It’s halftime. It’s a FOOTBALL FIELD. Football players play on this field. Except at halftime when the field becomes a hug stage – a plastic-wood-steel or something stage rolled out to the middle of the field. That can’t be good for the grass.
On the grass itself are marching bands, Beyonce and 40 other women with boots bouncing around on the football player’s field.
This can’t be good for the guys in the locker room, wondering which hole they might step into in the second half.
Has the NFL Players Union asked for an end to this? Has the union stood up for the players’ safety? Nope. It’s about money, not concussions, hips, or legs – except for Beyonce’s.
I confess. I love football. I know I shouldn’t. But I do. I don’t like concussions. I don’t like halftimes. But I still like a great play. Great plays take place in the first and second halves. I regret that halftime entertainment makes the second half less safe than the first.
Just a thought from an as yet unrepentant football fan waiting for the second half in 2016. Go Payton. Finish the game without injury. Then run for your life from the NFL! Gordon C. Stewart, Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016.
Once upon a time a long time ago, I was a little “Big A”, a Little League baseball team in Broomall, Pennsylvania. So was Coach McBride’s short son, Dickie, the 10 year-old Little League All Star catch. I was the smaller than small 8 yr. old Big A’s bench-warmer without a position.
I came to the plate once as an 8 yr. old. “Stewart,” said Mr. McBride, “Get a bat. You’re going to pinch hit. We’ve got to get somebody on base. You’re the man. Robin Williams is the best in the league, but you’ve got the smallest strike zone. So… here’s what I want you to do. Crouch down. Don’t take the bat off your shoulder. Make him pitch to you. No matter how good the pitch looks, DON’T SWING. Got it?”
“Got it, Coach.”
Three pitches later, the bat was still on my shoulder. I struck out on three called strikes. But the truth was I could barely see Robin’s fast ball!
When the McBride family moved to Cleveland the next year, the Big A’s had no catcher. The new coach lined all us Big As up in a row along the first base line. “We don’t have a catcher. Who’d like to catch?”
No hands went up. Not a one.
“Here’s my big chance to get off the bench. Dickie was short. Size didn’t matter to Dickie!” said I to myself.
“I’ll try it!”
They strapped on the shin guards, six inches taller than my knees. The chest protector draped over my torso like a horse blanket over a pony. The mask and catcher’s mitt were heavy. Freddie Lamb took the mound. Bobby Lawson stepped into the batter’s box. The pitch came. Bobby swung and missed. I blinked…but, to my surprise, caught the ball. From that moment on I was the Big A’s little catcher.
Moral of the story? If you’re short, don’t count yourself out. You, too, could proudly wear the tools of ignorance, and become another Big A’s All Star catcher.
Gordon C. Stewart, Big A forever with Freddie Lamb, Bobby Lawson, Ron Nagy, Kenny Olson, Arden Silverian, Gary Boen, Robbie Gillmor, and all the rest. You guys were the best! Love you all. November 10, 2015.
Yesterday morning Minnesota media announced the untimely death of Flip Saunders, one of Minnesota’s most beloved public figures.
Cheered long ago as the diminutive starting point guard of the University of Minnesota Gophers basketball team, Flip worked his way through the ranks of the CBA to become a successful NBA Head Coach with Minnesota, Detroit, and Washington before returning “home” to Minnesota as both President and Head Coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
There is a deep sadness over his loss. At 60 years old, he was looking forward to the fruits of his labor, the makings of a future world championship team developed by Flip’s extraordinary draft picks, trades, and the return to Minnesota of Kevin Garnett, the NBA star who credits Flip with his development when Kevin was fresh out of high school.
Like Garnett himself, Flip Saunders was not a native Minnesotan. But he, and Garnett, came to see this as home, as do many out-of-state transplants once they taste the beauty and culture of Minnesota.
Today it’s that culture that should be lifted up along with the love for Flip: the respectful silence kept by the media in response to the Saunders family request for privacy during the long hospitalization that began in early September.
Readers and sports pundits who feed on sensationalism might have misinterpreted the absence of detailed coverage as meaning the sports writers and the media didn’t give a flip about Flip. It’s rare that the need for privacy is honored, even when a family requests it.
Team owner Glenn Taylor and the Minnesota Timberwolves were a class act from the first announcement of his diagnosis and encouraging prognosis to the heartbreak of his long hospitalization and death.
Flip’s illness and death were handled with the rare discretion that represents the very best of Minnesota Nice. Minnesotans don’t like prying into each others’ business unless invited, and quiet respectfulness is a Scandinavian characteristic that held back the pens of sports writers and voyeurs until there was something to share.
The StarTribune headline, quoting the NBA Commissioner, reads “Flip Saunders ‘leaves gaping hole in the fabric of the NBA”. In the fabric of NBA culture of bigger-than-life heroes, Flip Saunders brought something smaller, more private, and all too rare.
For the Cubs 1-0-7 long years Crying No-Series-Winner sad tears. Yes, I live far away, But soon on that great day Baby Bruins will sure hear my cheers!
– Steve Shoemaker, Cubs fan writing 154 miles from Wrigley Field in honor of Harry Lee Strong, world’s greatest Cubs fan.
Steve and Harry are lifelong, long-suffering “Baby Bruins” fans hoping the sports heavens are about to open after the 107 year drought since the Cubs last won the World Series. Harry, pictured below in his tux, and his dog with the Cubs tie, have been “dressing for success” in Harry’s “Cubs cave” farther away in AZ.
Harry Strong holding picture with Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks and Cubs memorabilia.
The bus carries seniors, yes, 50 or more.
To see the Cubs play, to see the Cubs score!
We ride for 3 hours,
But then come the showers,
And thunder and lightning–it’s starting to pour!
Some start in to pray, and the ones who have doubt,
They cross all their fingers, and begin to shout
“The Cubs are now winning!”
“We haven’t been sinning!”
(But one woman singing:
“You win some, you lose some, and some
are rained out.”)
Chicago hot dog
We walk into Wrigley–be careful don’t slip!
Our ponchos, our rain hats, our jerseys all drip…
But we drink some good beer,
And are of good cheer,
The Chicago hotdogs make this a good trip!
The other night a professional baseball game was played during a torrential downpour at Target Field in Minnesota. Meanwhile down in Texas, historic level floods were rising.
Senator Ted Cruz, the climate change denier who opposed the bill providing disaster relief to the Northeast following Hurricane Sandy in 2013, was shouting for urgent federal assistance above and beyond ordinary disaster relief.
Back in 2013 when the victims of Sandy were in New York and New Jersey, the Senator from Texas opposed the federal government “wasting” tax payers’ money.
“This bill,” he said, “is symptomatic of a larger problem in Washington—an addiction to spending money we do not have. The United States Senate should not be in the business of exploiting victims of natural disasters to fund pork projects that further expand our debt.”
Now that the scene of the disaster has shifted to Texas, he says, “At a time of tragedy, I think it’s wrong to try to politicize a natural disaster.”
At the moment, Cruz is playing “Plants vs. Zombies,” a game where users collect sunlight points to feed plants who fight off waves of zombies; “Candy Crush,” the puzzle game where he claims he’s in the 217th level; and “The Creeps!,” a tower defense game.
One can almost hear the voice of Senator Cruz’s predecessor, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson (D), crying from the grave, wondering how the zombies took over his beloved Texas.
Senator, please join the rest of us in fighting for the plants against the zombie Climate Change denier obstructionists. What’s happened in New York and New Jersey, and what’s happening now in Minnesota, Texas and Oklahoma is not a video game. “Let’s play ball!”
As Sesame Street’s Kermit the Frog croaks that it’s not easy being green, today reminds me that it’s not easy being right, whatever “right” is.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) recently amended the Church’s constitutional definition of marriage as a commitment between two people. It was a good day for those of us who have discussed, debated, and advocated for full inclusion over the last 40 years.
It represents something akin to the civil rights movement – institutionalization of the same ethic that refused any longer to deny equal rights to African-Americans in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was the right thing to do.
But nothing ever happens in a vacuum. Collateral consequences accompany every controversial decision, and sometimes those collateral consequences place us in conflict between two highly prized commitments.
No sooner did the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s constitutional change make the news than the National Black Church Initiative (NBCI) announced its decision to break fellowship with the Presbyterian Church (USA). Click HERE for the story. The NBCI claim that the PC(USA) has abandoned or “manipulated” sacred text is not a new charge, but it’s a mistaken one. Said NBCI’s President, the Rev. Anthony Evans:
“No church has the right to change the Word of God. By voting to redefine marriage PCUSA automatically forfeits Christ’s saving grace. There is always redemption in the body of Christ through confession of faith and adhering to Holy Scripture.
“In this case, PCUSA deliberately voted to change the Word of God and the interpretation of holy marriage between one man and one woman. This is why we must break fellowship with them and urge the entire Christendom to do so as well.”
But the PC(USA) did not alter Scripture. It amended its understanding of the Word of God, as we did when we repented of the biblically acceptable practice of slavery. Scripture and tradition without the guidance of the Holy Spirit are not the sine qua non of the Christian faith. It was and is through the guidance of the Spirit of the Living God that we are called to read the Bible through the eyes of Christ, the eyes of love and human dignity, to bring the church and society into a greater light.
It seems, as best I can tell, that there are two grounds on which opposition to the PC(USA)’s full embrace of GLBT members is based. One is psychological (fear). Whenever fear appears, we are called to be compassionate. To understand and walk in the fearful one’s shoes. The second ground is intellectual, as in arguing against biblical interpretation. To argue that one’s biblical literalism is the only faithful reading of the Bible is intellectually dishonest. It’s buried in denial, but it no less intellectually dishonest if it were spoken from unfettered consciousness.
Life is messy. Theology, ethics, and morality are messy. Every decision is contextual, and in that complex set of competing claims and valued, we stand responsible for our decisions of interpretation, faith, and action.
The “breaking of fellowship” by the National Black Church Initiative and its 36,000 African American congregations cuts to the bone of a church for whom racial justice and reconciliation has long been a mandate of the gospel of Jesus. Racism is America’s great sin. Its forms are personal and institutional.
The PC(USA) Confession of 1967 declared the ending of discrimination as of first important to the church’s mission of reconciliation, a confession of faith we now apply to discrimination against the GLBT community. Section 4 on Reconciliation in Society, begins as follows:
In each time and place there are particular problems and crises through which God calls the church to act. The church, guided by the Spirit, humbled by its own complicity and instructed by all attainable knowledge, seeks to discern the will of God and learn how to obey in these concrete situations. The following are particularly urgent at the present time.
a. God has created the peoples of the earth to be one universal family. In his reconciling love he overcomes the barriers between brothers and breaks down every form of discrimination based on racial or ethnic difference, real or imaginary. The church is called to bring all men to receive and uphold one another as persons in all relationships of life: in employment, housing, education, leisure, marriage, family, church, and the exercise of political rights. Therefore the church labors for the abolition of all racial discrimination and ministers to those injured by it. Congregations, individuals, or groups of Christians who exclude, dominate, or patronize their fellowmen, however subtly, resist the Spirit of God and bring contempt on the faith which they profess.
It was in that same spirit of God’s reconciling love in Jesus Christ that the Presbyterian Church (USA) slowly moved over the last 40 years to the position of full inclusion of GLBT members, culminating in the marriage amendment.
It’s not easy being green. It’s not easy being right, whatever right means, especially when one right creates another wrong, or is perceived as sin.
This Wednesday of Holy Week, we once again move with Jesus toward the cross. Green, black, white, yellow, red, and brown, straight and gay; the certain and the confused. Sin is everywhere, even in our best intentions, and often it hides in the corners of our own claims of righteousness. Only a vast love and mercy can overcome the gulfs of estrangement that divide us. Some sins are plain to us, some escape us, some we cannot face. Even our best intentions…. Johan Hermann’s text “Ah Holy Jesus, How Hast Thou Offended” (1630) set to music by Johann Cruger’s “Herzliebster Jesu” (1640) is a heartfelt prayer for the whole Church and for the world itself as we move through confession on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday toward Easter this Holy Week.
These words from the prayer that followed Holy Communion yesterday (the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday) at Trinity Episcopal Church in Excelsior, Minnesota leaped from the page. They are part of the congregation’s Post-Communion Prayer, prayed aloud by all worshipers.
In deep gratitude for this moment,
this meal, and for these people,
we give ourselves to you, most holy God.
Take us out into the world
to live as changed people
because we have shared the Living Bread
and cannot remain the same.
Ask much of us,
expect much from us,
enable much from us,
encourage many through us.
May we dedicate our lives to your glory.
Amen.
I needed that. I need daily to be reminded, asked, enabled, and encouraged to live actively in gratitude.
Long-suffering Chicago Cubs fans like Steve Shoemaker are excited about this season. The Cubs look like a serious contender in 2015. The club’s new owners have invited fans to write a new song for home games at Wrigley Field. Steve explains his contribution. “Steve Goodman in 1984 wrote ‘Go Cubs Go’. It is sung by surprised fans after each Cub win. It does not really fit since Goodman wrote it to ENCOURAGE the Cubs. Instead of writing a new song, here is my revision of Goodman’s classic.” Click HERE for a YouTube video of Steve Goodman’s original Go Cubs Go. Here’s Steve’s new rendition:
Go Cubs Go
Baseball season’s underway
We hope ya got ready for a brand new day!
Hey Chicago waddya say?
The Cubs have gone and won today!
We’re singing:
Go Cubs, go!
Go Cubs, go!
Hey Chicago, waddya say!
The Cubs have gone and won today!
Go Cubs, go!
Go Cubs, go!
Hey Chicago, waddya say!
The Cubs have gone and won today!
They got the power, they got the speed,
They are the best in the National League!
Well this is the year and the Cubs are real,
So join us here at Wrigley Field!
We’re singing now:
Go Cubs, go!
Go Cubs, go!
Hey Chicago, waddya say!
The Cubs have gone and won today!
Go Cubs, go!
Go Cubs, go!
Hey Chicago, waddya say!
The Cubs have gone and won today!
Baseball time is here again–
We just saw another win!
So stomp your feet and clap your hands!
Chicago Cubs got the greatest fans!
We’re singing now:
Go Cubs, go!
Go Cubs, go!
Hey Chicago, waddya say!
The Cubs have gone and won today!
Go Cubs, go!
Go Cubs, go!
Hey Chicago, waddya say!
The Cubs have gone and won today!
Go Cubs, go!
Go Cubs, go!
Hey Chicago, waddya say!
The Cubs have gone and won today!
The best coaches in sports are all teachers,
Although some it’s true also are preachers,
But the one that we fear
And try not to go near
Is the coach that consistently screeches.
Views from the Edge 