now this post may surprise some of you and some of you it may not... tonite i served my first game of a 2 game suspension from my local men's baseball league... personally i am not real sure how to feel... humbled? yeah, a bit... surprised? that too... i think i am mainly just laughing about it though because i have never been suspended from anything before... no technical fouls or ejections in any manner from any sport at all...(actually there was that time when i bit that guys ear off in the Bethany Boxing Federation, but i was hungry so can you blame me???) so this is a wierd place for me to be right now...
the long and short is this... playing second game of baseball on a long, hot saturday afternoon and the calls seem to be questionable and our bench became quite irritated... as did i... the difference being that i (in my opinion, politely) approached the umpire to get reasons for such travesties... others did not handle things quite so gentlemanly(is that a word???) ... i guess the ump was tired too after a long afternoon and did not appreciate our questioning and quit midstream of the game... on monday one of our team reps (we have 2) spoke with this ump and said that we had 2 options... either myself and 2 others were suspended for 2 games or he would never ump our teams games again... well if we had a surplus of umpires on Grand Manan this would be an easy choice for me because i thought the ruling was silly, but alas, we do not... in fact this umpire represents 50% of the umpires on Grand Manan so i am serving my 1st suspension from anything, ever this week...
do i feel that we were scapegoats and made an example of to show others in the league that this problem will not be tolerated... YOU BET I DO!!! if things were handled consistantly there would have been 10 different guys serving suspensions this week for "jawing" as they like to call it, but i guess that is not the point...
the point and humbling spiritual lesson is this... when i allow bad officiating or other people's actions (other teams that is) to control my attitude and take the fun out sports for me it is time to hang up the cleats... in fact i almost did saturday night as i tossed and turned til 1:00 in the morning hating what had happened, how i felt towards others, and who i became on that ballfield that day... does this apply to life??? i think so... you connect the dots...
but sunday night through numerous teens sharing with me their personal hurts and pains i realized that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ and he has awesome plans for me on this island with the young people so i best stop beating myself up, griping about "others", serve my time and move on... Satan has been attacking me big time as i realize this, but i will not be defeated so i guess all i really have to say is...
"Play ball!!!" (er, well not until next week that is....)
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4 comments:
Good post Scottie
Have a good 2 game vacation. I remember getting in trouble in grade school once. I felt horrible. Then I went back to being a perfect kid.
whoa... that was quick... the ink is still wet from the presses... grade school eh??? is there a little bit of a message there for me that you are trying to get through??? ouch man, that hurts...
haha. the suspension game would have been fun to watch (i think). Hi by the way.
haha, yeah, I saw your tirade on sportscenter. I would have suspended you for the season.
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