Putting old heads on young bodies

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the March 20, 1993, issue of WORLD Magazine.

Liberals and conservatives don’t agree on much, but here’s one observation they have in common: American education is sick. The more dollars we spend, the less kids seem to learn. Maybe we can learn something from the best teachers I’ve seen: major league baseball coaches.

“Welcome to Pirate City,” the large sign at the Pittsburgh Pirates spring training site beckons and warns. “At your own risk, you are now entering the unprotected field area. You are hereby notified and warned of the potential risk of serious personal or bodily injury from bats, balls or other objects leaving the playing field.”

And not just from bats, balls, or other objects—for players at major league spring training sites in Florida and Arizona this month, the greatest threat of serious personal injury comes from within.

“I’m dealing with 22-year-old guys here who could become millionaires real quick, and there are a lot of pressures and temptations in that situation” said Ray Miller, Pirates pitching coach. “They have an attention span of about 10 minutes, and they naturally tend to overthrow on the mound and overdo it off the field, so it’s a race against time in trying to teach them. My job is to put old heads on young bodies.”

That message of education I heard repeatedly in three days of talking with players, coaches, and managers at the Florida spring training sites of the Pirates (Bradenton), the Baltimore Orioles (Sarasota), and the Cincinnati Reds (Plant City). “Old heads on young bodies”—it seems a mystery, like “You must be born again.” But there are two parts to the answer and they are found in baseball’s practical applications of Proverbs and gospel.

CAL RIPKEN, BALTIMORE’S ALL-STAR SHORTSHOP, who has now played in 1,735 straight games, emphasizes work and more work as a way to stand up to pressure.

“You have to be prepared for all situations in baseball,” he said. “No matter what situation arises, if you’ve done your work, it’s something you’ve done and thought about many times before. You position yourself and you take every at-bat the same way.”

Sitting in the spartan locker room after the workout, Ripken mused on the importance of diligence: “What I’ve done today will be crucial in September. To have a successful at-bat you have to do certain things the same way whether nothing’s on the line or everything’s on the line. That’s not to say you don’t feel the pressure at times—I do—but you have to put the specialness out of your mind and try to make every at-bat the same, whether it’s the World Series or an intersquad game. You work hard not to think about the specialness of those tough situations, because that just puts more pressure on yourself. Instead, you keep telling yourself, ‘I’ve done this thousands of times before. I’ve done my work.’”

That emphasis on work pervades the Orioles spring training site from the batting cages to the team lunchroom, where the DiGiovanni catering service plays soft Christian music in the background and posts verses from Proverbs on the daily menu board: “The desires of the diligent are satisfied” (Proverbs 13:8).

Harold Baines, the Orioles new designated hitter, said, “I’ve practiced hitting hour after hour, year after year, so I know I can hit the ball in any situation. If somebody catches it, there’s nothing I can do about that, so I don’t worry; I just keep working.”

Ripken and Baines are veterans. But how can rookies gain old heads? Orioles manager Johnny Oates, giving the baseball equivalent of the parable of the sower, told of how “some players come up fast but they waste their talents no matter what you do; they’re just not coachable. And others don’t have the talent; you have to let them go. But lots of players have the potential to make it, if you can help them mature. You have to be persistent. If you tell them once, it might go in and out their ears, so you tell them again and again, and sooner or later it will sink in. How many times should you tell them? Sometimes I fall short. With some people I’m more patient than with others, I can’t tell you why, but I have to be willing to repeat, to be patient. That’s my job.”

“If you tell them once, it might go in and out their ears, so you tell them again and again, and sooner or later it will sink in.” —Johnny Oates

Oates ranges over all the practice fields during a workout—the Orioles complex is typical in having four fields radiate from a central point. During four hours of practice, Oates was almost always moving, always watching, rarely talking. “I want everyone on the team to know I may be watching them at any time,” he explained later. The only thing that seemed to upset him is lack of diligence. He yelled at a right fielder who stood absentmindedly when a coach hit a fly to the center fielder: “Back him up. If you don’t want to do it, let’s go home.”

Oates does take aside young players to explain probability, which is the basis of baseball strategy. When one rookie at first base seemed puzzled about why to cut off a throw from the outfield in a particular way, Oates explained patiently, “The reason is that you’ll cut the ball and get the trailing runner at second much more often than you’ll be able to get a runner at home. At the major league level the throw to have a chance at home has to be on a line in the air or on one bounce. That’s why you’re a cutoff man, not a relay man.” Baseball probabilities are based on experience, and Oates is the historian, trying to convey to young men decades of observation, with one goal in mind: old heads on young bodies.

One of Oates’ favorites is Tim Hulett, a marginal infielder who is also the team’s Baseball Chapel leader and autographs baseballs with a citation of Romans 6:23 next to his name: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Hulett is practicing catching this spring so he can be a late-inning fill-in behind the plate if needed. Jerry Narron, the Baltimore catching coach, was watching as Hulett tried to catch cut fastballs and devilish curves.

“I didn’t blink,” Hulett reported after surviving one hard-to-handle pitch, and Narron praised him: “No blink, no cringe.” Oates, a former catcher, watched as a pitch got by Hulett, and then said quietly, “Just knock it down with the big part of the glove. Stop pulling away.” As Hulett listened and improved, Oates watched what he was creating and said, “Good, good.”

Oates then moved over to observe a fielding drill across the way, but came back as Paul Carey, a 25-year-old minor leaguer with a number better suited to an end in football—88—stood in the batting cage and complained about the teammate who was throwing to him, Todd Frowirth. Frowirth’s unusual sidearm, almost underhand style was bothering Carey, who was muttering, “He throws five balls in a row, then one’s in there. Hard to concentrate.” But Dick Bosman, the pitching coach whose skin is leathery from years in the sun, was watching Frowirth pitch and he liked what he saw: “Good, good, good angle. That ball’s going straight down. Look at that thing. Ain’t bad, is it?”

When Carey barked out an obscenity in response to a high inside pitch, Bosman merely said, “Missed you.” When Carey took a pitch that might have been on the outside corner, Bosman commented, “Gotta reach.” When Carey swung at and missed the next two pitches, he weakly asked another coach who had joined the observation team, “Elrod, those last two high?” Hendricks said, “Not the last one, maybe the one before.” Then Carey hit two weak ground balls and said, “Not my fault. Those were balls.” Hendricks replied, “You didn’t have to swing at them.” And Oates was there all the time, watching.

In the locker room after the workout, Hendricks explained his pedagogical philosophy. “Spring training is no different than a teacher teaching students,” he said. “You teach through repetition. … You might have to say it a thousand times. Maybe the 1,001st time it will get through to them. They’re going to get tired of listening to you. You’re going to get tired of saying it, but you have to keep teaching. The good listeners last longer. People will look at some good players and say, ‘They’re so natural,’ but there’s no such thing—they all have to work hard at the craft. The only way you become natural is through hard work and execution. It’s never-ending.”

“They’re going to get tired of listening to you. You’re going to get tired of saying it, but you have to keep teaching.” —Elrod Hendricks

Early in March, coaches and managers on other teams were also emphasizing the difficulty of putting old heads on young bodies. Bill Virdon, a fine outfielder on the Pirates from 1956 through 1965, now provides proverbial wisdom to young Pirate outfielders: “Don’t start thinking about tomorrow, concentrate on right now. There are 130 pitches in a game, you get five or six plays a game, and if you’re not alert for all 130, the ones your mind wanders on may be the ones hit to you. If you start thinking about other things, about how you had a chance with the bases loaded last inning to win the ball game, next thing you know a ball is hit to you, you’re not ready, and you’ve lost the game. The outfield takes speed and all that, but most of all it takes concentration.”

Pirates pitching coach Miller, like Henry David Thoreau, says, “Simplify, simplify.” He explained, “I tell pitchers not to throw four different pitches in a game, but to go with the two best they’ve got. Simplify every iota of the game. In fielding, say, keep it simple: Look, step, throw, do it a zillion times, get it fundamentally right, then bring it up to game speed. Simplify, go over and over it, in slower motion. When the player understands, you increase the tempo and the athlete in the guy will take over, handling the increased speed but doing it right.”

Miller emphasized that self-esteem among young pitchers comes from knowledge, not from easy compliments: “When you’re young, even if everyone says you’re great, there’s fear in your mind—‘Am I really a big leaguer?’—and consequently you overthrow. Part of my job is to get the pitcher to think about changing speeds, which is the one thing that a good batter has trouble with. I tell them about the hitter’s depth perception and their ability to change speeds so he never really has a good swing at it. I stress instant feedback and a lot of information flow to the pitcher. It’s very hard when you stand on the mound and you throw from your toes to get an accurate sense of how close the hitter is to nailing you, so we have signs from the catcher to the pitcher after each pitch to let the pitcher know exactly where the hitter was on the pitch. Information like that can bring about a transformation. The transformation comes from having a fear of all the guys at the plate to having the knowledge that no matter who’s up there, I can tell from my last pitch what pitch to throw next.”

An hour standing next to Reds manager Tony Perez also shows American education at its finest, except for Perez’s frequent use of obscenities. With Jamie Quirk, a marginal utility player who is trying to catch on, Perez is insistent: “Keep your body behind the ball. Use that [expletive deleted] weight you’ve got on you. … Stay behind it, get your hands in front, save your hands for the last moment. … Keep your body back, keep the ball in front of you. Hit the [expletive deleted] on top.” And Quirk does hit the next few pitches much more sharply, with Perez giving instant reinforcement: “See what you did. See where you hit that [expletive deleted] ball. See it. Got to keep the ball in front of you.”

Perez, a great slugger from 1965 through 1986 who is starting his first year as manager, did not walk around like Oates, observing everything. Perez is a hands-on-bat instructor who seemed particularly comfortable with hitters. But Perez, like Oates, showed interest in character, which he defined as taking a high inside pitch without flinching. When outfielder Roberto Kelly at bat did not flinch at a close pitch, Perez said to all, “That’s the way to take a pitch.” When Willie Greene, a highly touted 21-year-old infielder was at bat, Perez muttered, “Every time he gets pitch inside he goes …”—and Perez demonstrated a flinch. To Greene, at this point, Perez simply said, “You’ve got too much movement in your body.” When All-Star shortstop Barry Larkin batted, Perez told Greene to watch closely. When Larkin remained steady as a pitch passed inches from his face, Perez said, “That’s the way to take a pitch.”

What Perez sees is not what an ordinary observer sees. Hal Morris, the Reds’ first baseman, who batted .318 in 1991 but was injured part of last year and dropped to .271, put on an impressive display of power during his first batting practice session. Ball after ball went over the fence, to the delight of a teenager on the other side who had brought his glove and positioned himself well. Perez, though, thought Morris was swinging for the fences too much and would not be able to duplicate the batting practice spectacular during a game when pitchers would be throwing him knee-high fastballs. Perez kept telling Morris, “If the ball is low, don’t try to lift it. Stay on top and see what you can do. Nice and easy. You want slow feet, quick hands. Stay in front, don’t drop your [expletive deleted] head, keep your head up. You tend to drop your shoulder. Keep your head up. When the ball is down you’re still trying to lift it. Stay on top. Forget about your hands. Don’t move your hands. Stay right there and get it.”

As Morris listened carefully, adjusted, and got it, Perez was pleased: “Yes, that’s a [expletive deleted] line drive. You don’t have to hit [expletive deleted] flies to drive in runs—just make contact. Keep the ball in front of you. You want to see it when you hit it. Keep that [expletive deleted] in front of you, see it when you hit it, stay low.”

Morris confessed that he was blind but now he saw: “I wasn’t seeing that low ball before. Now I can.” Perez replied, “Happened to me, happens to you, happens to everybody. But you were doing it the end. I bet you saw where you hit that last line drive. When you stay back, [expletive deleted], it feels different, doesn’t it?”

PEREZ’S BATTING PRACTICE INSTRUCTION DEALT with the mechanics, but there is much more to baseball than that. As Pirates pitching coach Miller said, “You can mentally age a guy on the field, but there’s still that pressure. They know that anything they do wrong is going to be shown on CNN or ESPN and they can be a laughingstock real soon. There’s pressure, and some guys get so serious, so intense, that they become absolutely paranoid about not wanting to make a mistake.”

Miller spends a lot of time after workouts in one-on-ones. “You have to read a guy,” he said. “Certain guys you have to put your arm around them, other guys you gotta boot their rear ends. So I never instruct a pitcher when another guy’s standing there. I always get him off to the side. Here in spring training when I get a guy I like I take him aside, just sit down and talk with him about the weather, anything, just to get a read on him, whether he’s a religious guy or a more crude, macho kind of guy.”

Miller described himself as “a God-fearing man. I know that everything is such a miracle, that—look around at this field on this day—it’s so beautiful, that there has to be someone in charge of all of it. But I can’t take the Bible word-for-word; whenever you tell someone a story and it goes around, it comes back a little distorted.” Two of the Pirates’ stars—one a veteran, one with only two months and two playoff games of big league experience—have gone deeper.

Andy Van Slyke, the Gold Glove center fielder known to sportswriters largely for his sardonic one-liners—the biggest adjustment minor leaguers promoted to the bigs have to make “is figuring out how to spend the extra $45 a day in meal money”—is serious about the interaction of faith and vocation.

“My relationship with God is through Jesus Christ, and it’s helped me to keep perspective on what baseball really is,” Van Slyke told me. “Because baseball is a job that is elevated, scrutinized, and viewed by millions of people, there is an unbelievable amount of pressure put on performance, and a problem out on the field can really leave you low. But God doesn’t save us because of our performance, and whether it’s a good performance or a bad performance, it’s not going to threaten our relationship with God. That’s a comforting thing to know.

“Before I became a Christian [12 years ago],” Van Slyke continued, “my baseball life was such a roller coaster—good days, bad days—that it was wearing me out. Now, there’s perspective: 50 years from now, who will know or care that I had a good month of May last year? Who even remembers now? So what? That stuff is futile, it fades away, like everything in the world. It’s the glory that God receives that will last for ever.”

The 32-year-old Van Slyke is a hard worker, but he has gone beyond Proverbs into the gospel to gain an understanding of the game that is work. Tim Wakefield, a young Christian knuckleball pitcher, is on the same road: He learned about God’s grace in 1990, through the work of Baseball Chapel. Called up to the majors on July 31 of last year, Wakefield had eight wins, one loss, and a 2.15 ERA during the remainder of the season and almost brought the Pirates a championship by winning two games in the playoffs, showing enormous poise for a rookie.

“Before, I worked hard but I wasn’t at ease,” Wakefield said. “Now, in a lot of tough situations people have asked me how I can be so composed, and it’s only because I know the Lord. Knowing that God is gracious regardless of my performance helps me to control my frustrations. … The gospel has given me inner peace. I still have a lot to learn, but there is that inner peace.”

“Knowing that God is gracious regardless of my performance helps me to control my frustrations.” —TIm Wakefield

And what about the non-stars? Tom Foley of the Pirates, a 33-year-old journeyman trying to hang on this spring, is known as a tough competitor, and he said his faith in Christ “makes me play harder. I go out there and I play for the Lord, and I leave the results to Him. I can’t control those.”

What happens—Foley’s batting average was .174 last year—when there is failure?

“If I go 0 for 4, and I gave all that I had for Him, in God’s eyes I went 4 for 4,” he said. “I want to win just like everybody else does, but failure doesn’t drag me down the way it used to. I’m not trying to please 50,000 people in the stands. God gave me my ability, and I’ve done as much as I possibly could with it, so I’m pleasing Him.”

In the Orioles clubhouse the Christian influence starts at the top. In manager Johnny Oates’ words, “The good Lord put me in this place for a reason: It’s to share the Good News with all the people around me, and it’s to glorify God in the way I manage. We play with fun and gusto, but when we realize that’s not the whole scheme of things, we have inner peace. There’s no doubt in my mind that my depending on the Lord has helped me as I struggle with decisions. If I don’t have my quiet time in the morning, if I don’t take time to think about what life is all about, my day’s in trouble.

“Baseball’s an irregular life in some ways,” Oates continued, “but as I read my Bible, as I watch the personal testimony of other Christians, I try to develop a consistent philosophy and communicate that to my players. First, we play aggressively. I never want any Christian to be passive and start saying ‘It’s God will.’ Our goal is to do everything in our power that’s not morally wrong or illegal to win a ballgame. Second, if we lose, I tell the players, ‘Go look at yourself in the mirror. If you did everything you could, go home and get a good night’s rest. If not, remember what you did wrong, then go home and rest.’

“I also want players to think through their lives off the field,” Oates added. “I believe two things about this. First, we’ve all sinned and we’re going to continue to sin, but Jesus died on the cross so we can be forgiven. He took those sins on his shoulders. Second, His sacrifice doesn’t give me a license to go on sinning. I know I do and will, but through His grace I hope I do it less and less. Since people know I’m a Christian, they’re watching for me to slip. I tell my players, ‘The second you put on a uniform you’re a role model.’ That’s particularly true if you’re a Christian.

“None of us is perfect, and we have to keep athletes from being on a pedestal, because there’s only one pedestal when it comes to performance, and that’s occupied. At the same time, I’m aware that if a great scientist, a great artist, and a sports star walk into a class of seventh graders, the athlete will receive most of the attention. And that means that for the sake of the ballclub and the community, on the Orioles we try to go after players who are quality players but also quality people.”

Second baseman Harold Reynolds is one of those quality people the Orioles recently signed. It’s fun to watch Reynolds take batting practice. He says “Good pitch” to the pitcher when he misses one across the plate, says “Oh, Harold” to himself when he swings at a bad one, says “Get down, ball” when he hits a fly out, and laughs when he hits a series of line drives.

“I’m feeling pretty good up here,” he said. Reynolds takes his bunting seriously, practicing again and again, and he is serious in his faith: “As a Christian, I know that every day I have Someone to play for. Over 162 games you can start lagging, but I know I have the responsibility to go out and play hard everyday, not to honor man but to play for the Lord.”

Reynolds, like other Christian players, took pains to dispel the stereotype of Christians as baseball wimps: “There are some Christians who play passively, but that’s because their personalities are passive, and they haven’t gone deep enough into Scripture. Biblical meekness has nothing to do with weakness; you’re meek before the Lord by glorifying Him, and that means using all the talent He’s given you, and the only way to do that is by playing hard. Some guys get into the ‘It’s the Lord’s will’ mentality, and there’s definitely Providence involved in anything that happens, but the Lord also gives us authority over the things in our lives, and I’m going to take authority in situations where I should, according to His word. Look at Jeremiah 29:11—the Israelites are in exile but they’re not passive, because the Lord says He has plans to prosper them and not to harm them, plans to give them hope, plans for them to call upon Him and come pray to Him, and He will listen.

“While you’re playing hard, you also have to be relaxed,” Reynolds continued, “and knowing about Jesus’ love allows me to relax. I don’t have to earn His love by what I do. Besides, reading the Bible, the sweep of history, helps to keep things in perspective. I also try to apply the wisdom of the Bible to the specific situations that occur. I remember my first year playing every day in the big leagues, in 1986. I was struggling bad. I had a hitting coach who liked me, but he was afraid of the manager. He wanted me to hit a certain way because the manager wanted me to play a certain way, to be slapping the ball, going inside out, but it wasn’t a way at which I could be successful. At the time I was reading in Daniel about Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel, how God had given them favor with the officer that was over them, and so Daniel said give me 10 days to do it my way, and in those 10 days they ate the vegetables and came back and their appearance and countenance was better than the king’s men’s.

“I took that passage to heart and said, hey, look, I got favor with this coach, but he’s afraid of the manager, just like this guy was afraid of the king. So I said to the coach, just give me 10 days to prove I could do it, and I turned my whole career around in those 10 days. I was batting around .100 at the time, but I came back and finished at .220, and the next year I made the All-Star team. Throughout my whole career the Bible has given me insight in human relations, and a sense of relaxation when I’m struggling, but also the desire to play hard. If I were not a Christian, I wouldn’t be in the big leagues today. It’s as simple as that.”

Things have generally gone well for Reynolds, but one Christian teammate on the Orioles, Glenn Davis, has been hobbled for the past two years by injuries. Davis works hard—he was in the clubhouse two hours after one workout ended, lifting weights and doing physical therapy—and he also thinks about God’s will: “I feel the same kind of pressure anyone else feels. Being a Christian doesn’t make me immune to difficulties. I suffer the same adversity, but faith helps me to deal with the pressure. During the past two years particularly I’ve been thinking about Scripture’s promise, ‘Come to me with all your burdens, you who are heavily laden, come to me and I’ll give you rest.’ God doesn’t make things easy for us, but He’s allowed me to see the faithfulness of Christ. I wouldn’t be a ballplayer except for that.”

There is, of course, a lot of jocular theistic belief in baseball, as there is in the field of country music. Most of the Cincinnati Reds stars, when asked a general question about the relationship of religious belief to their playing (without indication that the question was coming from a Christian), responded in a manner that would not lead anyone to confuse their locker room with a seminar at Westminster Theological Seminary. Larkin, the All-Star shortstop, told me, “My relationship with the Man Upstairs is important. There are so many trials and tribulations during the season that I couldn’t get through it unless I had Someone to turn to.”

Second baseman Bip Roberts said, “When I’m in a tough situation on the field, I take a deep breath and say, ‘Big Man, I need you more than I ever needed you before.’” Pitcher John Smiley was more formal but a bit more tentative: “I just go out there every day, hoping God will watch over me.” While some baseball Christians are more articulate than others, the particular language is not as important as the desire to go beyond the “Big Man” level of understanding. Spring training contains frequent lessons about the importance of glorifying God by not taking talent for granted.

Kevin Mitchell, the National League’s Most Valuable Player in 1989 when he led the league in home runs (47) and runs batted in (125), reported to the Cincinnati camp on the last possible day before incurring fines. Before going out to take his first batting practice he talked about how he “grew up in the church” under the tutelage of his mother, who is a missionary to prisons within the Church of God in Christ denomination.

“It really helps to believe in the Man Upstairs,” Mitchell said. “You lose your sanity if you don’t. When you’re down He’ll help you.” Then, with his gut hanging out—sportswriters had asked the team’s publicity director how many pounds Mitchell was overweight—the man downstairs floundered in the batting case, popping up balls and showing all that faith without work is fat. Mitchell made a feeble joke about the wind blowing in, but Larkin responded gruffly, “It don’t make no [expletive deleted] difference that the wind’s blowing in. The way you’re swinging, you might want to drop a bunt down every once in a while.” And manager Perez said, “You swung at that first one like you were taking a [expletive deleted].”

On the other hand, proverbial wisdom and gospel faith seem to have found a common niche in the head of Reggie Sanders, a much-heralded rookie last year from whom much is expected this year. Sanders came under Perez’s withering examination during batting practice: “I want you to see everything you hit. See it when you hit. You want your head to stay back and your hands to cross the plate.” Perez stayed on Sanders, pitch by pitch: “Now, slow your legs, speed up your hands. … You don’t need to move that front foot, keep it back. … Get your leg back, stay back, keep your leg back, body back, head up. See it when you hit.” Sanders paid rapt attention and successfully made adjustments, so he gained favor with his manager: “Good. Yes! Yes!! Yes! Keep your head down. You see how you hit the ball when you do it that way. Keep working on it!”

And off the field, sitting in the locker room, Sanders spoke of his faith: “I truly believe in the Lord. … If I have a good day or a bad day, I take it all the same, because I realize that whether someone is cheering me for a good play or booing me for a bad, the Lord always loves me for what I truly am. Even if no one else truly loves me, He does, and I’m always trying to learn more about him.”

Bip Roberts said he goes to Baseball Chapel meetings on Sundays but “during the season there’s not a lot of time to do much else.” Sanders, however, said, “I work at baseball and I work at my faith. On the road there’s lots of time to study, so I use the NIV Study Bible and that helps me get deeper into the Word.”

The combination of work and ease that many Christians exhibit has even impressed thoughtful non-believers in the locker room. Hal Morris, the 27-year-old first baseman of the Reds, does not count himself as “one of the religious guys, or one of their opponents—I’m somewhere in the middle.” But he used the training he gained at the University of Michigan—he was Academic All–Big Ten in 1985 and 1986—to give a thoughtful sociological summary: “As I’ve been observing different guys, the guys who are more religious don’t seem to feel as much pressure throughout the season. They seem to feel more at ease. They don’t feel the pressure. I find that interesting.”

If American education followed the baseball pattern of apprenticeship and careful attention to the basics, neither illiteracy nor the trade deficit would be growing.

THE PRESSURE CERTAINLY IS PRESENT. Pirate City is built on 160 acres of land that was once the site of the Bradenton city dump, and half the players who began this month of March with high hopes will soon be dumped into the minors, or into retirement. There are evaluation sheets for each player, and every workout contains its daily exams, under the watchful eyes of coaches. Spring training in America, in one sense, used to be simpler. Ballplayers who spent the offseason appearing at banquets and working at car dealerships came to camp with lots around the middle to lose before the Ides of March arrived. For most ballplayers—Mitchell appears to be an exception—that has changed. Players typically have fitness equipment in their homes and use it to protect their bodily source of abundant income. But the demise of the basic exercise component of spring training does not leave players with more spring in their souls. Instead, for those who do not have assured major league jobs, there is no longer an excuse for not showing off from the moment they show up.

The need to impress is so great that muscles are often asked to do more than they are ready for. Rookies and free agents endanger their shoulders and threaten their careers in order to advance their careers. The sunny skies of a Florida March can be deceptive, as players make tiny corrections in the way they hold their bats or place their feet. Making the National League takes even more drill than making the National Spelling Bee, except that there is often no other activity to fall back on should a player be eliminated. Major leaguers need to be fundamentalists, with emphasis on the fundamentals of their positions: an hour of ball-blocking for catchers, bunt-defending for infielders, hitting the cutoff man for outfielders.

There is constant teaching, and constant mentoring. If American education followed the baseball pattern of apprenticeship and careful attention to the basics, neither illiteracy nor the trade deficit would be growing. For an hour, Cincinnati pitching coach Don Gullett demonstrated exactly how to turn on a pickoff to second base, and each pitcher tried it, over and over again, lifting the leg just so. Report cards in all 28 spring training camps will be issued during the next two weeks, as teams make their final cuts, sending some young players to the minors and veterans into a field of memories, shattering some egos in the process.

Some players crack under the pressure, as some people crack under the intensity of modern America. But others find strength within, because God has put it there. Old heads can be given to young bodies, and new hearts as well. In the words of Glenn Davis of the Orioles, “If you want a model for fellowship, look at Christians in baseball. Here’s where you have fellowship—you need it so survive. We have a common goal and we work hard to attain it. We don’t sit around talking all day, but we talk about the practical situations that arise. We learn to apply the Bible under pressure. We rest in the faithfulness of Christ.”