgiveness as a coping technique, a mental game, a psychological tactic of conflict resolution. I read what this Christian man did in that cane field, and I realize that we are being invited to actually move to an entirely different kingdom. It’s as mind-blowing as that. “Father, forgive them” is the eternal foundation of a different kingdom . . . a kingdom not of this world. And we’re invited to move to this amazing place.

I mentioned in an earlier radio series on the parables of Jesus that these stories teach, over and over, the math of a faraway kingdom. A guy works one hour and gets paid for the whole day: that’s heaven’s math in heaven’s kingdom. A prodigal son totally blows his dad’s fortune, but gets forgiven. Gets a whole new fortune. Heaven’s math in heaven’s kingdom. People with no money, no tuxedos, no tickets, all invited to a black-tie wedding feast. Heaven’s math. The first shall be last, and the last first. Heaven’s math. Nails are being driven into your hands and feet: “Father, forgive them.” Heaven’s math in heaven’s kingdom. Your worst hurts and hatreds given to a strong Father: “Dad, You take care of this.” That’s what you can say when you move to this wonderful, distant, different kingdom.

And you’d never want to go live there, and say, “Father, forgive them,” unless you were sure Dad could take care of it.