Teammates (Bot9 #350)
A little over a week ago, a pair of teammates faced one another with the World Baseball Classic title on the line. Los Angeles Angels unicorn Shohei Ohtani came out of the bullpen to face his teammate, the “WAR Lord”, Mike Trout. Let’s just say 19-year-old Keith, who is still alive and well inside of me, was geeking out at this moment. Only in video games could anything like this be possible when I was growing up. Ohtani is the most extraordinary two-way talent to hit the game since Babe Ruth, and maybe ever. Trout has dominated the “Wins Above Replacement” statistic at a legendary level since coming into the league. Such a matchup was only possible in a fantasy world before new creations like the WBC.
After Ohtani struck Trout out in the epic showdown and celebrated the title with his Japanese teammates, I sat wondering, “What kind of teammates are these two guys? What kind of relationship do they have?” Articles online suggest that it is good, but observing from a distance might suggest it leaves something to be desired. I don’t see a deep, personal connection between the two. Sure, Trout says he will “do whatever it takes” to keep Ohtani in Los Angeles when he becomes a free agent in the near future. But, for example, when the two shared the stage on the MLB Network for an interview, I just don’t sense a brotherhood between the two. Yeah, maybe the language barrier is a part of it all, but there’s something missing. A vibe. A nudge. A wink. A laugh. Something deeper.
It’s this thing that I see missing in today’s game. The deep, personal connection between teammates. I grew up hearing about Steve Carlton and Tim McCarver. There’s a book called Lefty & Tim that outlines how those two polar opposites became connected on and off the field. I remember so many newspaper stories and Sports Illustrated features that would speak to the clubhouse makeup of teams. When’s the last time you heard about a team like the 2004 Red Sox who lovingly referred to one another as “The Idiots” and seemed to enjoy every minute of the day with one another?
Last week, basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar released a list of his favorite sports movies by sport on his email and blog. Kareem’s a deep intellectual so some of his choices are either old and/or boring. You’d have to be a film critic to sit in alignment with many of his choices. For baseball, he chose Bang the Drum Slowly as the best baseball movie ever made. I had never seen the movie and decided to give it a shot.
Now, as I continue, the movie is bad (I have to assume the book is better). Unless you have a flair for 1970s cinema, you can skip it. There’s some awkward situations that would never happen today and the baseball scenes…eek (You can’t have a team resembling the Yankees playing scenes in Shea Stadium and competing against National League teams before interleague play was even introduced). But I found the story and ideas to be rich and infiltrate my thoughts after watching the movie. The main character demands that his dying teammate be connected to him within his contract (the front office doesn’t know his teammate is dying), and protects him throughout the story until his death at the end. That’s a connection worth writing about.
Now, when Trout says he will “do whatever it takes” to keep Ohtani, do you think he’d go to that length? If he stays, I stay. If he goes, I go. In today’s age of athletics, no one even expects such a thing. It’s a business. We’ve all accepted that to be the case. But I wonder if that mindset has infiltrated our daily walk in this life as well. What are we willing to sacrifice for the people next to us? Our pride? Our dignity? Our money? Our life?
Thankfully we do have a teammate like that in the trinity. As I’m in the midst of handwriting the book of Luke right now, I happened to be on the story of the Prodigal Son as I was in the process of writing this piece. We have a Father who would give everything for us. A Father who runs toward us as we repent and turn our lives toward Him. A Father who will put a ring on our finger, conferring sonship on us through His own Son. And it’s His Son, Jesus Christ, whose death, burial, and resurrection we celebrate this coming week. No human teammate could ever “do whatever it takes” for us to enter heaven to be with the Father, but Jesus did. Let us give thanks this week for Jesus, the ultimate teammate in this life, and seek to live our lives with Him in everything we do.