Holes in the Soul (Bot9 #358)

Next week I’ll check off three more ballparks from the MLB bucket list as I travel to D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia on a baseball trip with my dad. This will make the total 17 of the current parks and 6 which no longer exist. My favorite existing ballpark is Fenway Park in Boston and my favorite of the parks of days gone by is Comiskey Park in Chicago. The one I regret missing was old Tiger Stadium (I used to love watching games played there on TV growing up). Of the parks I will see next week, I’m probably most excited to see Camden Yards in Baltimore. If it’s not obvious, I have an affinity for the old-school, traditional parks. They provide us with an opportunity to live today while remembering the game and life as it once was.

To add to the nostalgia of the trip, I’m reading Babe: The Legend Comes to Life because Ruth is from Baltimore and I’ll also visit his birthplace and museum near the ballpark in Baltimore. The book said that Babe Ruth hated school, roamed the streets, and “Almost certainly he began to play baseball, for in those days little boys and youths and grown men played the game whenever they could.” Oh my how times have changed. The only time I’ve seen this occur in my lifetime was in the Dominican Republic. I’ve never seen such a thing in my American life.

Nostalgia has a way of making you feel like you’re missing something. You look back as if things were better than they are now. I can’t imagine walking down the street and dropping into a pickup game of baseball. That just doesn’t happen. This glance backwards made me look through the list of ballparks I’ve visited, and I remember how I once saw the game with simple, innocent eyes. How the sounds of wood bats in the garage, or the whip of a wiffle ball bat, or metal cleats on cement used to spark an element of joy in my heart. Such simple things no longer have the same effect. When we focus on nostalgia, we seem to look into a hole in our souls.

I heard that phrase on an episode of Against the Rules by Michael Lewis titled “Field of Ignorance” featuring Bill James. James is the well-known pioneer of the analytics revolution in all areas of our lives, but he didn’t grow up with the dream of playing baseball in a major league ballpark. For James, the game “filled a hole in my soul somewhere” that came from a difficult childhood. He turned to the statistics of the game and it unlocked a new world for him and for those who would listen to him as a way to fill that hole. The interesting thing about hearing his story is that he doesn’t seem to like how people have taken his influence to the extreme. The thing that may have once filled a hole in his soul has actually created a new one.

There’s another ballpark not on the list of major league parks that I have visited - the field used in the filming of Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa (before the put up a whole stadium…I got to see the field, just as it was, in the middle of a cornfield and it was indeed dreamy). That film’s story centers around this same theme of men trying to fill holes in their soul left by the game of baseball or even life’s events. Whether you’re looking at Ray Kinsella, the main character, Terrence Mann, Moonlight Graham, or Shoeless Joe Jackson, the movie journeys through the hole in the soul of each character. As the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson interacts with Ray on the first night he appears on the field, he says, “Getting thrown out of baseball was like having part of me amputated. I've heard that old men wake up and scratch itchy legs that been dust for over fifty years. That was me. I'd wake up at night with the smell of the ball park in my nose, the cool of the grass on my feet.” The film presents redemption in the end, as Hollywood or fiction will most often do, but there are things that occur which may leave irreparable holes.

I’ve recognized a hole in my soul that came from the 2020 season that never was. That spring I was preparing to coach what I would argue was the best team I had ever been a part of from top to bottom. It truly had no flaw and they had bonded like no group I had seen. But we never got to play a game together because of the shutdown. Not one inning. The things I missed as a result feels like a hole that will never be filled. I missed coaching Declan in his senior year behind the dish. I missed Nick’s impending breakout season on the mound. I missed coaching the Class of 2021 through what would be their breakout season. Though they did lead the program to a state runner-up finish the next season, they were primed for even better in 2020. I missed coaching Keenan that year, and, because he would miss his senior season due to injury, only got to coach him for two of his four high school seasons. I love those guys and they loved each other. When I see them today, I am filled with joy, but I’m also left to wonder what that year would have been like.

Why do these holes exist? The Christian response is, of course, “Jesus” and that is indeed true. He fills the God-sized hole in all of us. There’s no denying that. But I think there’s more. In the fullness of time, our experiences grow bigger than the hole of grief that once occupied our thoughts. As we move away from that hole, we have to opportunity to experience restoration. The hole never goes away. It’s always there. But our experiences grow and move in a way that allow us to be blind-sided by the story that restores the hole in the soul. Bill James impacted the game he loved beyond his wildest dreams. Shoeless Joe got to play again (fictitiously) and become a part of dialogue about the game’s history. Moonlight Graham got his at bat. Ray got to have a catch with his dad. I have no earthly idea how the hole in my soul from 2020 will be restored but I’m so curious to see how it happens. If it takes until heaven where we all take the field in a cornfield in Iowa, that will be good enough for me. But I bet that God’s narrative of restoration will be even greater than I could ever imagine.