All About A-Rod

All About A-Rod

Shabbat Shuvah

September 7^th, 2013

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Richmond, Virginia

It would be personally very difficult to have this entire Yom Tov season go by without one sermon dedicated to baseball! I contemplate the World Series with my Dodgers battling my brother’s Red Sox - what more could I want! Yet I still want to integrate these remarks into the overall theme that I chose for this season: “What does God want from us?” It is not that God has ordained special rules for playing the game – “God forbid!” But as we play the game, remembering as youngsters and maybe as Men’s Club members with their softball, or as we attend games at the Diamond, or wherever they will play if they stay in Richmond – who knows, or look at baseball cards and remember stars of yesteryear, perhaps there are rules about us, focused on us, not on the game, even as we play it.

I have two stories, one brief and one extended. They are recorded in the volume III of “The World of the High Holy Days,” edited by Rabbi Jack Riemer. I have edited them slightly.

#1

“The first story, from the Sun Sentinel, said that there was a little league game in Broward County (Florida) that nearly ended with a riot.

“What happened was that the umpires decided to call the game off at the end of the sixth inning. They did so because there was a backlog of teams that were waiting to play that day, and they wanted to give some other kids a chance to play.

“The problem was not the children, but the parents. It seems that one of the teams was undefeated all season until this game, and it was behind, by a score of seven to five, when the game was called.

“The kids were willing to accept the umpire’s decision to call the game so that other teams could play. But the fathers weren’t. The fathers began to yell and scream and curse at the umpires. Because they wanted their kids to be allowed to finish the game, in the hope that they could come from behind and win. And if that meant that the other teams that were waiting their turn wouldn’t be able to play, that was their tough luck, according to the parents. Not our problem!

“You have to wonder: What were these fathers teaching their children that day?

“They were teaching them that winning is not the most important thing – that it is the only thing that counts; that you should never accept defeat graciously. They were teaching their kids that it is alright to throw a tantrum in order to win the game.”

My postscript: They were teaching them that you don’t have to care about others, only yourself; that it doesn’t matter that what you do, impacts the lives of others.

#2

“The news item comes from the New York Times. It reports that in certain upper class suburban neighborhoods, parents are now paying tutors $60 and $70 an hour to teach their kids how to play baseball, so that they can do better in little league, because evidently, they believe that doing well in little league is crucial to their child’s self esteem, or perhaps to their own self esteem.”

“Now listen to this story, which comes from a different world. I found it in a book called: From The Maggid’s Table, [authored by Rabbi Peysach Krohn – who I knew as the most popular mohel on Long Island, if not beyond, when I lived there].

“It is about a boy named Shaya, who goes to a day school for learning disabled children. The school shares facilities with a regular day school that meets nearby, including a playground with a baseball field.

“Shaya was a boy who was learning disabled. He was pudgy and clumsy and good-natured, but he could only walk with difficulty, and he didn’t have much physical coordination. One day, Shaya and his father wandered into the playground, while the older kids were playing ball.

“One of the teams was behind, by a score of eight to one in the bottom half of the 8^th inning, so when Shaya asked if he could play, they figured: why not? What harm could he do? They were already behind by seven runs, and so it didn’t really matter.

“And then, in the bottom of the 8^th, Shaya’s team picked up four runs, and so now it was eight to five, and in the bottom of the 9^th, they got three men on base.

“And now, it was Shaya’s turn to bat. There were two outs, and bases loaded.

“The adults who were watching the game were sure that the kids wouldn’t let Shaya bat, not at such a time, not when the whole game depended on the next batter. But to everyone’s surprise, they did. Shaya stood at the plate, and it was soon clear that he had no idea how to hold the bat. So one of his teammates stood behind him, and helped him hold the bat.

“The pitcher realized that Shaya had no idea how to hit, and so he lobbed the ball to him. Shaya swung and missed twice. So it was no balls, two strikes, two out, and bases loaded.

“The pitcher moved in closer, and tossed the ball to him as gently as he could. And this time, Shaya hit the ball, and it rolled a few feet.

“The pitcher retrieved the ball. And everyone cheered as Shaya lumbered towards first base. The pitcher saw what was happening, so he deliberately threw the ball way over the first baseman’s head. While the first baseman chased after the ball, the coach told Shaya to touch the base, and then turn and head for second.

“And the crowd cheered him on.

“The right fielder, who retrieved the ball, had figured out by now what was going on, and so he threw the ball way over the head of the second baseman, and everyone yelled, “Run, Shaya, run!”

“The catcher got the ball, and purposely threw it to the pitcher, who dropped it and took his time finding it, until Shaya and the three other players who preceded him had scored. And then, as Shaya finally lumbered home, his cheeks red with excitement and pride, all eighteen boys from both teams lifted him up on their shoulders and carried him around the field, singing siman tov and mazal tov and David melech Yisrael chay vikayam, and calling him their hero, for having hit a grand slam home run, and for having won the game for his team.

“I am sure that these were kids who loved baseball, and I am sure that these were kids who loved winning, and yet, these kids evidently felt that making a learning disabled child feel good about himself was worth more than winning the game.”

My postscript: This is the Jewish way to play the game of baseball.

I entitled this sermon “All About A-Rod,” the third baseman of the New York Yankees, who was suspended for 211 games, the most ever, besides lifetime expulsion, for use of performance enhancing drugs. He is currently playing while appealing the decision. I could have entitled this sermon “All About Ryan,” Ryan Braun, outfielder for the Milwaukee Brewers, who received a lesser sentence but also has a sordid story, accusing others, and now has recanted and apologized. I wish both of them, and also the others that have been suspended for differing amounts of games, could have heard this sermon before they took the drugs, before they lied to their families, to their team mates, to the fans, to the little children that idolize stars. I remember being crushed when I learned that Mickey Mantle was a drunk.

A-Rod has not apologized. But even Ryan Braun’s apology is not teshuvah. His team defeated other teams because of his hits because his body was juiced. He did not apologize to those teams. He can’t give them back those games as ‘wins’ while the Brewers takes them as ‘losses.’ You can’t change this retroactively. He won the 2011 National League Most Valuable Player award instead of Matt Kemp of the Dodgers. Did he apologize to Kemp? No. Did he give back the award to the National League? No. He didn’t do teshuvah, and neither has A-Rod.

Embedded in the two stories from the Florida newspaper and from The Maggid’s Table and the current sports sections are important lessons that answer the question: “What Does God Want From Us?”

            How does God want us to play the ‘game of life’?

            How what we do impacts and affects the lives of others?

            How we hurt others?

            How we destroy the tzelem elohim, the Godly image implanted within us?

            That real teshuvah is more than a lip-service public apology.

There is much to learn from the game of baseball.

Shabbat Shalom.