GRANDERSON

Reading: Isaiah 40:8

Ruminations of a diehard Detroit Tiger fan ….

Once again he is patrolling the broad expanses of center field. Long legs, graceful moves, and sure hands. His very first time at bat this season, he hit a long, powerful home run.
Curtis Granderson is on the job as the one of the premier defensive outfielders in baseball today whose ability to hit the long ball makes him a game-changer in every game in which he plays. He was one of the heroes of the Detroit Tigers when they won the 2006 American League pennant.

But what’s this? The uniform. There’s something wrong. Pin stripes. The Tigers wear crisp white uniforms. No! Those are Yankee pinstripes! He’s gone over to the side of the antichrist. Curtis Granderson is playing for the New York Yankees! The next thing you’ll be telling me is that Placido Polanco has backslidden to the Phillies. He has|? Oh,no!

It’s the beginning of the 2010 baseball season—and more than one baseball fan suddenly finds that the players from his home team, for whom he has rooted many years, are now playing for someone else. Sometimes your bitterest rival.

But that’s the nature of baseball these days. Baseball is a business. Players go where they receive the best compensation. Team owners shed fan favorites, heroes of years gone by to control their payroll costs. There are two bottom lines – one is financial, the other the World Series, Unless you are consistently achieving the latter, the former will always be the true bottom line.

Things change. Nothing is forever. Nothing lasts. Save one thing and Isaiah reminds of us what that is. The word of the Lord. "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever." In a world where fortunes rise and fall, people switch sides, institutions thrive and then disappear, marriages are made and broken, we count on one thing to guide us through this all. The Word of the Lord.

(c) 2010 by Stephen L Dunn