Baseball: It's NOT boring

This is a fairly long sports post. I'm telling you this up front so that if you're not interested, you can just skip it altogether. I'm not primarily writing this to inform anyone, but to record, for posterity, my story of what I believe to be one of the most exciting nights in sports of my entire life.

At the beginning of September the Boston Red Sox held a 9-game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays in the race for the American League wild card (i.e., the final playoff spot available). On September 6, the Atlanta Braves led the St. Louis Cardinals by 8 1/2 games in the race for the National League wild card.

After Tuesday night's games, both wild card races were tied. Last night was the last night of the regular season for Major League Baseball. In the AL, the Red Sox were playing the Orioles, and the Rays were playing the Yankees. If both teams won OR both teams lost, they would have to play each other tonight to see who would make the playoffs. If one team won and the other lost, the winning team gets the last spot.

In the NL, the Cardinals were playing the Astros, and the Braves were playing the Phillies. It was the same situation as the AL.

I turned on the Braves game at about 5:30 pm. ESPN 2 was showing the Braves game, and would switch to the Cardinals game when the Braves game was over. But, the Cardinals game lasted only 2.5 hours as the redbirds smoked the Astros 8-0, so it never appeared on TV. After the win, the Cardinals were guaranteed at least a play-in game, depending on what happened with the Braves. Atlanta led 3-1 for most of the game. In the 7th inning the Phillies scored a run, cutting the lead to 3-2. In the 9th, the Phillies got a single, a few walks, and a sacrifice fly to tie the game at 3. The game stayed tied until the 13th inning (the Braves, at this point, knew that the Cardinals had won and that they needed a win to stay alive), when the Phillies were able to manufacture a run off an unimpressive RBI single by Hunter Pence. The Braves couldn't score in the bottom of the 13th and lost the game. A close, exciting game. It was 9:40 pm and the Braves had completed the worst September collapse in MLB history, missing out on the playoffs.

Meanwhile, in the American League games, the Red Sox led 3-2 over the Orioles and had been in a rain delay for quite some time, no doubt following the action in New York where the Rays were getting walloped 7-0 by the Yankees. Not long after the Red Sox game resumed, something weird happened in New York. It was the bottom of the 8th, and somehow the Rays managed to score 6 runs. It's quite rare for a team to score 6 in a single inning. But then the inning ended, and the Rays were still behind 7-6 with only one inning left. But in the bottom of the 9th, with two outs, the Rays had just one more chance to hang on. Manager Joe Maddon called on a pinch hitter named Dan Johnson to bat. Johnson's batting average was .108 (translation: awful) and he did not have a hit in the month of September. Johnson hit a home run. The Rays were tied with the Yankees and heading to extra innings.

As the game stayed tied in New York, another anomaly was happening in Baltimore. It was the bottom of the 9th and the Orioles were still behind 3-2 in a game which was quickly looking like an absolute must-win for the Red Sox. The Sox put in one of the best closers in the world: Jonathan Papelbon. This season, the Red Sox were 76-0 when leading after 8 innings, and Papelbon was a big reason why. Papelbon struck out the first two Orioles. Now the Red Sox needed just one more out and they would be assured at least one more day of hope for the postseason. But the next Oriole hit a double. The one after that hit a ground-rule double to tie the game at 3. Then Robert Andino came to the plate and hit a soft line-drive to left field. The Sox left fielder couldn't make the catch (even though he appeared to be in position to). The Red Sox had blown a 9th inning lead for the first time all year and lost. What? It was 10:02 here in Denver. But the Red Sox would still be fine, as long as those pesky Rays didn't pull out a win.

But down in Tampa, the Rays were still tied with the Yankees in the bottom of the 12th. It was 10:05 Mountain Time, and the scoreboard at Tropicana Field had just been updated for the fans to see that Boston had lost. A Rays win would put them in the playoffs. And Evan Longoria pulled a line drive shot down the left field line. It cleared the fence by about a foot. The Rays won. Twenty-five minutes earlier, the Braves had set a new record low for awful collapses in the Major Leagues, but when Longoria hit his home run, the Red Sox collapse trumped it.

Most of the night it looked like a sure thing that the Cardinals would win, but so would the Braves, and they'd have a play-in game tonight. It also looked like the Red Sox would win and the Rays would lose and Boston would clinch the AL wild card. Instead, the Braves lost in 13 innings and the Cardinals got the wild card outright. Then the Sox stumbled and the Rays pulled off a miraculous comeback, and the Rays got the wild card outright.

One of the most exciting sports nights I can remember. I couldn't even sleep well because I was so blown away by what I had just witnessed. Incredible.

Update:
Here are some related notes I found interesting:

• I mentioned above that the Red Sox were 76-0 this season when taking a lead into the 9th inning prior to last night. Also, though, the Yankees hadn't blown a lead that big (7 runs) that late (8th inning) since 1953. Those were the two stats that had to be overcome for Tampa to end up in the playoffs.
• The Red Sox were 7-20 in the month of September.
• In 3 of the 4 games with playoff implications last night, a team was 1 out from winning and ended up losing.
• Great Sports Illustrated story on the drama of September 28, 2011 can be found here: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/tom_verducci/09/29/game.162.drama/index.html?eref=sircrc

In an unrelated baseball story, Jose Reyes of the New York Mets caused some controversy yesterday. Reyes was seeking to win the National League batting title (i.e., best batting average in the league). In his first at bat, he bunted for a hit. Then he took himself out of the game to preserve his average and get the title. I thought that was cowardly. Ironically, this occurred on the 70th anniversary of one of baseball's great stories. In 1941 Ted Williams entered the final day of the season with a batting average just over .400 -- a monumentally great average. His manager told him he could sit out the day's double-header to preserve that average. Williams refused. He played in both games, risking his average with every at bat. Williams went 6 for 8 that day and raised his average to a whopping .406. Ted Williams had guts. Jose Reyes did not.

An amateur looks at Love Wins

At the end of February a pastor from Michigan named Rob Bell released a promo video for his soon-to-be-released book, Love Wins, and a firestorm of controversy erupted in the online evangelical world. The next month the book came out, and the controversy continued. From the end of February until about mid-April it seemed everything Christianity-related I read online had to do with Bell's book. In a nutshell, Bell's book is (as his subtitle suggests) A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person who Ever Lived. In this book Bell is seen by many as having taken a step toward (if not a canonball-sized plunge into) universalism - the idea that in the end, all people will be saved. Though the controversy is now "old news," I just recently had a chance to read the book, and I wanted to share my thoughts.

When I began reading, I started taking notes on just about every sentence on every page, but I soon realized that this was taking a ridiculous amount of time, and it was completely unnecessary. Many others have posted detailed reviews of this book and have done so much more eloquently and intelligently than I would ever be able to (I can provide links to enough blog posts, articles, and broadcasts to keep you busy for the rest of the calendar year, if you're so inclined). And so, I settled in and finished the book within a couple of days (the book will NOT take you that long if you just sit down and knock it out in one swipe - a couple of hours maybe). I thought I'd provide you with my overall reactions, which could very well be longer than you're willing to read from a nobody like myself.

THE GOOD
Bell's book has forced Christians to examine their theologies about heaven and hell more closely. This is good because often these ideas -- especially hell -- are more or less avoided. Also, Bell emphasizes in parts of his book that we should be careful when we describe heaven as a distant location of wonderfulness where all Baptists (or Calvinists, or Presbyterians, etc.) will someday go, as if it's some pie-in-the-sky place and we're all just waiting around here to die so we can get there. If this is what we believe, we don't have any real obligation to working on problems in our lives on this planet. Also, if we truly believe this, why don't we just all kill ourselves so we can get to heaven sooner?

And unfortunately, that's about it for the good.

THE BAD
Let's see... where to start.

There are many notes I jotted down while reading that won't make their way to this "review," but I'd like to start with the opening pages of Bell's second chapter in which he basically ridicules a painting that his grandmother had hanging in her house while little Rob was growing up. It's a painting that depicts the "cross as a bridge" image that you've probably seen a million times. There's a great chasm with hell at the bottom. On one side of the chasm is humankind, and on the other side is God (often depicted as popular ideas of heaven with shiny streets and angels and harps). The only way from one side to the other is to take the cross-shaped bridge. Bell rails against this image, saying it makes us think heaven is somewhere else that we need to get to, and it's dangerous for us to think in those terms. Ironically, this "artist" (or so he is described by most of his defenders, and perhaps even himself?) doesn't seem to understand that oftentimes paintings are metaphorical. I'm guessing that neither the painter of this image, nor Rob's grandmother, really believe that there is some physical place where we have to go and walk across a cross, and if we don't step carefully we'll fall to our eternal damnation in a fiery furnace. But the image, according to the Bible, is pretty accurate. There is a gap between people and God. A huge gap, called sin, that can never be crossed with anything man-made. The only way to bridge that gap is with the cross of Christ. What's wrong with metaphorical paintings that have assisted missionaries and evangelists for years, Rob?

Bell argues that when Jesus talks about "hell," he uses the word "gehenna," which refers, basically, to the town garbage dump outside of Jerusalem where there was an ongoing fire that consumed the city's trash. He also tells us that when Matthew writes about the sheep and the goats, and that the goats will "go away to eternal punishment" (Matt. 25:46), the Greek words there would more accurately be translated "go away to an intense period of pruning." This allows Bell to argue that punishment in hell is only meant to bring people around to Jesus, and that it won't last forever. I'll leave it to other experts to explain to you why Bell must not have done very well in his exegesis classes in seminary, but if you'd like, just read a few good commentaries on these verses and you'll find out that Bell's version just doesn't work. None of the major English translations in existence supports his theory. Is there a Western-world conspiracy that wants everyone to believe Hell is forever, Rob? Or is it possible that your lone voice is the one that's mistaken?

Kevin DeYoung's review of Bell's book goes into much more detail about this point, but I did notice that sin, for Rob, seems to be almost exclusively about horizontal injustices. He regularly talks about rape and war and oppression and abuse and other things people to do other people. Flowing from this is Rob's insistence that "hell" is what we experience here on earth because of these sins. "Hell" is finding out your daughter has been repeatedly sexually abused over the years by a relative. "Hell" is the teenagers in Africa who have had their limbs cut off in the midst of civil unrest.  Missing from his theology seems to be any notion of the idea that sin is also against God. It's vertical. And it must be atoned for. That is what Jesus' death did. Bell's theologies of sin, hell, and especially his Christology are sorely lacking.

When the Love Wins promo video was released, the big controversial question was, "Is Rob Bell a universalist?" After reading this book, I would say that although Bell tends to be as slippery as an eel, and does his best to avoid any single label, "universalist" in any meaningful sense of the term seems fairly accurate. Bell does emphatically say that Jesus is THE ONLY way, but then he says that anywhere people find hope and forgiveness - that's Jesus. No matter your beliefs, Bell seems to think that if you have some bit of joy, hope, forgiveness (or any other touchy-feely abstract noun) in your life, that's Jesus, and so even though you didn't know that's what its name was, you've been saved by Jesus. Some might call this inclusivism instead of universalism. Perhaps that's more accurate, but it seems like a semantic battle now. For all practical purposes, Bell is quite a few paces down Universalist Road. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but calling my bike a rose won't make it so.

Sometimes I wonder if Bell understands syntax when it comes to sentences. He LOVES John 3:16. I guess I should say, he LOVES John 3:16a: "For God so loved the world that he gave is only begotten son..." but that's where the love stops. Bell even describes that part as "beautiful." But, he argues, "millions have been taught that if they don't believe..." and then he launches into a rant about how God instantly becomes a vindictive monster to people who don't believe. I wonder if Bell has read the rest of the verse and chooses to ignore it, of if he just never got that far. To help him out, it goes like this: "...that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life." The inverse of the argument isn't true, Rob? Maybe he thinks there's an omitted part that says, "...and whoever does NOT believe in Him will also not perish, but have eternal life -- because we here at Bible Writers, Incorporated are very open and loving and affirming, and it'd be unloving of us to deny anyone eternal life."

In Bell's paradigm, I honestly see very little need for evangelism and missions within the Christian faith. In fact, the one time I remember Bell mentioning missions, it's only say that he hears stories all the time about missionaries who tell the stories of Jesus, and the native peoples say, "That's Jesus? But we've been telling those stories for years" (again confirming my "pretty close to universalism" beliefs about Bell). Bell talks about the importance of following God in this life, but the reasons for it seem to be mostly, "because it's just better, and you'll feel more fulfilled." It feels like someone trying to convince me to cheer for the Steelers, because they win a lot of Super Bowls, and they're a well-run franchise that doesn't disappoint nearly as often as other teams, so I'll just enjoy football more if I convert. Unfortunately, I enjoy being a Cowboys fan, and since, in the end, it doesn't really matter what I choose (I'll always be able to change my mind after I die when I realize that the Steelers really were the better team), I'll stick with my 'Boys. I'm enjoying it just fine. It reads to me like Bell basically says, "Jesus is NOT the mean judgmental guy you hear about from the Westboro Baptist Church weirdos. Now that you are aware of that, I can't really give you a solid reason why you need to follow him right now. Just keep him in the back of your mind so that when you die and it comes time for you to change your mind, you won't have to be 'pruned' for very long before you realize Jesus is the right way."

My last point: None of this would be that big of a deal if Rob Bell were truly just seeking answers and trying to provoke thought, but he's teaching this stuff to millions of followers. He preaches at a megachurch, he writes very popular books, and he speaks at conferences and gives interviews around the world. His influence is huge, and that's why this is important to combat. Bell loves to play the "I'm just a pastor" card, but when we're talking about millions who look to you as a spiritual advisor in their lives, false teaching carries some dire consequences.

I understand that this post reads largely as some rant against a guy I don't like, and I'm sorry for that. But, honestly, I've never had a real problem with Bell before I read this book (I thought he might be slightly "out there" regarding a few things he's said and written, but I didn't have a problem for the most part with what he and his church has been teaching to tons of people). Now that's changed.

Read Kevin DeYoung's lengthy review for the most thorough exposition of the flaws in Bell's book.

10 points

10 points to the first person (who's not married to me) that can point out the error(s) on this map.

Ready for the Weekend

Recent blogger problems with my account made it difficult for me to post something on Friday. My apologies. Here is a delayed "Ready for the Weekend" post for you.

Genesis 6-8: The Flood

We arrived home at our Colorado apartment around 2:45 pm last Sunday afternoon. We'd had a wonderful time in Iowa (as you can read about here), but we were ready to relax on Sunday evening in order to be ready to get back to the grindstone on Monday.

We opened the door to our apartment and were almost blown away by the awful stench of mildew. Uh oh. While we were in Iowa it had rained heavily in the Denver area every single day, and we had already heard that a few ground-floor apartments had suffered some flooding. Looks like ours needed to be added to that list. Now, when I say "flooding," you're probably tempted to think of standing water and our stuff floating around the room. It wasn't like that at all. In fact, there wasn't really anything visible at all that looked flooded. However, the carpet was wet or damp all over our apartment, and the smell was pretty bad.

We called our apartment complex and told them what was going on. Since the maintenance guys aren't around on Sundays, we knew we might not have anyone come out very soon. The woman at the office said she'd see if a maintenance guy was already on the premises so he could come take a look. After hanging up, we turned on our air conditioning (it had also been hot while we were gone... and has continued that trend). We soon found out that the AC wasn't working properly either. We called again, and they said someone was on his way.

So, Sunday evening our maintenance guys did some work on our AC, then, with our help, moved most of our furniture off our carpet (quite a task - the only parts of our unit that are NOT carpeted are the tiny bathroom and the kitchen), ripped it up, and took the padding out from underneath. They left us with about 6 industrial carpet-drying fans running, and a dehumidifier. Our bed was covered with stuff we'd had to lift off the floor, and our whole apartment smelled sickeningly like mildew. We couldn't stay there. One of the maintenance guys had assured us that the apartment complex would compensate us for expenses if we had to get a hotel or something. So we got a hotel room (fortunately, we had done laundry before leaving Iowa, so our already-packed bag was all we needed when we left our apartment). Elizabeth's brother, Clay, was in town visiting, so we arranged to meet up with him for some supper. It was really fun.

Monday, Elizabeth had to go to work. I ran some errands and did some work of my own. By late Monday afternoon, we discovered that no further work had been done on our apartment that day. We were going to have to find a hotel again, and we had no guarantees that we would be compensated. I booked a room on Hotels.com (the ONLY room I could find in the city that was available for less than $350). When we got to the hotel, they told us that they'd been booked up for hours and didn't have any record of my reservation. I sat waiting for someone to answer the phone at Hotels.com for more than a half hour before we decided we had to find somewhere else to stay. It was about 8 pm. Thankfully, our pastor and his wife had offered their spare bedroom for us, so we headed toward their place. As we were getting settled there, I got a call back from a woman at Hotels.com who spent eleven and a half minutes apologizing to me for what had happened.

Tuesday we both went to work again. Elizabeth was able to get part of the day off, and I finished up my work as quickly as I could so we could try to hang out with Clay some more, AND make sure they were doing something to our apartment so that we could live in it again. We DID get to hang out with Clay for a couple of hours, and when we got back to our apartment they had installed brand new carpet. The mildew smell had been (mostly) replaced by a new carpet smell. Finally, we could sleep in our own bed. (By the way, our apartment complex is reducing our rent to compensate us for our inconvenience and expenses, but the amount they're giving us won't quite cover what we were put out.)

Of course, now we were realizing that our AC still wasn't in working order. We had a very warm night's sleep Tuesday night.

Wednesday they came to work on the AC some more. The guy made it so that it was COLD air coming out of the vents, but it still wasn't coming out very forcefully, and was therefore doing little good. We had another warm night on Wednesday night.

By the time we got home after work on Thursday, he had come to finish up the AC work. Finally, Thursday night was nice and cool and comfortable.

Friday morning when we woke up we realized that the carpet near the utility closet where the AC unit sits was wet. Something was leaking. So another maintenance phone call was placed. When we got home from work on Friday, everything had been fixed, but the maintenance guy(s?) had made a huge mess, tracking mud and grass and dirt all over our new carpet and through our kitchen and somehow making a mess on our counter tops as well.

So, I sit here on Saturday morning, thankful that after almost a week of being home from vacation, it looks like things are pretty much back to normal.

Of course, during the new carpet/furniture moving operation a few of our bookshelves got destroyed, so now there are books sitting all over our apartment with nowhere else to be placed...

Ready for the Weekend

Sometimes I post on this blog and it doesn't seem to show up in feed readers for two or three days. I think that's both weird and completely obnoxious. Anyway, if you're reading this in your feed reader and it's Tuesday or something, just know that it's being posted on Friday at about 11:30 am Mountain Time.

I don't know what the heck goes on in Australia on a daily basis, but this makes me wish (a little bit) that we got their version of the Today show around here.

Is this heaven?

Our week in Iowa has been fantastic. Unfortunately, we have to leave the corn-filled rolling acres in the morning to get back to our regularly scheduled lives. It's been warm but not miserable for our stay, but I will say this: humidity makes a BIG difference in how 85 degrees feels.

On our way eastward across the state on Sunday night we got to stop and stay with Jase & Rachel (how did we not get a picture together, guys?). That evening we also had the privilege of meeting up with Mike & Katherine and their two-month old, Benjamin. LOVE that family. 

The other day Micah was using a plastic tub as a hat.

Jaron and a co-worker took Joel and I on a tour of his glass-manufacturing plant in Dewitt. It was REALLY cool. Somehow, I didn't get any pictures of Jaron on our trip (though he did take a few). Later, we all got to go swimming at my in-laws' place. You'll have to visit Pam's blog for pictures from that outing. Pam calls Micah "a bit of a wild man in the pool," and I just have to say that's an understatement. The kid seems neither to realize nor to care that when he steps off the side of the pool, or off the step in the pool that he will sink, and not be able to breathe, and drown. It felt like he spent the whole afternoon just testing to see if an adult really will show up any time he decides to throw himself in.

Today we had to say good-bye to Joel, Pam, Gabriel, Micah and Zaley, but first we got to hang out a little bit. Micah asked me to read him Corduroy... about three or four times. 

Then they both wanted to listen to their new book, Luke Goes to Bat (nevermind the hat... Micah insisted I wear it).

Here's Gabriel (and Elizabeth) listening intently.

Family photo!

In this video, Gabriel was "playing" the conch shell like a trumpet. Micah wouldn't stop asking me to "take a picture!"

So, after filming for a few seconds, I took his picture.

And those are our tales from Iowa.

Ready for the Weekend

This week's video is a bit lengthy. After the first few minutes it's really much of the same, so you don't need to watch the whole thing unless you find it absolutely riveting.