As far as All-Star games go, this year's was pretty exciting. The National League was leading for most of the game until some American League player (sorry, I don't follow that league enough to know names) batted a couple of runners home in the top of the 9th with a triple. I believe Bud Selig showed what a bad commissioner he is when he made homefield advantage for the World Series dependent not on the merits of the teams who got there but, rather, on the outcome of this game. How long, Lord, will we be under his reign? How long?
Anyway, I don't want to be one of those people who goes overboard in defense of her favorite game, but like many folks, I find similarities between baseball and religion. The liturgy of the games; the smells, bells and whistles; the deliberate pace; the standing and sitting. So I was inclined to appreciate John Dickerson's piece in Slate.
Dickerson is the chief political correspondent for the online magazine owned by the Washington Post. He wrote a first-person account of his visit to Camden Yards Sunday to hear Billy Graham preach. Even though it's written informally, it's newsy. He paints a vivid picture of the experience, from the sinfully-priced sodas to the lusty Christian band that got things going. His artful style is engaging and sassy without being terribly judgmental. Cal Thomas -- a friend of Dickerson's mother -- takes him to meet Franklin Graham:
He spoke with perfect diction and a whiff of a Southern accent. He is not a man in doubt. His positions on abortion, condoms, and immorality are just what you'd expect, but his weightless charm isn't. There was no smiling at the wrong time or obsequious fawning or theatrical whispering. He's selling salvation to be sure, and he is less diplomatic than his father, but he has such an even keel that for a moment you forget that he's just condemned to eternal damnation all those who don't enter into heaven through Christ.
But enough about Franklin. Like the crowds at Camden, we're waiting for the main event. Here's his description of Rev. Billy Graham's sermon and altar call:
Then he said we're all going to hell. It was very literal. There was no windup or the verbal padding I'm used to from Catholic Church, where the priest talks in parables and inference that usually obscure the starker messages of sin and redemption. "You are going to die," he said. "I'm going to die. And after that, there will be a judgment. 'Every idle word that man shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment,' the scripture says. When you break a law, you pay the price. You've broken God's law. We've broken the Ten commandments. If you've broken one of the commandments, you've broken them all. And we're all sinners. And we're all under the threat of judgment." It was spare and simple. He did not raise his voice. It was as if after all that rock, Woody Guthrie had hooked up his battered acoustic to the sound system. "Are you ready to die? You'd better decide for Christ here and now."
But Dickerson doesn't just give the one side of Graham's well-known work. It's not all Law:
This was where the incongruity of the venue worked so powerfully. Graham's message wasn't just for Sunday or weddings or funerals. What he was offering was the promise of grace at any moment, including in left field under an Esskay hot-dog sign. Too frail to walk, the old man left the stage as he arrived, driven across the field on a golf cart. It's the same way they bring relief pitchers from the bullpen. He was departing after one more save.
Some might say that last line is a bit much but I thought it worked well. And it kind of makes me wish Dickerson were writing more about religion.