Presidential Ponderings: 8-27

A great tragedy is that my dad never got to see the TV show Ted Lasso. El Gordo loved a heart-warming story about underdogs in sports.

The Natural. Caddyshack. Bull Durham. Hoosiers. The Sandlot. Mystery, Alaska. The Bad News Bears. The TV show Coach with Craig T. Nelson and Jerry Van Dyke.

He cried at some point during all of them.

Folks can compete against themselves to be better, no matter their opponent's strength.

El Gordo believed this with his whole heart. It was why he spent so much time coaching, playing, and living sportsmanship as a spiritual discipline. As he asked to have inscribed on his tombstone: “Not perfectly, but increasingly.”

In the season premiere of Ted Lasso's 4th season, one of the characters visits the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri and learns about Satchel Paige, baseball’s best pitcher.

My dad read so many books about the Negro Leagues. It was a perfect combination of his passion for racial reconciliation with his first love, baseball. He actually got a hit off of Satchel Paige in the summer of 1968 when the Indianapolis Clowns came through Danville, IL on a barnstorming tour. He credited that experience with convincing him that he was NOT cut out for professional baseball.

I wonder how our lives would be different without that closed door in El Gordo’s life? What if he left the Army in 1971 and signed with the minor leagues, like he'd been offered in '68, the year before his team won the NCAA championships?

Instead, his humility about his place amongst other baseball players led him to a different life. A good life.

I ask you what I ask myself, "When have I looked at myself and realized I wasn't where I belonged?"

Sincerely,

Rebecca