What we leave behind and what we hope to leave behind are mostly very different. We create traditions as fathers, and ritualize the things our fathers did. And then somehow, after a few generations, things get passed on that maybe we didn’t recognize in our DNA, but were there all along. At my house, my father loved baseball. All four of his boys played, each of us very average except my older brother who was exceptional.
When my first son was 7 years old, I signed him up for little league baseball. I don’t know why, it just seemed like the thing I should be doing. Some years later I found the only film that existed of my father and his brothers and, of course, his father. It was old 8mm, bleached from light leaking in through the camera back, faded colors from celluloid that didn’t age well. It was shot by my aunt, so we don’t see her. What you do see is four brothers, shirtless and skinny; jeans cinched tight with thin leather belts; tight haircuts, a few pairs of horn-rimmed glasses; and my immigrant grandfather, gray-haired and standing in the dusty infield of a dry baseball diamond in the heat of summer, in the middle of his pale, skinny boys tossing a baseball around. No one else is on the field, just my grandfather, my father and the rest of the family. Just throwing a baseball around, sometimes one of them would step up to bat; all of them mugged for the camera as it passed by; all of them were happy.
My grandfather arrived from Switzerland at 19 years of age, having joined the Church in Bern. He worked 14 hours every day, except Sundays. After church he took the family to the park and they played baseball. It was really the only time they were together all week. A couple of hours once a week. They spent the time playing baseball, throwing the ball around, laughing, just the family. I wondered when I saw it if that’s where the baseball gene surfaced, because I don’t think grandpa would have discovered baseball if he hadn’t joined the Church and left the old world for the new.
I remember as a young boy climbing around on the bleachers of the old George Q. Morris field in downtown Salt Lake, watching my father play softball. In those days, teams were actually good. Church ball was competitive and intense---that part hasn’t changed. But back then, the biggest trophy was for sportsmanship. Most of the ward turned up to the games. Players wore uniforms head to toe, their wives gathered in the stands with big hair and cold bottles of Coca-Cola. There were two things I loved about watching those games: Number one: John Urses, a big guy who played in the Canadian football league, rounding third, getting the signal to go home on a close play at the plate---he was like Hoss on Bonanza, running full-tilt, head down, clouds of dust kicking up behind his feet, streaking directly at the catcher and usually the pitcher backing the catcher up, and sometimes the umpire if he wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way. It was a great collision, the kind that seems to right all the wrongs in the world---bodies flying everywhere and big John the last man standing, a broad smile on his face, the ranch safe for another day. I think Bonanza influenced our moral values as much as Church in those days.
The second thing I loved was watching my father play infield; he played third base. And he was good. The ball came into his hands easily, the movement from picking up a groundball, drawing it out of the glove, the throw to first---was all one fluid motion. He played a lot of ball growing up. I found that out much later when he coached a bunch of us 16 year olds. Third base is known in baseball as the hotbox. It’s where groundballs come at you like rockets, taking odd bounces, bruising your body. It’s easy to turn your head on a well-hit ball. But if you do, it gets past you---an opportunity goes by and you’re left to shuffle your feet in the dust and hope to get another chance to make a play. Third base has to be protected so as to keep runners out of scoring position. I remember how often my dad’s knees and legs were torn up on a tag play, the runner sliding in high---they wore metal cleats in those days. Years later pop took a line drive right between the eyes that cold-cocked him and broke his nose. But dad loved it.
I think about it now and I realize how much time dad and his boys spent playing ball. It’s what we did, what we loved. It must’ve been because it was the thing he did with his father, perhaps the only thing. Maybe he wanted us to have as many of those moments as possible, moments that teach us a little bit about life. I love my father for that, giving us life in a game so we could examine it, practice it, improve it.
My dad on third base is my dad in life. He was always willing to do the hard things, to make the people around him better by taking one in the shin. You don’t see that much anymore, in sports or in life---the sacrifice; putting yourself in the line of fire for a greater good.
Today’s world is awash in shallow materialism, corruption, immorality; a gospel of self-centeredness and me-first gratification. In other words, fatherhood is failing in America. In his book “American Soul,” historian Jacob Needleman describes materialism as “a disease of the mind starved for ideas,” and that “the neurosis of materialism leads us to despair.” And what is despair but a form of pride? The world lacks substance, spiritual sustenance. Did you know that the standard of living has never been higher in this country, and yet the percentage of Americans dissatisfied with their lives is also at an all time high? This can only be attributed to a focus on self rather than others. We here today know this because we know who we are: Children of a Father in Heaven. We have the threads of divine DNA in our fiber, that goes beyond our earthly fathers and where they came from. We have, according to Nephi, “All that is to be revealed.” We have a living prophet. We have all the ordinances of the gospel. We do not have “minds starved for ideas” or hearts devoid of the spirit. We have the sustenance that keeps us from the neurosis of materialism. Our fathers have taught us well. Our Father in Heaven has loved us from the beginning and we know it. Our opportunity is more than we can fathom. Our only requisite is to be willing to do the hard things. We can change the world around us. Elder Henry B. Eyring said: “You can have the utmost assurance that your power will be multiplied many times by the Lord. All he asks is that you give your best effort and your whole heart.”
While much of the world is as Paul describes to his brother Timothy: “Ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth,” let us simply live what we know. We must be “doers of the word and not hearers only.” It’s why our Eternal Father sent us to this earth. It’s how my own father has lived his life---as a doer. Growing up, there was something my dad almost always said if one of us got a little too critical of someone on a baseball team. “He’ll come around,” dad would say. He knew that a young man’s life was a work in progress, not a snapshot. He had the patience to coach us along---even when it was really hard. There are a lot of young men out there who did come around; and a few we’re still waiting for. They’ll make it if we don’t turn our heads and let the opportunity go by: make a phone call, a visit, an invitation to participate. As Alma said to his son Helaman in his farewell address: “…by small things and simple things are great things brought to pass.” My father got the little things right that make a big difference. Plant your back foot before you throw; ask someone in the family if a sick child has had a blessing. Keep the ball in front of you; put your arm around a boy struggling to fit in. Bend your knees; say another prayer.
I’m certain it was hard for my father to work the long hours he has, to serve the way he has, to leave the office early and coach his kids, and then go back to the office until long after we were in bed. I remember kids on little-league teams and ward ball teams and in scout troops that could try the patience of Job. But dad was there doing the hard things, the little things that would bring them around.
Our Father in Heaven has had to make some tough decisions…letting us come here, giving us free agency knowing our potential for making a mess of things; sending His firstborn Son to clean things up, to bring us home if we choose.
Each of my boys played baseball, and went on to other sports. I figure I’ve probably spent more of my life sitting on bleachers than making a living. It’s where my father talked to his father, where I talked to my sons, probably where they will talk to theirs. That microcosm of life, the game, can be the impetus for so many words that do not need to be spoken. At 76 years old, my father is still playing third base; after 25 years in Bishoprics and Stake Presidencies he’s with the Young Men again. He spends a lot of time in bleachers letting the boys talk after their games, the way he let me talk after mine, the way his father let him talk on Sunday afternoons when they grew tired of throwing the ball around and the game became life and life needed a little coaching.
