Albert and Me

Last night I went to the Cardinals - Phillies game. The Cards lost 13-11. In the top of the fifth inning the Phillies scored their seventh run (zip for the Birds). Most of these were on homeruns - the Phils hit five on the night. Immediately after Philadelphia scored their seventh run, there was a mass exodus of Cardinal red from Boosch Stadium. I heard some of these fans groan and say "we're not really baseball fans anyway".

My point: the Cardinals will probably not play in the NLCS this year. But the fans bailed after only half the game. Half the game. Four and a half innings is only half a game. It really did get much worse in the top of the next inning. One fan said as he left: "they have a ten run rule in little league".

But the Cardinals started hitting back in the bottom of the sixth. They scored three in the sixth, six in the seventh, and two in the eighth. It actually became a ball game.

Question: Do we as Christians bail out in the fifth inning? If I could mix metaphors, I would say that this walk of faith is not a sprint. It is a marathon. Gordon MacDonald said it doesn't matter how fast you can run 100 meters if the race is 400 meters long.

Press on, keep it up, persevere, don't quit now.

BTW, the picture above is Albert Pujols and me in the bottom of the seventh inning. Albert is the guy in the red helmet toward the lower left.