"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” – Anne Lamott
I always get melancholy the day after the baseball season officially ends for my favorite team, the Boston Red Sox. That happened last night (October 3rd) at 10:38 pm when first baseman Nathaniel Lowe popped out in the top of the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium to end the game, and the BoSox 2025 campaign.
I loved this team and season as so many other fans did, and for reasons you’d expect.
Baseball has been a part of my life since I was seven so for 57 years I’ve enjoyed the sport, how it entertains and brings me some joy. This season was awesome because the team was actually competitive and a blast to watch, really for the first time since at least 2021, maybe even 2018. The times I went to Fenway Park this year the place was alive again and just rocking. This spring, summer, and fall’s games, as always, gave me a way to measure the seasons, to witness the passage of time and to know comfort in the dependability of a game that always returns next year, no matter what.
But what really drew me in as a fan this season was the how the game allowed me to escape, for a few minutes in the morning sports stories, listening to the radio at night, and talking about the Sox with other fans. Baseball allowed me to consume news that was actually good, interesting, and something to look forward to, and follow. Baseball let me cheer for the good guys and against the bad guys in games on a field of play that ultimately had nothing at stake, save for bragging rights and championship rings.
Boy, did I need baseball. Do I need something, anything to lean back into for rest, for comfort, for recharging, for life. Maybe you do too.
Because the part of my life I live as a citizen and an American? That’s mostly filled with bad news, really bad news, since last January in particular. Each day now seems to be filled with too many horror stories of the powerless being treated with such cruelty. Bad tidings about the high-jacking of our democracy in a movement marked by mediocrity and mayhem. The country I love is feeling less and less like my home these days.
Baseball helped me take a break.
We all need such pauses and retreats from the intensity of day-to-day life. God does not make us to fire on all burners 24/7. To just keep going and going. Our devices may scream at us, “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!” and the news cycle may demand of us “YOU MUST CONSUME THE LATEST NEWS NOW!” Too many of our leaders now act as if politics is the center of everything, as if it is a new kind of religion, with a new god and gods, who demand absolute fealty and devotion.
Not me. I absolutely won’t worship at that altar or before that idol.
I am just trying my best to be a part of the good now, to build up rather than to tear down and to make the world a little better every day by how I live. I often fall short, but I have to keep on keeping on, as do many of us. At its best that’s what religious faith tries to do as well: inspire believers to embody the good, and then to do God’s good, for the common good. That hard work happens every day in houses of worship and soup kitchens and prisons and nursing homes and schools and small towns and big cities.
To do the good and to push back against the bad.
But everyone needs a break from our work, the intensity of daily life, and the chaos that some create for their own amusement or profit, or both. That’s why I needed baseball. Why I need to go the movies and to ride my bike. Why I need to write. Bake bread and make a home cooked meal for my 90-year-old mother. Why I need to spend more time with the folks I love and who love me right back, without condition.
You do too. We all need to regularly refill our spiritual wells and to be renewed for the living of this day.
What is your baseball, the pastime, the hobby, the escape, the retreat, the ritual, the game, the craft, the sport that feeds and renews your soul? Who are the people in this life that make your heart sing and give you the strength to carry on, and make life worth living?
My hope for all of us is in these tumultuous times is that we each find our joy, and whatever makes us feel more alive. May we embrace more often our loved ones and just take good care. Life is a marathon after all, not just a sprint. This race has a ways to go.
I’ll pray for you, and I hope you’ll pray for me and others and our country and the world too.
And take a break, ok?
(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)
The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.
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