I don't get baseball. Never have. Yes, I'm ADD, but the pace of the game makes evolution look like a time-lapse, and at any given time the fact that 16 of 18 players are idle makes the contest ideal for encouraging a nap and little more.
Now there's this.
Apparently it's perfectly legal for a catcher to put pine tar anywhere on his uniform, just not on his skin. They do it so they get a better grip on the ball for that point in the game when they might have to throw down to second base because of a steal attempt.
It's illegal for a pitcher to have any foreign substance anywhere on his person lest he artificially alter that path of the ball as he throws it.
Uhm....am I the only one wondering about the obvious problem here? Two guys on the same team, one throwing the ball and the other catching it, and then returning it to the first player. One must not have a foreign substance because it gives him an unfair advantage, but the other may, and it seems almost always does.
Why would any pitcher ever get caught using a foreign substance??? Just have your catcher put it on the ball before he gives it back to you.
The pitcher who gets tossed for that violation has to be incredibly stupid.
It's 7 a.m. as I type this and the wind is gusting to 30 mph. That's enough to carry away anything that isn't fastened down, and we've already had a bird house on the front porch go sailing away. No great loss compared to my thoughts about the 150' dead fir trees on the other side of the creek.
Lots of local roads are closed because of downed trees and we're learning about homes without power.
I think it's gonna be an inside day.
-------------------------
It's now 6 p.m. and the day turned out to be everything we thought it might and more. It rained for all but about an hour, sometimes horizontally. The guy on the news said peak gusts for Eugene were 54 mph and we're closer to the coast so I think they were higher here. I went out a couple of times, including to feed the goats, and retrieved things dislodged by the wind. It's still raining, but the wind has died down. The best news: none of our trees came down, at least that I can see. Tomorrow or Sunday I'll check out the other side of the creek.
If I saw a bully putting a horrible beating on a small and defenseless child and did nothing to intervene, but stood by and just watched the beating, my basic humanity should be questioned. If that child was mine I hope you'd intervene, as I should in the reverse. It's what being human is about - taking care of others, especially victims.
When that dynamic happens on a larger, global scale I see it the same way. So I fully approve of President Trump's actions re. Syria. Inaction (cf. Pres. Obama) makes one complicit. Will there be negative consequences? Perhaps. But the right thing is the right thing, and measuring every action in terms of adverse effects it might have on me is selfish.
As a pastor I struggled with Christmas and Easter, especially the former. Almost every pastor I've talked to says the same thing, just not to anyone except a colleague. They present a special opportunity because of the people who only attend on those two days; it's a chance to tell them about God's love manifested in Christ's substitutionary death.
But everyone, including the regulars, expect a home run service with knock-em-dead music, special elements, and a top-ten sermon. Hey, they even dressed up special for this. Can't happen in most of the churches because we lack the horses to pull it off.
Do I preach to the visitors or to the regulars? 'cause they're two very different sermons.
Trying to do more than we're capable of risks a FAIL, but doing what's normal, typical, just doesn't seem right.
UFC certainly has the horses, but it's a very regular folk church. No pretensions. I'm curious to see what this (Palm) Sunday and Easter are like.
No comments:
Post a Comment