Dear Friends,

Many of you have read the story in this week’s message. It is one of the early Word of Grace messages and maybe the most popular one. The number of subscribers climbed from around 200 to over 1,000 in the Spring of 1999 after I sent out this story of grace in adversity.

The emotional damage caused by bullies and bullying has received much attention in recent years. There can be overkill in seeking to eradicate bullying by eliminating disagreements and insisting on one point of view. Perversely, those who enforce tolerance by suppression of beliefs and viewpoints are some of the greatest bullies of our time. But true bullying is the always the oppression of the weak by the strong and it is wrong.

The playground response to insults is the taunt–“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. But that’s not true. The writer Philip Gourevitch says, “Power largely consists in the ability to make others inhabit the story of your reality.” The constant message, “You are ugly and stupid, weak and defective; you don’t belong here; no one will ever love you; and I can do anything I want to you and no one will care” can define a childhood and continue to torment in adulthood.

Bullying draws vicious graffiti on the image of God in us. Both bullies and the bullied are marred by the shaming. Even onlookers are affected by the choices they make in response.

A pastor friend told me the appeal of this story is “All of us are lost in right field. All of us need mercy.”  God may reveal his mercy to us in surprising ways. This story is about one of those surprises. Even if you’ve read it before, it will do you good to read it again.

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sides chosen
the boy not chosen
lends me his glove.

(Cor van den Heuvel and Nanae Tamura ed., Baseball Haiku [New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2007], pp.12, 23,106)
I came late to baseball, or rather softball, which is what we mostly played at my school. I was a klutzy kid, inept at sports, and often teased for being uncoordinated. I was indifferent to sports because I loved to read and liked to roam the hills and woods around my home. Besides, my face had some painful collisions with balls that I failed to catch and I was loathe to risk more of the same.

There were times I couldn’t avoid having to play like PE class or school and church picnics. At those times I would try to avoid attention and humiliation in the deepest recesses of right field.

You remember right field. That’s the place where no one hit the ball. That’s where you were banished if you were a klutzy kid without motor control but the teacher made them pick you anyway– just to be fair.

I was the prototype of that kid. My eyes were crossed. My feet were big. I was truly afraid of the ball.

That was too bad because softball was the sport of choice at Samuel Eizenfelt Memorial Junior Academy, the cement block fortress of religious virtue where I attended elementary and middle school. It was there that my cringing awkwardness led my classmates to call me “Spazo”(for “spastic”) and “Cordo” (for “uncoordinated”). So what if I could play the piano well, had read more books than any other kid in the County Public Library’s summer reading contest three years in a row, and knew a lot of neat stuff. I was a certainty to drop the ball and lose the game.

It did not help that my older brother Terry, a truly gifted athlete, had attended the school before me. He could catch, throw and hit with aplomb and set the standard for play of which I was the inglorious exception.

We would line up at recess or PE class to pick sides. The best players would be the captains. They would pick their teams by calling out their choices who would leave the line and walk over to stand beside the captain who had chosen them. Good players went first, mediocre players next, and then I would find myself standing alone, except for Paulie Swenson who had a congenital eye problem that allowed him only to see well in the dark and required him to squint in daylight. Paulie would actually be chosen before me.

There was an uncomfortable silence while both teams stared at me standing alone at the edge of the grass. Finally the teacher would clear his throat and one of the captains would mutter, “I’ll take Kent, but you have to let us be the home team.”

The next words I would hear were inevitable. “Kent, you take right field.” I would trudge out to the graveled wasteland behind first base where I was exiled in the hope that no ball would be hit to me and maybe I’d daydream and forget to come in to bat.

The major factor in our softball games was Mr. Jenkins, our rather-odd home-room teacher. He was an intense young man who glared at us through horned-rimmed glasses. Bow ties bobbed off his adam’s apple. His most remarkable feature was the shocking references to human anatomy and sexual relations which frequently broke through his monotone lectures. These always left us embarrassed and quiet and appalled our parents who were locked in a perpetual argument with the principal and school board about Jenkin’s fitness for employment.

Looking back, with the perspective filtered through intervening decades, I realize that Jenkins was an intelligent, complicated and lonely man. I feel sorry for him.  But there was no getting around it then; Jenkins was mean and sarcastic. He would call us names and disparage our intelligence. When I would muff a ball in four-square, fall down chasing a fly ball, or strike out to the chant of “Cordo” or “Spazo,” he would smirk and laugh. This was mild. His favorite targets were shy, awkward girls just coming into the full bloom of their puberty. He would tease them unmercifully about their looks and their clothes forcing them to red-faced, tearful silence.

Our softball games provided the canvas for the full portrait of Mr. Jenkins as bully. It is no challenge for a 30 year-old man to drive a ball over the heads of children. That is exactly what he would do game after game, at-bat after at-bat. Playing with us allowed him his fantasy to be Babe Ruth. Attempts to walk him were met with his withering rancor about the courage of the pitcher. It was better to give in and let him hit and watch him laugh around the bases while the outfielders gave chase to the ball rolling seemingly forever across our fenceless diamond.

Macho hitters always pull the ball. My one relief was that the right-handed Jenkins’ inflated sense of manhood wouldn’t allow him to swing late and hit the ball to right field.

So it went day after day until. . . .

Karen Sykes was a classmate who lived on the school grounds with her parents who were school employees. We were all invited to her birthday party on Sunday afternoon. We played a softball game before the cake and ice-cream were served.

Karen was my friend and she did a wonderful thing. She asked me to be a captain for the first time ever. I envied the good players and I picked them now. Mr. Jenkins always expected to be selected first. On principle, I did not choose him to his surprise and irritation. He pursed his lips and smirked. The other captain called his name.

We were the home team because I had picked first. Heady with my captainship, I put myself in left field, another first. This was met with the ill-disguised dismay of my teammates. What was I thinking?

When I took my position, I prayed the prayer that I have said often in my life– “Please God, don’t let me mess this up.”

Jenkins, batting third, hit a two run homer in the first inning over the head of our center fielder. We scrambled back. Our games always had high scores.

Then came the third inning and my destiny. Jenkins came to bat with one out and one on.

He looked at me out in left field. I was playing as deep as I possibly could to avoid the humiliation of the ball being hit over my head. I tell you truthfully that I had never caught a fly ball in the outfield in a game, ever! Jenkins knew this. I had no illusions. I gamely popped my big brother’s black glove a few times with my fist and crouched like I knew what I was doing.

There are moments for each of us that live forever suspended in time. For me these include my first kiss, winning a talent program, notification of my first published short story, the shame of almost being expelled my junior year of high school, Patricia saying “yes,” making law review, passing the bar, and standing in the law firm lobby, saying “Come to Daddy,” while watching my grinning eighteen-month old son toddle to me. And there is this third inning with one on and two out.

On a 2-0 count, Jenkins swung and the ball arced high in the sunny, blue sky down the left-field line. I began to run toward the spot where I guessed the ball would come down. There is a sound-track for my memory: gravel crunches beneath my thudding feet; my teammates’ shouts of encouragement are like cries of wheeling sea gulls; the wind rushes past my ears; my breath compresses and whooshes out.

I closed my eyes and stretched out my glove hand as far as my hurtling body would allow. The ball fell into my glove and stuck. I pulled up and stopped in foul territory.

My teammates erupted into screams. They had witnessed a miracle. “Did you see that? Kent caught Jenkin’s fly.” It happened when my eyes were closed. Skill had nothing to do with it. But I felt great!

Mr. Jenkins stood halfway between home plate and first base still holding his bat. He hurled away the bat in disgust. He glared at me. Then he walked away from the field and sat on a picnic table. He did not come out to the field in the bottom of the inning. He quit playing. He sat by himself the rest of the party. Karen’s mom had to bring him his piece of cake and talk him in to eating it.

The possibilities unlocked for me by the catch seemed limitless. That night, I slipped the glove under my pillow. I lay in the dark, grinning at the ceiling, reliving every microsecond. The belief began to grow in me that I might be able to do this again.

My classmates quickly forgot about the catch but I couldn’t forget. I talked anyone I could into playing “three flies up” with me before and after school and at recess. I chased fly balls until my legs ached. In the summer, I wore out all the neighbor kids by playing up to six hours a day. The remembered grace of the miracle catch breathed life into my practice.

I still wasn’t a “natural”–an athlete of lightning fast reflexes and physical intuition, but the hours of practice gave me a confidence that proved to be justified when my freshman year began and we played ball on the sunny days of late summer and early fall.

The tapes that played the humiliating “Spazo” and “Cordo” over and over in my head began to fade. When it came time to play, I quickly moved the few feet between the ignominy of right field and the glory of the wide-open spaces of center field.

No longer was I picked dead-last and sent to right field when sides were chosen. I wasn’t the first choice either, but made it to a respectable second or third pick.

I discovered a whole new world of fellowship and camaraderie in teamwork. Sportsmanship became a consideration–can you “prove” your point on the field through good play or just whine about the bad breaks? Are you a “gamer”– someone to be relied upon to give their best even with the inevitable cuts, scrapes, strains, bruises, blisters and insults?

Before I was through, I captained three championship fast-pitch softball teams in high school and college even though I was far from the best player. Other captains typically picked their friends to play, I learned to review the available players, position by position, and select the best starting with a pitcher and moving to shortstop right on down the roster. This taught me valuable lessons for managing a law firm and a legal team.

My ball-playing ended in middle-age when I was again a right fielder on a last-place church league team. My arthritic left knee finally would not support the running necessary for me to play. But that’s OK. The lasting benefit of the catch remains with me and makes me smile.

I learned the key to grace for desperate moments in the adult version of right field when my enemies mutter things that sound a lot like “Spazo” and “Cordo.” The secret is closed eyes and outstretched hands in a prayer–“Please Lord, do not let me mess this up. In your mercy, protect me from those who mean me harm and wish me shame. May your Holy Spirit level this playing field with grace.”

If this word reaches you when you are in deep right field, I want you to catch it.  Let it stir you, awaken you, to the possibility of grace. God loves you, will help you, and make the difference that only he can make.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Placespublished by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.

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