The Mound

01 — Sixty Feet

It’s just sixty feet, six inches to home plate.

A pitcher stands on his mound of dirt. It’s raised ten inches above everyone else on the field. There is no one up there with him. Not the shortstop. Not the manager. Not the 36,232 people in the seats. There is a man, a ball, sixty feet and six inches of empty air, and a stranger in a batter's box. It’s a dude hellbent on ending his night.

He winds up. He throws as hard and as precisely as twenty years of repetition can make a body throw. It’s everything he has. It’s the work, the mechanics, the will not to blink. It gets compressed into four-tenths of a second of flight where physics takes over. In that moment, nothing else matters. It's just a ball, heading toward the plate, and whether or not that pitcher has made it do what he needs it to do. He is completely alone. And he is completely in that moment.

02 — Right Field

Meanwhile, out in right field, somebody is half asleep.

Baseball has an organic inequity built into its design. Most players spend the majority of the game standing around. They only react to whatever comes their way. Snag a fly ball if one happens to arrive. Back up a throw if the time comes. Otherwise, watch, wait, hope it works out. Oh, and try not to get caught off guard. There's nothing wrong with that. It's the game. Somebody must play right field.

Marriage doesn't ask you to snag the occasional fly ball. Fatherhood doesn't let you drift for six innings. Work life isn't all about showing up for the highlights. Perhaps a half-cocked version of a man can be reactive and hope that an outcome works itself out. That’s not like the involvement of a pitcher. It just isn't. It's right field.

Nobody remembers a father, or a husband, if he passively lives his life in the outfield.

03 — The Bullpen

The pitcher is alone for the pitch. He is never alone for the game.

Here's the part that got left out of my super clever metaphor. A pitching coach helps him build his mechanics. A catcher visits the mound mid-inning when the ball stops finding its spot in the strike zone. The bullpen warms him up before he ever takes the hill. Someone is watching every pitch count. There's also a pitching rotation full of men who have thrown that same pitch, missed that same spot, and know exactly what it feels like.

Nobody hands a twenty-two-year-old a major league mound and says figure it out. There's a past and present support structure built to optimize his success. It's especially intended to prepare him for that moment when he's out there alone. Alternatively, we hand men a marriage license, a newborn's birth certificate, and a mountain of real world life responsibilities. Nothing automatically prepares you for the actual weight of marriage or fatherhood. You can read the books. You can watch your own father, for better or worse. None of it is the same as standing on the mound the first time when the stakes are real and you’re carrying all of it. You've either been prepared and have needed support surrounding you or you don't.

Most men (nowadays) get a smartphone, a search bar, and a "you'll figure it out" pat on the backside.

04 — Aaron and Hur

Scripture already solved this.

It wasn't with a highlight reel. When Israel fought the Amalekites, the battle turned on whether Moses could keep his arms raised. He couldn't. His arms got heavy. Gravity is a bugger pain that way. Aaron and Hur didn't hand him a strategy or a five-point improvement plan. They stood on either side of him and held his arms up until the sun went down. Moses still had to be Moses. He still had to stand where he stood. But he did not stand there alone.1

That's a model worth considering. It’s not a substitute for the man in the fight. It’s about two men willing to hold another man’s arms up until it's over. Solomon said the same thing without the battlefield backdrop. He declared that two are better than one. When one falls, the other lifts him up. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. He wasn't writing a team-building slogan. He was describing what happens to a man who has nobody standing next to him when his arms give out. He falls, and there is no one to help him up.2

05 — The Dugout

A dugout is not a stage.

This is where whatever we call "church" could show up. From my vantage, it mostly didn't. Think about it this way, nobody in a dugout is performing for the other eight players. It is a bench of men who have all struck out, all made the error, and all had a bad outing. But they show up again the next day. That’s what the team requires.

Somewhere along the way, church became the stands instead of the dugout. It regrettably devolved into a place to watch the game from a comfortable seat, to sing along with the catchy music, and to go home before you have to ask someone how their arms are actually doing (think back to Moses). Nobody visits the mound. Nobody's warming up in the bullpen for you. You find out how alone you are in the moment you need somebody standing next to you. Bummer. They're not with you in the dugout, much less the pitcher's mound. They're in the stadium seats. They're watching the game.

Hebrews doesn't tell believers to admire each other from a distance. It tells them to consider how to spur one another toward love and good deeds and not give up meeting together.3

06 — The Pitch

But somebody still must throw the pitch.

No amount of community changes what happens between the pitcher and the batter. Aaron and Hur held Moses' arms, but they didn't fight the Amalekites for him. Paul knew this too as he said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” It was singular. His fight. Nobody fought it for him.44

That's the tension a man lives in. The battle is his and his alone. Maybe having a dugout at his side changes whether he can keep walking back out to the mound - with his head up - after the outing goes badly. Every man has those outings. I have them all the time.

07 — THE MOMENT

In the end, it comes down to one moment on the mound.

Bat meets ball, or it doesn't. Ball blazes through the strike zone, or it doesn't. That instant belongs to the pitcher and to no one else. When he winds up and releases the ball, that's his best effort flying on a trajectory that can no longer be influenced by him. What happens next is a matter of innumerable possible outcomes. He was prepared as he could be. He had as much support as he could have. Now it's a matter of how the reality plays out. Hope the right fielder is awake.

For tonight, Dodgers beat the Cardinals 3-2 in the 9th. Happy day!