I pastored a church in Warren, Ohio for a number of years, starting in the mid-1980s. Warren was a pretty fair sized city just a few miles north of Youngstown, Ohio. Together, the two cities and their respective metropolitan areas have over a half million people. Many churches exist in that area, and among those many churches, there exists two church softball leagues. Though our church was small at the beginning, I thought we should join a league.

          We were pretty dismal that first year. We won two games. The low point was a 63-3 pasting at the hands of a mega-church. But we had fun. Our coach was 80 years old that first year. Lou, though, had coached all his life. He had played some minor league ball as a young man, but the depression came and he went to work for the WPA and the dream of a major league career died. But two of his little league teams he coached got to Williamsport, so he was pretty good. Toward the end of that first season he sat down next to me as I waited my turn to bat. “You know Pastor. I have never had a team this bad.” Here it comes, I thought. It wasn’t worth his time. “We’re going to be a lot better next year.”

          And we were. Each year we got better. Most of our players hadn’t played in years. The church was growing, the team was adding new talent, it became fun. And these were not ringers brought in to only play ball. A lot of the teams did that. But Lou had pretty strict rules. Our players were all a real part of the church. We were a happy bunch, running the age gap of 14 through 80-womething. (Lou liked to get a few at bats in each year.)

          Finally, we were having The Season. We had just gotten good. Before the season started, Lou had told me it would probably be his last year coaching. When you are pushing 90, you are allowed to run out of gas a little bit. I got the team around me and told them about Lou. “Wouldn’t it be great to give Lou one more championship?” They all seemed to like that idea, so we went into the season with a little extra incentive.

          Lou always wanted young kids on the team. I don’t know what it was, but when he took one of the kids aside and explained about getting down on the ball on a grounder or stepping into the pitch when you brought the bat around, they quit goofing off and listened like the world depended on it. He just had a way with kids.

          Well, that year we had three boys in the 14-15 year old range. Three challenges. Good boys, but challenges. All three were from truly desperate poverty. Their living conditions had to be seen to be believed. Unless you have witnessed their kind of poverty, you would think it only existed in other countries. But it is everywhere in our large cities. People who refuse to work but who want all the benefits of life. Of course, the benefits were not there (at least at that time), so the people moaned and complained about their terrible living conditions, and they just lived on in those conditions. Filth, lack of ambition, hopelessness for their children.

          Two of these boys were brothers. Steve and Pat. Brothers in that they lived in the same dingy apartment and had the same mother. The man who lived there with them was Pat’s biological father. Steve was biracial and Pat was white. The father took Steve as his own, too, so that was a good thing. Marsha and I picked the boys up for church every week. Steve and Pat were average height and painfully thin, with Steve being a little taller. They had never played any sports and so were clumsy and unsure of themselves. The other boy was Bobby. Quite short for his age, Bobby had a pretty severe learning disability. Couldn’t read, math of any kind was too much for him, terribly uncoordinated, Bobby was that kid you wondered how he would make it in life. His living conditions were worse even more so than the brothers. The kids at church stayed away from all three boys, particularly Bobby. They weren’t clean, they smelled and they seemed almost furtive in their actions, like they were always looking over their shoulders. If our son had a birthday party or something, he invited the three, but mostly the kids shunned them. The adults looked after them at church and during the week. And, of course, Lou. Always had something to say, some little joke to tell. Lou was the one to ask them to come and play that year.

          Had they been old enough to play back when we were getting beat 63-3, they would have fit right in. We were all awful then. But this was a different team. One of Lou’s rules was that if you came to practice, you played. Lou always stopped and picked up Bobby and I always got the brothers, so they played every week. Usually Bobby played the first two innings at catcher. If a ball was coming in from the outfield, the pitcher or the first baseman would cover the plate. All the catcher really had to do was throw the ball back to the pitcher. Bobby always led off because he had no strike zone, he was so small. Always opened the game with a walk. Third inning Pat would go in to catch and then a little later it was Steve. They got to play and bat and didn’t hurt us too badly. And they learned and they just soaked up Lou.

          Our church and another church fought it out all season. They beat us the first time we played, we beat them the second time and meanwhile, we both beat everyone else. Our second to last game of the season would be against that other team, so if we beat everyone else and then beat them, we would win the championship.

          Even when you have The Season, you still have The Game. That is the game on which everything turns. With four games left, we had The Game. The third place team. They were pretty good, but we had beat them twice already. They wanted to beat us in the worse way. And, as it happened, that was the week almost everyone on the team was on vacation. That league’s rules said you could play with as few as eight, and that was all we had. That included the three boys and Lou. It meant we would have holes everywhere and a weak lineup. Losing this game would leave us with just three games to make it up and the other team we were tied with would have to lose not only to us, but to one more team. What had been a great season was feeling like it would slip away from us.

          When we were done warming up, the three boys sat huddled on the bench in conversation. I walked past them and heard Pat say, “Look, it’s all on us. We have to play the best we can for Coach Lou.” I just walked on. Wouldn’t do for them to see the pastor getting choked up.

          Top of the first inning was pretty cool. They went three up, three down. They made contact three times and all three balls came to me at first base. When we got our ups, Bobby led off with his usual walk. Lou grounded out to right field. I know. You don’t ground out to the outfield often, but Lou was closing in on 90. A short line drive to right and the right fielder threw him out at first. He was embarrassed, but Bobby was on third. I got a hit and brought Bobby home.

          The whole game seemed to go that way. The other team was trying too hard to kill the ball. Some were dropping in. We had some gaping holes. They were scoring some runs. However, the defense held it together pretty well. Offense, though, was a problem. Lou had the brothers batting in the last two spots, which was the 7 and 8 slots that day. Steve had an awkward swing that always looked like he broke something. Pat’s swing was better, but the old eye/hand coordination just wasn’t there. Anything like a rally died right there.

          Finally, bottom of the last inning. We were down 4-2. Steve was leading off. The picture was not too bright. I told Steve to let the first pitch go by. My thinking was if the pitcher threw a ball, it might make him nervous and put some pressure on him. Steve nodded, went up and took that awful disjointed swing at the first pitch. Line drive right over second. A single. Man on first. Lou told Pat to take the first pitch. Pat nodded. He took a mighty cut on the first pitch. A weak little pop up just over the leaping second baseman’s glove. A single. Steve had gone on to third. Men on first and third, no outs, top of the order.

          Now we are all coming back to life. Lou, who had pitched the whole game and was just about exhausted, walked in from coaching third because he was on deck. The hitter was Bobby. No strike zone to speak of, Bobby walked. Down two runs. Bases loaded. No one out. Lou walked to the plate. Lou was done. Just wore out. The other team’s coach called a time out and motioned me over. (I was one of three commissioners for the league.) He put his hand on Lou’s shoulder and said to me that if I would allow it, he would like for any of our other players to bat for Lou. I looked at Lou and saw his shoulders slump. He just looked defeated. I shook my head. “No, the rules are the rules. No batting out of order.” Lou looked at me, smiled and winked. I went back to the on deck circle. Lou had done all he could. He deserved that one last shot. Lou hit a little pop up to the pitcher, who caught it. The runners didn’t advance. We still had three on with one out. Lou hobbled over to the third base coach’s box to coach the end.

          Steve and Pat were not great baseball players, but they were fast. If I just got a puny little single, they would both score and we would be tied. I would have to hit a homerun to bring Bobby in. Short legs, no smoothness to his gait, he wasn’t much of a threat there at first. I figured Steve and Pat could both score on a sacrifice fly, if I hit it far enough. I just had to keep it off the ground or we would go down in a double play.

          The outfield was playing me to pull the ball, all shifting toward left field. Including the right fielder. I glanced at that and decided if I put the ball down the right field line, that right fielder wouldn’t get to it till Bobby was at third. Doable. I choked on the bat a bit and when the pitcher went into his motion, I change the position of my feet and slapped a pretty nice line drive down the right field line.

          The runners should have stayed at their bases until it was clear the ball could not be caught, but Lou was yelling at them to run. I could tell from my angle it wasn’t going to be caught, but it wasn’t real deep, either. I figured Bobby would stop at second. Steve and Pat were on their way, but Bobby would have to wait for the next batter.

          Except Lou kept yelling for Bobby to keep for third. Actually, with Bobby going to third I should have gone on to second, But I stopped in amazement. What was old Mr. Conservative down there doing? Bobby couldn’t get down to third in time. I looked back to the right fielder in time to see him over run the ball then slip and fall down as he tried to stop. Well. OK. Bobby could make it. However, that wasn’t enough for Lou. He waved Bobby on around third to home. That will never happen, I thought, yet because Lou did it I thought, Maybe. Short little legs churning, dust flying, the weirdest gait you ever saw, Bobby put his head down and headed home. I was still on first, dumbfounded. Worse base coaching I had ever seen. The right fielder finally had the ball and he threw it to his cut off man, who happened to be their best player. He easily had Bobby at home. He pulled back his arm to fire the ball to the plate. And it fell out of his hand. He bent down and picked it up and threw. Not a good throw with a lot of power. It bounced twice in the infield on the way to the plate. Bobby never lifted his head. His foot slapped the plate a second before the ball plopped into the catcher’s glove. I believe he would still be running if Steve and Pat hadn’t been waiting for him. Coach told him to run and he was going to run.

          I looked across the diamond to Lou. He was shuffling slowly towards the plate, pain in each step. The boys were dancing at the plate and then they stopped together and looked down toward third. As one they all broke and ran to Lou, wrapping him up in a big hug. By that time, I was standing next to Dan, our center fielder and one of our older Youth. “Geez, Dan, I was the one who drove them in. Where’s my hug?” He looked at me with a smile. “Maybe Marsha, maybe not.” Probably not. Marsha was hugging Lou’s wife.       

          We won the rest of our games and the championship. Those boys were part of something really special. Pat just couldn’t shake his upbringing and last I heard had been in and out of jail several times. Steve always had a desire for something better. He went into the Marines, looking to make it a career. Bobby, though, was the one I would have thought that the mad dash around the bases would have been one of the few highlights of his life. As soon as he was sixteen and could get a job, he hired into a McDonalds near their apartment. When he turned eighteen his mother told him to leave because she would no longer get support money for him from the government. He had graduated from high school unable to read or do math in 1997. He is still working at that McDonalds. Twenty three years after he started. Has his own small apartment. Walks to work because he was unable to learn how to drive. But, he can mop and he can sweep and he can rake leaves and shovel snow. He can fix the fryer and he can unstop the toilets. His apartment, he told me, is as neat as a pin. He has no debt. He sat there and told me what his life was like and I saw pride in his face. Growing up, he was ashamed with his place in life. Most of us would be appalled at twenty three years at McDonalds, but he feels a real sense of accomplishment.

          Kind of like that insane race around the bases. Mercy, I love baseball.