Baseball, Fathers and Forgiveness

I recently finished reading my first John Grisham novel.  I suppose that’s a little surprising, seeing as I’m a legal professional who loves to read. But I’m not that big into “thrillers,” even legal ones. So, I guess it’s not surprising that my first Grisham would be his very non-legal, non-thriller short novel about baseball: Calico Joe.

Set in the 1970s, Calico Joe tells the fictionalized account of the events leading up to a fateful at-bat between two major league ballplayers: Joe Castle and Warren Tracey. Castle, a rookie for the Cubs with the hottest bat in baseball, faces off against Tracey, a veteran, but fading, pitcher for the New York Mets.  The story is narrated by Warren’s son, Paul Tracey, who was an avid 11-year- old baseball fan in the summer of 1973, the season of the notorious confrontation between his father and his idol.

Written from the vantage point of 30 years later, Paul recounts his childhood as the son of a professional baseball player, while giving the play-by-play of his present-day attempts to reconcile his father and Castle before Warren Tracey’s impending death of cancer. Warren is a hard man, arrogant and abusive, and his self-absorption destroys his relationships, particularly with Paul.  Warren’s not much different during Paul’s adulthood, though Warren’s cancer allows him the opportunity to finally voice his long-held regrets. In contrast, Joe Castle, or “Calico Joe,” is all a good sportsman should be: full of gentility and grace on and off the baseball diamond.

Paul’s boyish idolization of Castle puts him into a conflicted emotional state as Warren Tracey pitches to Castle in a Mets-Cubs game on August 24, 1973. Spoiler alert: in an act of sheer spite, Tracey “beans” Castle in the head, permanently injuring him and ending his professional baseball career. Thirty years later, Paul, who has since married and started a family, does his best to bring Tracey and Castle together for one sole purpose: to give his dad a chance to make at least one thing right in his life before he dies. Tracey and Castle do meet, and (spoiler alert), an apology is made by one and forgiveness is extended by the other.

Oddly enough, the character who gave me most cause for reflection by the novel’s end was the person telling it: Paul Tracey. There’s much to like about Paul. Though the product of a broken home, he’s caring, courageous, responsible, and a devoted family man. Paul is nothing like his father, something he takes pride in.  Much as the older brother viewed the prodigal in Jesus’ parable, Paul sees his father as the bad guy, the one who spoiled talent and relationships on a hedonistic existence. The reconciliation between Warren and Joe is, as far as Paul is concerned, an act of penance for Warren than an instance of restorative forgiveness. As for the chances of Warren Tracey trying to make things right with anyone else in his miserable life, Paul says “fat chance.” Ironically, while Paul can accept Joe Castle forgiving Warren Tracey for ruining Joe’s life, he will never forgive his father for ruining his.

Calico Joe ends with Paul satisfied with how things turned out between his father and Joe.  And despite the apparent resolution between Warren and Paul, it’s neither satisfactory nor really healing. Both men remain wounded and broken.

The most glaring unresolved relationship in the story, however, is the most important: that of each man with God. Warren never seeks God’s forgiveness, and ironically, just like his father, neither does Paul. Apparently secure in his own “good” life as an adult, a life without the mistakes of his father, Paul misses out on the forgiveness that could have redeemed and brought healing to them both. His own self-absorption in being the man who isn’t his father, makes him even more unlikely a candidate to find the forgiveness (and consequent healing) he desperately needs.

Calico Joe is a well-crafted tale, with substantive characters, and valuable insights, particularly on relationships between fathers and sons. But its most poignant lesson is that without Jesus, seeking, arranging, or even extending forgiveness is nothing more than another good, but empty, work. For without receiving the forgiveness of a just and holy God, each person’s at-bat on Judgment Day is sure to end in a strike-out. 

Photo credit by Matthew Stratton in creative commons. 

Book Review: Meet the Men and Women We Call Heroes

I love biographies because they’re true stories about relatable and yet inspirational people. But often I don’t have the time I’d like to delve into the details about the great men and women of history. And sometimes, I like to get a sense of who a person was before spending a few dozen hours of my life reading a 400-page book about them. That’s one of the reasons I’m grateful for my recent journey through Meet the Men and Women We Call Heroes, an anthology of 20 short biographies edited by Charles Turner and Ann Spangler.

 Heroes is unique in two ways: its subjects and their authors. Unlike other “hero” books, the people you’ll encounter in this volume are not particularly famous, but they were particularly impacting. There are a few headliners, like Mother Teresa and C.S. Lewis, but most are only moderately known (e.g. Catherine Marshall, Paul Brandt, Amy Carmichael), and many without any prior notoriety. They come from all points in history (the Middle Ages to modern times) and include scholars, politicians, authors, editors, poets, doctors, missionaries, fathers and mothers.

But even more unique than the collection of heroes this anthology contains is the collection of authors who describe them. Each author, 10 men and 10 women, was (and in most cases, still is) considered an influential Christian in 1985, the year of the book’s publishing. Readers then and now see them as modern “heroes of the faith,” and this puts an entirely new perspective on each contribution. Instead of simply reading about William Wilberforce, you'll read about the historical cultural activist from modern cultural activist Chuck Colson. Ever wonder who inspired people like R.C. Sproul, Elisabeth Elliot, J.I. Packer, or Philip Keller? Heroes will give you the answer. And like the subjects themselves, the contributors include lesser known (but just as effective) communicators.  

In each of the book’s 20 chapters, a contributor describes his or her hero in their own unique style. You’ll read Kitty Muggeridge’s straightforward life account of Mother Teresa, Elisabeth Sherrill’s dramatic portrayal of Adrienne de Lafayette (a.ka. the wife of the Marquis de Lafayette of American Revolution fame), and Harry Blamires’ reminisces of what it was like to be a student of C.S. Lewis. It’s true that some authors do the job better than others, but each piece gives special insight into both hero and admirer. In many instances, the chapter is a first hand account written by someone who knew the hero, sometimes quite personally.

Because it’s an unassuming paperback from 30 years ago, some might think Heroes is old enough to be considered dated, but recent enough to be considered unremarkable. But that’s a mistake. While there are a few chapters where the book’s age does leave some gaps (e.g. some of the heroes who were living have since passed on), the accounts are otherwise timeless, and the heroes just as worth learning about and emulating now as they were then.

Meet the Men and Women We Call Heroes, edited by Charles Turner and Ann Spangler, 368 pages, (Servant Publications, 1985 and other editions) is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble . Contributors (and their heroes) include Kitty Muggeridge (Mother Teresa), Elisabeth Elliot (Amy Carmichael), Kathryn Koob (Catherine Marshall), Elizabeth Sherrill (Adrienne de Lafayette), Ingrid Trobisch (Johanna Mathilda Lind Hult), Luci Shaw (Elizabeth Rooney), Gladys Hunt (Evelyn Harris Brand), Karen Burton Mains (Wilma Burton), Madeleine L’Engle (Mary McKenna O’Connell), Rebecca Manley Pippert (Ethel Renwick), Harry Blamires (C.S. Lewis), Philip Yancey (Paul Brand), Charles Colson (William Wilberforce), R.C. Sproul (Thomas Aquinas), W. Phillip Keller (Otto C. Keller), J.I. Packer (David Martyn-Lloyd Jones), Thomas Howard (Philip E. Howard Jr.), Robert E. Coleman (Blaise Pascal), Charles Turner (T. Stanley Soltau), and Malcom Muggeridge (Alexander Solzhenitsyn).