163...plus some

It's not Monday, but I had meant to mention my fascination with the sports story of how baseball's season is being extended by an extra game for the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins so that they can decide who will represent the Central Division in the American League playoffs. (I think a day late in posting a comment has actually witnessed my increased fascination, as the decisive game wasn't finished until extra innings!) That means that after a long season of 162 games, these two teams finished with identical records (which is especially remarkable considering the long odds of the Twins doing so just one week ago), and even in the 163rd game to decide which of the two teams was better, 9 innings were not enough.

It's amazing to me that baseball, a game known for long innings, long games, and long seasons, is also a game of such close measures. I think it's human nature to reflect and wonder, "If they just made one play to win one more game earlier in the season, they wouldn't have to face game 163" - at least I know it's my tendency to think that way. At the same time, I remind myself that I could just as easily say, "If they hadn't made that one play to win that one game earlier in the season, they'd never have the chance to play for a playoff spot!" After comparing the two perspectives, I favor the latter.

I admittedly do the same in my own life (compare to the past, that is). I catch myself wondering, "If I had just done that one thing better or made that one decision differently, I wouldn't be in the mess I'm in." I could just as easily turn the sentence around to be happy with a decision I made long ago that I now reap the benefits of, but then again, I don't think that's quite truthful either. When it comes down to it, I realize that beyond any decisions I've made or not made, I'm simply blessed. This isn't to say that my decisions don't matter: life, like baseball, takes place over a long period of time and is composed of all the small things that we do on an everyday basis which I believe do matter. At the same time, life comes in seasons, like baseball, and sometimes those seasons stretch out longer than we'd like or expect, and sometimes we look back on seasons grateful for the small things that added up to go our way, while other seasons we look back disappointed in the small things we didn't do or experience. I believe that while the small things that we do everyday matter, just as in baseball, and we go through seasons of joy and disappointment, like baseball, life has the added element of grace in which I have hope of an eternal joy despite what I've done or not done. These thoughts are pretty messy, and I'm not exactly sure what the final message is that I'm getting at, but these were just things I was pondering.

I suppose for now I'll say that, in light of the Twins and Tigers' decisive game to conclude the season, I have two main takeaways:
1. I love baseball
2. I love that life is like baseball (well, really baseball is like life), plus the blessing of grace