So, it is the Angels against the Giants. By the time this goes to press, we should know who was favored by God. As this is being written, the teams are preparing to do battle on the baseball diamond in that holiest of all venues, the World Series. As a small child, I just started one day to favor the Los Angeles Angels of the old Pacific Coast League. Bill Rigney was their radio announcer. He knew so much about the game that I always wondered why he was not the team manager, which, of course, he was later on, with great success. When Gene Autry started the major league Angels, I dropped the Dodgers like a hot potato in favor of the "New Angels." We had a neighbor who was a great baseball/Angel fan; it was my job to take her to games with some regularity. She is a devout Roman Catholic, and those were the days when fish was synonymous with Friday. We were at a Friday evening game which went into extra innings, so many as to cause us to mark the closeness of the midnight hour. She could have a hot dog if Saturday came before the game ended! This indeed came to pass, and I was dispatched to the refreshment stand, only to find such a crush that the supply of hot dogs was exhausted before I could make my purchase. I don’t recall who won the game; we stopped at McDonald’s on the way home.

Strikes, idiotic salaries, and Disney’s purchase of the Angels have dimmed my passion for the Grand Old Game. I had taken up a modest interest in the Seattle Mariners, in deference to Mrs. "Noah" who grew up in Seattle, and who doesn’t care if baseball keeps or not. We went to a Seattle game last summer as part of her "significant" high school reunion celebration. The original intent was to root for the Mariners; they were playing the Angels. Forty-two years of every emotion imaginable welled up and could not be overcome; I relaxed and pulled with quiet passion (rewarded, it might be added, 1 to 0) for the Angels.

I promised the Rector that this piece would turn on baseball as a metaphor for a good if not a Godly life. We all know the old bromide that a batter is a hero if he, or she, is successful only one-third of the time. This doesn’t work when driving a car or loving and caring for someone, but it does give us hope when we face the inevitability of failure.

The Angels are a collection of no-names, with pride in not having any super stars. Someone new always seems to produces when there is need. Now, anonymity is elusive, if not impossible. The fun will come as we watch them in the years to come. If human nature controls, several players will develop into super stars, in place or for other teams. The magic of this moment will be lost, and they will fail or worse yet become something like the Yankees. The no-name team is the metaphor for a good life. With hope that we have enjoyed baseball for what it is, let us carry its lessons to the places they belong: our daily lives, our churches, and the community. The hard thing to understand will be that God quite probably favors both Angels and Giants, loves both us and our enemies.