Monday, June 05, 2006
The Colorado Rockies - Baseball Badboys or Angels?
If you have not heard about the USA Today article on the Rockes that appeared last week, click here to read a copy.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/nl/rockies/2006-05-30-rockies-cover_x.htm
The basic theme of the article is that the team has a lot of Christians, that it makes for a good clubhouse, and that the ownership and management of the team are trying to build a winning team around Christian principles. I heard the author of the article on radio here in Colorado last week, and he said he thought it was a fairly feel-good story, that people are very religious in America, and therefore there was no intent in publishing the story except to share one team’s different philosophy.
This is all well and good. Of course, it needs to be remembered the Opening Day Special in USAToday featured stories on only 29 major league teams. Yep, that’s right, USA Today flat out forgot the Rockies...as if they were not a major league team (which, to be fair, has been arguable the past two seasons).
Now, my biases up front. When the Rockies came into existence in 1993 I put aside former loyalties to the Reds (who I grew up loving because of Johnny Benchy), the Cardinals (because I could listen to them on KMOX), the Braves (because I had to cheer for them because they stunk so bad in the 1980s and I was subjected to 162 games a year on TBS), and the Yankees (who I fell in love with in the 1997 World Series and because Goose Gossage, a fellow Wasson High School grad pitched for them). So, I am a Rockies fan. I am also a committed Christian. So, I chose to read the story in USA Today with a positive bent.
Of course in the days that followed its publishing, the Rockies players went out of their way to point out how horrible they were, that they were no saints, and that the locker room is not as “clean” as it is portrayed in the story. I think it is a sad statement on today’s sports that these guys were made to feel bad about being good-guys. But, I think it actually showed some humility on their part, to recognize that they still do a lot of bad things, and that they should not be put up as “role-models” before the public. Of course they are, whether they like it or not, and I think they should have said something on the order of “Hey, I wish the USA story was true. We have a great group of guys, and everyone, regardless of religion, is welcome as long as they are willing to pour out 100% for the team and for each other.”
Aside from a few nasty remarks on the USA Today letters to the editor and on a few of the national sports-talk shows, the coverage of the article has been mostly good (though, it is interesting to note that since its publication the Rockies have lost 5 straight - the curse of USA Today?).
What caused me to write was the response from the leader of Christian journalism, Christianity Today.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/122/42.0.html
The tone of the article was condescending. As if “how dare you imply that there is a Christian way to run a baseball team.” Now, I know that some of this comes from looking at baseball as merely a sport. It is of course a sport, but all sports teams are businesses as well. I have been a longtime advocate for more for-profit business to be run on Kingdom principles (to use C.S. Lewis’s statement, “we don’t need more Christian businesses, we need Christians to run good and honest businesses.” My perception of the statements offered by the owner and the team president is that is exactly what they are talking about doing (mind you, this is a team that has lost a lot of fans by “quick-fixes” and bad characters).
The CT articles says, “theology in the hands of baseball professionals can be a dangerous thing.” But, CT has been very supportive of efforts of Christian business leaders like Dennis Bakke:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/workplace/articles/interviews/dennisbakke.html
I appreciated their coverage of Mr Bakke. We need to hear more about men like him and less and less of the likes of Bernie Evers and Kenneth Lay, men who claimed to be followers of Christ but have been convicted of illegality and have brough harm to thousands and disrepute to the name of Christ.
What the CT response comes off as is intellectual superiority, of the stripe I experience from fellow intellectual Evangelical Christians who cannot believe that I am a conservative and a Republican. “Isn’t that for the rubes who read Left Behind and shop at Christian bookstores?” Now, I have been known to utter a crude comment about Left Behind readers as well (there is something about casting the first stone and all), but I think that statement like the one from CT are dangerous because it creates yet another “us against them” mentality within the Evangelical movement. Hey, I am a trained (almost PhD) theologian, and I get scary with almost everyone’s pronouncements on theology - including journalists like the fellow at CT. Sure the statement like the one cited from Dan O’Dowd sound weird, a little too “provedential.” But think about baseball - you play 162 games in a year, and the best players fail 2/3rds of the time. No one in the Rockies organization is saying that the Lord is going to make the Rocks this year’s National League West Champion (though that would be up there with the sun standing still in my book). But the way I read O’Dowd and the rest of the Rock is that, regardless of the outcome in the standings, the team itself will not embaress itself, and they can be proud of their efforts, not ashamad of a championship won with the use of short-term bad characters.
I would think that would be something that CT would celebrate. I guess I was wrong.
