Who Are These Cubs?

The Chicago Cubs are the feel good story of sports this year. They are a talented team playing for an old franchise that hasn’t won in a while that is talented enough to win a championship and end years of agony in Wrigley Field. It’s a wonderful story that should get people who aren’t baseball fans interested in the sport. It’s got me hoping that the Cubs can perform well enough to win a championship. All of this against the backdrop of giving tribute to Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks. The script can be so perfect. Theo Epstien turned the perennial losers in Boston into the 2004 World Champion Boston Red Sox, now he’ll break another curse and bring the city of Chicago a championship. That would be the ideal scenario. I’m hopeful that they are the 2004 Red Sox. They also could be the early 2000’s Sacramento Kings. 

  Allow me to explain a little history here. In the early 2000’s, the Sacramento Kings rose from basketball ignominy to dizzying heights of style and praise not seen since the franchise won their only NBA Championship in 1951 as the Rochester Royals. They have not been back to the NBA Finals since. They bounced around from Rochester to Cincinnati to Kansas City to Sacramento, and between 1951 and their 1985 move to California, only made it as far as the Conference finals 3 times. The team was, like the Cubs, a perennial loser that still drew a good crowd, at least while in Sacramento. A popular loser with long forgotten winning glory, but a loser nonetheless. 

And then, the sky opened and Arco Arena lit up with some of the best basketball of the day. Chris Webber, Vlade Divac, Jason Williams, and crew turned the Kings into a must watch show. I wasn’t old enough to know the team and watch them in their heyday. I missed the best days of the Kings by only a year or two, but I have gone back to watch their game tape, and it remains some of the best basketball I’ve ever seen. They pass well, get everyone involved, play as a team, and their tapes remain some of the best basketball I’ve ever watched. 

There is one huge black cloud hanging over the Kings of the early 2000’s. They lost year after year in painful fashion in the playoffs, and never got over the jump to get to the NBA Finals, let alone win an NBA Championship. They were a missed jump hook by Vlade Divac away from winning a 1st round series in 1999. They lost in 5 games the next year to the Lakers in 2000, and were swept in 4 straight in the 2nd round of 2001 again at the hands of the Lakers. They lost two seven game series in the second round of 2003 and 2004 to Dallas and Minnesota respectively. But the most painful loss was the 2002 Conference Finals defeat to the Lakers with game 7 happening in Sacramento. For one series, the Kings were on even footing with the powerful Los Angeles Lakers, a team that often used the Kings as a punching bag and won more championships than anyone but the Celtics. They were so close to winning and ending years of disappointment. But alas, the Lakers downed the Kings in overtime, and the Kings would never come that close again.  

 Despite the difference in sports, I see a number of parallels between the Cubs of this year and the Kings of years past. Both are old franchises that haven’t won a championship since the early days of their sport’s respective playoff structure. In fact, neither team has even been to the championship round of their sport in 50+ years. Both are talented teams that have supporters from beyond their home city. Both play in the same division as one of the best teams in the history of their sport, the Lakers vs the Kings and the Cardinals vs the Cubs. Both teams have a brilliant coach who was successful in his prior job, but didn’t win a title. Rick Adleman coached the Portland Trail Blazers to the finals in 1990 and 1992 and lost both before coming to Sacramento in 1999. Likewise, Joe Maddon led the Tampa Bay Rays to respectability, but lost his chance at a World Series in 2008.  

 It is my sincere hope that the Cubs hit the lottery and win their first World Series since 1908. I hope the team plays well enough to win and is the Cubs equivalent to the 2004 Red Sox. It is my fear that they will instead be the baseball version of the Sacramento Kings from 1999-2004. 

Yogi Berra: A Yankee We All Can Love

As much as I detest the New York Yankees, no one can hate Yogi Berra. I am convinced that there is no way a person with a soul could legitimately hate Yogi. The man was too funny, too witty, too  entertaining for anyone to carry any disdain for him. Remember, this is coming from a lifelong Red Sox fan who grew up in a war zone known as Connecticut. I cannot bring myself to hate Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra. He’s too excellent a baseball player and man for even the most provincial New Englander to detest. 

Yogi born on The Hill in St. Louis to Italian immigrants in the same neighborhood that produced famous broadcasters Jack Buck and Joe Garagiola. He grew up playing baseball whenever he could, and dreamed of playing for his hometown St. Louis Cardinals. Team president Branch Rickey also loved Yogi and wanted to play for him, just not in St. Louis. Rickey was planning on leaving the Cardinals to take a job in the front office of the Brooklyn Dodgers. That’s why as one of the last moves he made in Sr. Louis, Rickey decided to sign Berra’s childhood friend Joe Garagiola to the Cardinals. It looked as though St. Louis had outright spurned Berra, but it was actually a gamble by Rickey to get him in Brooklyn. Unfortunately it didn’t work. The New York Yankees offered Berra a contract with a $500 signing bonus, a good bonus at that time. He began his minor league career in 1942 before it was interrupted by World War II. He was one of the many baseball players who served in the war. The Navy assigned Berra to be a gunner’s mate on the USS Bayfield in the DDay invasion. 

After the war, he resumed his baseball career, eventually getting the call to join the Yankees in September 1946. The next season, he had advanced enough to be a regular in the 1947 World Champion Yankees lineup, hitting the first ever World Series pinch hit homer against Branch Rickey’s Brooklyn Dodgers. He continued playing well, and earned a position as the starting catcher in the historically great New York Yankees of the 50’s and 60’s. He went to 18 MLB All Star games, won 3 AL MVP awards, and was the backstop for 10 World Series winning teams, the most for any player in the history of the sport. He ended his career with a .285 average, 358 career homers, and caught the only perfect game in World Series history.  

 He was a coach with the Amazing Mets of 1969 who won the World Series, and won 2 more championships as a coach with the 1977 and 1978 Yankees, running his championship total to 13. 

His list of baseball accomplishments is incredibly long and puts him in the category of baseball legend, and yet this isn’t first in most discussions about Yogi. What is? His wit. People originally called him Yogi because he looked like a Hindu Yogi when he sat with crossed arms and sad eyes after a loss in American Legion baseball. That nickname eventually came to define his habit of producing many wonderful quotes and phrases that make people laugh and wonder “what was that dude saying?” He always had a point to make and spoke with wisdom, but the wording got people to raise their eyebrows and wonder how Yogi’s mind actually worked. I loved mentioning to people some of the things he said, and just watching the reaction. 

Just read some of these! 

“If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up someplace different.”

“In theory, there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is.” 

“You wouldn’t have won if we’d have beaten you!”

“Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical.”

“You can observe a lot just by watching.” 

“We made too many wrong mistakes.”

“It ain’t over till it’s over.” 

“It’s like dejavu all over again.” 

“Always go to other people’s funerals or else they won’t go to yours.” 

Well Yogi, I know that many will attend your funeral and you deserve it. 90 years is a long time to live and you accomplished a tremendous amount in that time. From a passionate Red Sox fan, may God welcome you in to His arms for eternal joy. We’ll remember how tremendous a ballplayer you were and how extraordinary your life really was.  

 

Discernment: Summer’s Contributions

Discernment seems to be almost exclusive to my Catholic friends. I’ve never heard that word used in conversation with any group other than Catholic folks or in any circumstance other than vocational talks. But I’ve found it to be essential for living the faith correctly and it is how long term goals and trips should be approached. Let me define it before moving on to anything else. Discernment is the process of trying to understand where God is calling you to go both in the short term and in the long run. It’s something I’ve been working on in various ways for my time so far in college. And I’ve actually had the most productive time for discernment this past summer. Great! Wait, how? Do you have to be going out of your way to directly ask God? Well, no. That might actually be the worst way to discern. The more you sit down and ask God where you should go, the more you just sit and ask and look for an answer when you can and should get up, live, and let God give you His answers as they come. I’m guilty of doing that over and over again… especially this semester. I spent a lot of time on my own, thinking, praying, and looking for God’s answers instead of actually working to find the best uses of my time and energy. Needless to say, this resulted in a bad semester for me. 

So what did I do this summer? Not a whole lot of sitting and thinking, and a whole lot of going, doing, and living. My findings? Well let’s just say there’s a bunch of productive stuff. First, a big thank you to the Cape League and Cape Cod Sea Camps for helping me know for certain what I want to do for a living: not food service. Ok more specifically, I want to do sports writing and coverage for a living. I had an amazing time covering the Whitecaps this season, writing the game stories, and doing all the social media work for the team. I loved it. I felt like that’s what I want to do for a living after doing it for a summer. What made it clearer for me is that I enjoyed it while being exhausted from my paying job to the point of literally falling asleep in my seat at some of the games. I’m going to the Cape League championship game today even though I am so tired from work. Yep, I’ve found something I like enough to do even when my reserve energy tanks are empty. Sweet. 

The work discernment also helped me determine another important piece of the process: Vocational discernment. Before this summer I spent a good amount of time thinking if I was to be a priest or to be working and having a family. Around Holy Week, I racked my mind with this question and could not get a good answer. I decided that I would use the summer to help figure out that part of my journey. With the summer close to being over, I can say pretty definitively that I’m not called to enter the seminary. As I stated above, I don’t feel called to the work in the seminary. I feel called to the press box or press row and to tell the beauty of he stories I see, especially the sports stories that I might be able to provide some insight into. I admire the work of the Priest and know that it is essential to have great Priests to make the Church work in any capacity. I also don’t feel like that’s where I’m supposed to be. This hit me yesterday when a friend announced via a Facebook post that he will enroll in the seminary to become a priest. I was thrilled to hear that he will do that and I’m excited for him! He’ll do an incredible job! There’s just one disconnect for me, I don’t feel like I can follow him. I’ve had other friends who’ve entered and when they announced their plans I thought that I could join up be a priest too. I guess that was my mindset at the time or where I was in my faith journey that told me I could do that as a viable option. But yesterday when I heard the news, no. I was happy for my friend but nothing more than that. I’ll always be a Catholic, but that doesn’t mean I have to join the seminary to be a good Catholic male. 

Having the seminary off my list opens up one huge thing that I do feel called to, but in the long term: having a family. I know I have to have a girlfriend whom I marry then have kids with in order to have a family of my own and currently I don’t have that chance now. It’ll be a while before I have that, from what I can tell. And I have no issue with this. I can be patient and find my chances and take them when needed. I feel comfortable looking for them because I am quite sure that I’m called to have a family and kids. I feel comfortable working with and serving them at my camp job, I love making the campers smile, I loved entertaining the kids at the Whitecaps games whenever I could, and I feel comfortable doing the needed parent-roles. I’ll be patient and look for my chances to make that sort of life happen, but I do feel called to that life. 

It’s oddly comforting to have these sorts of details sorted out before I begin my senior year at BU. now to act on it and make it actually happen! I hope people reading this understand an important piece of discernment advice: Live and Learn! That’s the best way to find God’s call. It worked wonderfully well for me! Hope it helps you a bit.