Jesus Plays Sports: When Christian Athletes Fail

So with the Rockies and Paul Byrd both having fallen on hard times lately, I thought I should squeeze off a quick post about that. I hate it when people only talk about their causes or favorite players when times are good, thus I respond.

First, the Rockies were swept in the World Series. I wrote about this team's unique relationship to Christianity here. Quite honestly, I'm not surprised they lost in the World Series. You know, some might argue that had the Rockies won, they could have been this great testimony to fans about the power of Christ, etc. But rarely do things work out that neatly for Christians. Look at Kurt Warner's up-and-down career as an example. No blessing of God is guaranteed for being a Christian athlete.

Warning: Christian speculation ahead!
My personal bias, which I don't think Christians or non-Christians may agree with, is that God has a way of being coy about his role in the affairs of men. That way, only people who really are looking for him will notice. For me as a Christian, a few times my team won or lost games, and I thought "Wow, that was ALMOST miraculous the way we won or lost, it felt like something different was in the air, etc." But you can't prove it to be truly miraculous on pure statistics alone; unlikely, yes, but miraculous, no. So you're just left wondering if God may have intervened or if you're making too much of nothing. I think that although sometimes God is obvious, more often he makes himself known, then retreats. It then becomes a matter of faith as to whether you believe he really exists or not.

Second, Paul Byrd. There's a temptation to defend Paul Byrd as just trying to compensate for a medical condition in a way that was legal at the time. After all, often people complain that Christian athletes aren't tough or competitive enough. There's nothing uncompetitive about the man who got into a heated confrontation with Bob Wickman last year because he felt Bob cost him a W.

However, I keep thinking that Christians should hold a higher standard in the competitive arena. After all, on the Sermon on the Mount Jesus talks about "If someone forces you to go with them one mile, go with them two" and talks about thinking about adultery and saying harsh words to a brother as being a sin. Other muscle-building substances were illegal at the time Paul Byrd injected HGH. It seems that Paul Byrd obeyed the law of MLB but disobeyed the spirit of the law. That doesn't seem quite right to me.

However, I'm saddened because Paul Byrd's book was going to talk about his struggles with porn, despite being a married athlete. To think that athletes, known for being wealthy and supposedly having all these women at their disposal, have problems with porn would be a new perspective for a lot of people. I think it would start some badly-needed conversations about the lure of virtual reality (VR) in general (video games, porn, Internet communities, TV, etc.). Many, many Americans are getting addicted to VR at the cost of everyday relationships and experiences. It's a problem we need to seriously confront as a society and as individuals. Now, though, there's not much chance that book comes out.

World Series Quick Post

Sadly I was right about the Indians having Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tendencies. CC and Fausto reverted to last year's form, Grady resisted the awaiting Derek Jeter mantle Fox so badly wanted to place around his shoulders, and Travis was all donkey.

This is a tough one for me; originally I had the Red Sox winning the Series. But this setup of Red Sox vs. Rockies sounds a lot like Yankees vs. Marlins in 2003. When teams with very young, homegrown line-ups reach the World Series, they tend to be very successful. Additionally, expansion teams are 3-0 in the last decade in the World Series. Also, the Rockies are a better regular-season fielding team according to MLB.com's stats and at least as good of a regular-season hitting team.

True, the Rockies starting pitching isn't as good when viewed over the regular season stats...but the Red Sox are relying on an elderly Curt Schilling, a overtaxed Daisuke who finished the season poorly, AND a first-time play-off starter in Jon Lester. Plus, the Rockies get Aaron Cook back for Game 4; that will be an emotional lift. And don't be so sure that Papelbon's good closing will continue. If Garko hits that ball a little harder in Game 7, it's 5-5.

For the record: Rockies in 6.

Posterized: The Weak and the Elderly

UPDATE: The Starting Five has split up. Long-range, I think it'll help the writers to be separate. But short-range...to me, this was the best thinking-man's sports blog out there.

For this week, I decided to focus on some unlikely heroes. The aging Trot Nixon and Vinny Testaverde and the unlikely play-off bound Rockies are the poster topics for this week.




My mini-rant is on the attention paid to the Rockies' Christian leanings. I think that Christians in positions of power need to be very careful about subjecting non-Christians to Christian standards. That said, banning pornography and playing music with obscene lyrics from the workplace is hardly an unusual move. It's not as if most workplaces outside sports allow those things either.

I'm more cynical about columnists' reasons for questioning the Rockies. Think back to changes in the default athletic culture over the years--whether it's coaches who are soft-spoken instead of drill sergeants (Tony Dungy), using mathematical know-how to design a team (Moneyball with Oakland), or a change in the dominant demographics (majority black, Latino, or Christian players). Usually, what we saw initially in all those cases are columnists' harshly judging these changes. It's made to sound as if the previous culture made no demands on anyone, and all these new quiet or smart or black or Christian people are ruining everything.

However, this is a manipulation of the truth. The dominant culture (or if you will, government) ALWAYS coerces follower personalities to do what it wants. We just don't recognize the type of coercion after we have lived in it for a while. To pretend as if the new culture is coercive and the previous culture was not is revising the truth.

The main question instead is, which type of behaviors do you want the dominant culture to push on people? And after the deaths of Beck, Hancock, Caminiti and other baseball players due to rampant substance abuse, I think the Rockies style deserves a try. Even though as a Christian, I have some concerns about the Rockies's decisions (Christians are called to influence and infiltrate the dominant culture, rather than create their own separate culture), I think that this is an improvement over the default sports culture. So I'd ask you as well, dear reader, to keep an open mind.