“There’s no crying in baseball!” These words spoken by Tom Hanks in ‘A League of Their Own’ are very familiar to a certain generation – and many baseball fans. Many little league coaches have spoken these words jokingly to their players (or parents to the kids) in hopes to alleviate the sadness that a young boy is experiencing from being hit by a ball or suffering a loss/strikeout. I have yet to use the phrase on the field for my own 7-year-old son (he’s in coach pitch), but I am sure the day is coming some day soon.
However, I have used the phrase when I play my son in a game of baseball pinball. For Christmas, he received a 2 player game where one player can pitch to the other who hits it into a pinball style baseball field, and depending on where the ball lands the player earns hits and outs. He’s pretty good at the game, but I consistently beat him (which is typical for all the games we play). Normally, he is a cheerfully celebratory winner and wistful, gracious loser, but for whatever reason this game sets him over the edge, and he cries or tries to quit when he falls behind in the game. I have to remind him – “There’s no crying in pinball baseball!”
I do have sympathy for my son. I was a very competitive child growing up, and generally speaking, you never completely lose that competitive drive. I remember one day when I was around the age of 8 that I got mad at my dad because he intentionally lost a baseball game for our team so that my little sister could win. I was so mad that I threw my glove at him and cried. But – “There’s no crying in Baseball!” I was definitely in trouble that evening.
Now that I am older and have learned how to charitably lose, I have been tasked with forming my son (and eventually my daughters) and helping him deal with his emotions when it comes to winning or losing. I have come to realize that this takes more than just telling him just one time how to act and then expecting him to act like a perfect angel each time after. Dealing with emotions is tough, and we are often not strong enough to overcome them, especially when we are young. It takes patience and understanding to sit with my son as he processes each time he loses because as Tom Hanks says, “There’s no crying in Baseball!” But for now, the crying continues, and I, as a good parent, need to enter into that with my son to help him control his emotions.
In many ways, this is like how God forms us to be His children. We often think that after just one time of hearing a commandment or receiving a sacrament, that we are fixed individuals and will never sin again. However, this is almost never the case. We go to confession, but we sin again. We receive the Eucharist, but then we judge the people sitting around us. We are baptized, but we go through periods of lapse in our practicing the faith. God knows this. That’s why He stays present to us. That’s why the sacraments are consistently available to us. Because hearing something one time, and following those orders every time without question is more like being a computer program than a human being in a relationship with someone.
This is not to say that we should be content in our sinfulness. We should try to conform ourselves to God’s will as quickly as possible. But we also must recognize that this will take time. Sainthood does not happen overnight. It will take effort, surrender, sweat, and even tears (There is crying in sainthood!) to journey through life in a holy manner to our eternal home. And God is making Himself present to us to help us grow in holiness in His Word, the sacraments, and His Church. He never grows tired meeting us there, and we must be okay with coming before Him with our failures because it is when we are weak that He is strong. So if we find ourselves frustrated with our latest moral failures, let us run to Him. Quitting and running away from Him will never result in holiness. We need the Grace of His presence! Let us never grow tired of being with Him, because He constantly desires to be with us.
