We lost the game, the league championship.
I prayed about it.
I prayed not that we won, but that we learned the lesson God meant for us from the game—there are greater things, and higher rewards than “W”s in a record column.
We’d been undefeated all season, and as comes with that and teenage attitudes and minds, often an overconfidence.
God rarely champions those who champion themselves without recognition of the fortune, gifts, and help they have received. God humbles.
I stand with my son. He’s in tears.
He wanted to win. He wanted it bad. It didn’t quite happen.
I see nothing wrong with crying. Tears are a sign that something mattered, that you cared about it—a lot.
I console as I know.
I respect his feeling, his emotion—I’ve lived them many times. In life and sports, I believe it’s better to be a competitor—to care, to feel highs, and lows, elations, and sadness—than to simply show up and be present—a participant without something to give or bring and never feels much because degrees of emotion match our own efforts and care—and rely on someone else’s giving to decide our own life wins and losses (even if most of life’s experience is neither wins nor losses but lessons from the act of living—but we have to be engaged, not merely present).
I give him a hug, keep my hand on his shoulder, small touch to say “I’m here—for you” even in the disappointment.
Our lesson is humility: we don’t win them all—no one does. When we lose, what next? Do we keep working? Or do we quit? Right answer changes as ourselves, as we grow, prioritize, and better discern how and where we desire to give our efforts.
After the game, there is a raffle drawing for a league fundraiser—two signed Chiefs jerseys, and a gift certificate to a sports shop for a bat or glove of winner’s choice to be picked from any on hand in store.
A player is called from each team to draw.
My son is chosen from ours.
He wipes the tears from eyes and jogs to home plate. He draws from the bucket of tickets. He reads the winner’s name, “McCoy.”
He won.
A smile breaks from the sadness.
He hears the prizes again, looks at the jerseys, but he chooses the gift certificate—new bat or glove.
Other player draws. He reads the winner’s name, “McCoy.”
He won again (or my parents, who bought four tickets and are batting a Hall of Fame average of .500 on today’s raffle draw).
Signed jersey to go with the certificate.
My son draws the third and final winner.
“Anyone but McCoy,” a new stipulation is added.
Another wins.
I take it all in, fast as it lives, and disbelieving of how it played. We don’t normally win things, catch foul balls at baseball games, see and speak with Hall of Fame baseball players sitting in front of you at a ballpark, get autographs on a whim—but all’s happened to my sons this spring and summer.
Sometimes God speaks and gifts to us through games. That, this year, I’ve especially come to believe.
Today’s lesson: even when we lose, God hasn’t forgotten us. We aren’t forgotten. There are other gifts waiting that we can’t see.
Keep going.
By the gift and grace of God, what I expected to be a long and sad night ends with a high note, smile, and lifted spirit.
Driving home, I ask him whether he wants a bat or glove.
“I want to get a glove,” he tells me.
I was hoping that’s what he wanted. He has a good bat.
Last winter, we went together to pick out a new glove. I told him he could pick whatever he wanted (aside from the $500 custom rack of colored and designer gloves made more to stand out than to get scratched and used in the dirt).
We lost it this spring, not putting back in our bag before moving from a diamond working on fielding to a cage where we practiced hitting.
I got onto him then. We didn’t get another. It was a lesson we needed to learn. He’s pitched all year with a first base mitt, or borrowed the glove of another when on the mound and the umpires cared, because he had no other glove.
In lesson of humility of my own, game-before this, I misplaced my own glove—a Ken Griffey Junior Rawlings from when I was his age. By the grace of God, this game, it was returned: picked up and packed into another’s bag.
By the grace of God, name drawn from a bucket, God did the same with my son’s. God knew what he needed. God gifted, raising and bringing joy, when my son was at his lowest. The more we attune, greater discern, it really is incredible how often God does exactly this when we allow and admit ourselves to see.
Leaving the park, my son is smiling again. We talk of baseball gloves, and I add an extra thought from perspective of a father.
“Make it a cool one,” I tell him. “There’s a good chance the one you choose will be the one you use when playing catch with your own kids.”
I think of my own, black leather fading, leather basket of the glove zip tied where my son broke the leather laces pitching to me this year. It’s the glove I had when my age was his—and I still love when I get to put it on.
I pray, whatever glove my son chooses, future—in this way—lives the same for him. It is a gift to have children that let you play again.
God knew what I needed. God gifted, raising and bringing joy—the family that I have.
The more we attune, greater discern, it really is incredible how often God does exactly this when we allow and admit our selves to see.