The Confession of a Recovering Sports Addict

Topic: Perspective

Facing the Giants is one of the best movies anyone can watch.  It was not highly regarded at the box office thanks to the anti-Christian bias of postmodern culture but teaches many valuable life lessons in a very personal manner.  Head football coach Grant Taylor’s Eagles are outmanned, outclassed, and overwhelmed early on, beginning their season with a disastrous 0-3 start.

The movie contains a memorable scene in which, after this disappointing start to the season, Coach Taylor assembles the team and begins asking players which of their rival schools won the state championship in recent years.  The kids don’t know the answers and are corrected by Coach Taylor.  The lesson dawns on the room – purpose and identity are not found in fleeting achievements.  The team comes together, bonds with shared purpose, and embarks on a championship season of their own.

Military members are familiar with the term obsolete.  Two weeks after separation or retirement, that service member has been replaced, his loss mitigated by a new soldier or officer taking over the vacated position. From private to general, the lesson remains the same.  You can and will be replaced, awards, honors, and achievements notwithstanding.

I love the game of baseball and grew up idolizing the stars of the diamond.  My father took me to games in Houston, Arlington, Atlanta, and St. Louis every summer, and even in his final letter to me, which I received while deployed in Afghanistan, he reminisced on those old experiences at the ballpark, ranging from his own with his father in the 1940s going to old Shibe Park in Philadelphia, to the ones we shared together.  In that letter, citing the lessons and life skills taught by America’s pastime, Dad urged me to take my own children, not yet born, to ballgames when they were old enough to enjoy them.

In 2022, I took all three of my kids to a game for the first time to watch the hometown Texas Rangers play the Minnesota Twins.  The game was in a modern-day engineering marvel called Globe Life Field, complete with its retractable roof, artificial turf, and climate controls.  Its perfectly sterile, unflawed veneer stood in stark contrast to The Ballpark in Arlington I grew up watching games at, where legends like Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, and Michael Young roamed between the white lines, where a snow cone had to be eaten within three minutes, or it would disappear into the sweltering summer sun.  The Rangers were rarely competitive, falling victim to a worn-out pitching staff being unable to keep an always-potent offense in striking distance.

Back to 2022: The kids didn’t care.  The Rangers sucked, the temperature was too perfect, the sound too sharp, the uniforms unsoiled from the artificial surface, the field too distant, just like neighboring AT&T Stadium, home of the NFL’s Cowboys.  We felt as far away from the game as the Twins’ fans back in Minneapolis must have felt.  A couple hundred dollars’ worth of snacks and tickets would have been enjoyed to a greater extent at Dave and Buster’s, not just by the kids, but by me – the baseball addict and numbers guru.

It caused me great concern, forcing me to look inward and question what had happened to my love for the game.  For some former baseball addicts, the 1994 Players’ strike extinguished the flame.  Major League Baseball, seeking to appease the woke mob in 2020, nearly destroyed itself with a mockery of a season (60 games), seen by practically no one in the stands and marred by a special “COVID list” for afflicted players.

These two chapters didn’t wipe out my interest in submerging myself in the daily ins and outs of baseball.  So what was it?

The stolen election of 2020.

My life has been so consumed with pursuing remedy for the broken system of elections that I’ve not only had far less time to go to ballgames, but the relative insignificance of a game played in a dying country has weighed heavily upon me.  The game, and all its supporting infrastructure, is only relevant to the cultural lifeblood of a nation with a definite future for coming generations ahead of it.  America’s decline is a clear and present danger to not only those living today, but those yet to be born.

This means baseball, all other sports, theater, music, art, and all other pastimes that enrich a country are irrelevant until the country itself is restored.

How shallow I used to be.  I would sit around on Saturdays rolling my eyes and snarling at the TV when the Ole Miss Rebels would fumble away another victory on the gridiron, even though the players themselves would shower up and hit the party scene within hours, not caring how those alumni felt about being dishonored by a conference rival.  I would watch my Draft Kings lineups implode, impacting me greatly and affecting my happiness even in a day in which most Americans were completely unaware of the extent of corruption around them, including me. 

Nothing has driven home the futility of sports codependency more than the current college baseball season, which I have watched from a distance, which fades with every year I move away from my college days, and with every graying whisker.  Much of my love for college baseball stems from my days as a student assistant working for the Ole Miss Rebels, who are still coached by Mike Bianco, a future college baseball Hall of Famer who has seen many of his recruits and college mainstays become Major League stars.

I worked for the team from the fall of 2003 to the winter of 2007, departing the program just before the start of the season that year to focus on my ROTC commissioning process, which would come to occupy most of my free time.  The Rebel teams of that day were formidable, loaded with future Major League talent, and finishing twice just a single game short of playing in the College World Series.   We lost the Super Regionals at home to Texas and Miami in 2005 and 2006, respectively, suffering heart-breaking defeats that could have swung our way with just an extra break or two.  Coach Bianco would finally make it to Omaha, the home of the College World Series, in 2014, marking the end of a 42-year dry spell for the program and bringing about a fourth-overall finish nationally for the program.

In 2022, the Rebels were dead on the scene at the beginning of May, sporting a Southeastern Conference record of 7-14 (seven wins and fourteen losses).  They slinked away from Fayetteville, Arkansas, that first day of May having lost two of three to the Razorbacks over the weekend.

Then, the winds began to change.  Ole Miss defeated Missouri on Friday, May 6, and did the trick again the next day.  They pulled off a sweep on Sunday, and then the team caught fire and finished the regular season with a bang, and wound up earning the 64^th and final spot, an at-large selection, to the NCAA Tournament.

It was the long shot of all long shots.  The Rebels were sent on the road to Miami for the first round of the NCAA Tournament to face off against a field led by the formidable Hurricanes yet managed to sweep through that field in just three games.  Adding intrigue to the legend of this Cinderella story, Ole Miss then went on the road to play Southern Mississippi in the Hattiesburg Super Regional.  A loss in that round would be easily forgiven since the Rebels battled back at the end of the season with such vigor and managed to win a road regional against a national power, Miami.

Besides, Southern Mississippi has always been a scrappy program, damn near impossible to defeat at their home field and usually loaded with a daunting lineup of bats.  Our 2005 team had been involved in a near donnybrook there after the Golden Eagles beat us in their final at-bat on a dramatic home run, with the team bus narrowly escaping an unruly mob of fans in the parking lot.  The 2022 Rebels went into this Hattiesburg regional an underdog but clobbered their in-state foes in two games, advancing to the College World Series once more.

Then, the unthinkable happened.  Ole Miss, in the last season anyone would expect, won the national championship – for the first time in the history of the program, and for the first national championship in any of the major sports since the 1962 Rebels, coached by the legendary John Vaught, brought home the gridiron gold.  Their red-hot play that began in May carried them all the way through the College World Series, with Oklahoma being the final victim.  Ole Miss won 18 of their final 22 games, including a record of 10-1 in the postseason, to earn perhaps the most unlikely national championship in the history of college baseball.

Statistically speaking, fans of dominant California, Texas, or Florida schools should expect a higher likelihood of their school winning the college baseball national title, considering access to talent, school priorities, and historical legacy.  Other schools, such as the University of Georgia, have a more advantageous scholarship situation thanks to state law than schools like Ole Miss, limited in terms of scholarship allotment, do.  A fan of Ole Miss baseball, a powerhouse program for two decades, may expect to see one national championship in a lifetime as a baseline estimate.

Even great baseball teams don’t always win.  That is one of the reasons I consider baseball to be the greatest game.  It is often not about who is the best, but who is the hottest when it matters the most.  As a bona fide Ole Miss baseball historian, I would consider the 2005 Ole Miss team to be the most talented team to ever take the field in Oxford.  That team got tripped up by Texas, that season’s eventual national champion.  The 2022 team was indeed talented, but probably not as good as the 2021 team, which lost in the Tucson Super Regional to Arizona.

The national championship Rebels lost many key players to the MLB Draft or graduation, leaving the 2023 squad with many new faces.  This year’s team has lost its ace pitcher to injury, and currently sits in the bottom of the Southeastern Conference with a conference record of 0-6.  Ironically, the 2021 national champion, Mississippi State, shares the same record.  Both major Mississippi schools managed to reel off back-to-back national titles, the first in the respective histories of the schools, and now combine for a conference record of 0-12.

This is the worst six-game conference start for Ole Miss since 1996, and despite the resurgence in 2022, one that is likely to be permanently deflating for this year’s championship defense.  I am not upset at all.  The team’s pitching is talented, but young.  They have been getting pounded by conference teams, but in time will likely be formidable as they gain experience.  A seasoned baseball scholar should not be upset with this year’s team, especially since last year’s team overcame all odds and put on a season for the record books that overshadowed the performances of the greatest, most talented teams the school has ever fielded.

Yet, that’s not what is happening.  A scan of social media and other internet boards reveals an incensed fan base, basking in misery over the performance of their beloved Rebels (who, by the way, have been beaten by championship caliber Vanderbilt and Florida teams in consecutive weekends).  Just nine short months ago, the team was unbeatable and moving through juggernaut programs like a hot knife through butter.

This is our identity crisis – seeking to be fulfilled by things that don’t satisfy. 

“Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” John 4:13-14

The day after the championship parades end, coaches set back out in pursuit of the next recruits to defend that title.  Practice commences, conditioning drills persist, all in pursuit of a fleeting goal.  The championships, though they are the goal of all competitive sports team, do not satisfy.  They do not satisfy the coaches, the players, or the fans.  Rivals continue to mock.  Papers continue to criticize. 

This must mean that we are made for more than these temporary crowns.  The pit you feel when you finally reach the mirage in the desert, a temporary goal, is designed to refocus your sights on permanent goals instead of worldly crowns.  The goal of repairing a broken nation is not a temporary or worldly goal.  It is a Godly goal.

Nehemiah returned to his homeland to repair her walls.  Ezra returned shortly thereafter to restore the people to proper fellowship with God.  The nation was then prepared to receive the greatest gift of all, one with Living Water, to the world.

Our nation is capable of great good for the world, with a plentiful harvest, but relatively few to work the fields.  I am ashamed that I used to be so obsessed with sports outcomes, but relieved that I have noticed that my team’s successes bring only fleeting satisfaction.  I have been the class president, I’ve had the best physical fitness performance, I’ve had the highest grade in class, I’ve returned from a war, I’ve finished that MBA, and I’ve been recognized by the 45^th President of the United States of America, by name, publicly.

Still, I am not satisfied.  I count all these temporarily satisfying things as casualties along the road to restoring what we have lost, so one day the future generations can enjoy things that enrich a nation.  I write this not to chide people for having interest in pastimes, because I share many of those same interests and have pursued them to the point of idolatry.  The next promotion, degree, state championship, election win, or vacation will not satisfy the empty pit caused by a lost nation and culture. 

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I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.  My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.  John Adams