And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the Earth.”
Genesis 1:14-15
Say, preacher! Are we talking about day games and night games in our epigraph? And does that verse referring to signs mean the bunt sign, the index finger pointing at the ground as the sign for a fastball? Are the seasons God talks about in Genesis “baseball” seasons?
And would it constitute a huge difference in meaning if God had said “Play ball” at the beginning of Genesis instead of “Let there be light?”
Don’t think so.
And it came to pass that the first ballpark was located at 650 Ponce de Leon Ave., a few blocks west of the Clermont Hotel: Ponce de Leon Park, home of the Atlanta Crackers and Atlanta Black Crackers.
My father took me there when I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
The memories are dreamlike: a small boy in a noisy world that smelled of hot dogs and popcorn, my father holding my hand as we find our seats behind home plate. The public address announcer’s metallic voice rises over the crowd: “Now batting, third baseman, Joe Morgan.”
And he’s the first baseball player I remember.
The first hero of the diamond. Not the “Big Red Machine” Joe Morgan enshrined in the Hall of Fame, but “Walpole Joe,” who managed the Boston Red Sox to four consecutive winning seasons from 1988 to 1991 (he turns 95 in November).
In 1978, when Joe was managing the Pawtucket Red Sox of the International League, he made an observation to a Sporting News reporter about an infielder then playing with the Richmond Braves.
“The best player in the league,” Joe said. “He can hit, and he’s a great competitor. He’s got a great future.”
*That player was Glenn Hubbard, who was called up in 1978 and anchored second base at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium for a decade during the early days of Ted Turner’s ownership of the team.
I was fortunate enough to talk with Glenn during my visit to the Greene County Recreation Complex last Saturday.
Hubbard was one of five former major league ballplayers on hand for Mike Fischlin’s junior baseball clinic.
Another Brave called up to the big club in 1978 was Bruce Benedict, who now lives just down the road from me, teaching aspiring catchers how to present a suitable target and block errant pitches at the camp.
Bruce was once one of the “Cheese People,” a nickname the players adopted for the 1982 team that won the NL West. The Cheese People are chronicled in a TBS documentary called “It’s a Long Way to October” about that season. (You can watch it on YouTube.)
Bruce comes across as a genuinely pleasant man in the documentary, and he presented himself in the same manner last Saturday.
Those were good times for Bruce, but the team’s fortunes soon declined.
The nadir was 1988, a season Bruce and I endured together with him behind the plate and me sitting on my sofa.
It was dreadful.
The only channel I could pick up was TBS, so I watched the Braves almost every night, living and mostly dying with the club as they lost 106 of 162 games.
Ironically, I never rooted harder for another Braves team.
These were my guys, and they were being thrashed every night by evil teams like the Dodgers and Mets. It seemed so unfair.
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken the Braves?”
I cried every night.
“Just one night, Lord, let Bruce Benedict and the Braves beat the Dodgers, so I don’t have to watch Tommy LaSorda come waddling out of the dugout to shake hands with Kirk Gibson.”
“I want to see Bruce shaking hands with Tom Glavine and John Smoltz.”
Alas, the Dodgers punished Hubbard, now with the A’s, too, when Gibson hit that iconic home run and beat Oakland in the 1988 World Series.
But as it says in Romans 12:12, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.”
Three years later, the Braves would turn the tables.
Selah.
* From Glenn Hubbard’s bio on sabr.org, written by Peter Gerken