You Gotta Have Faith

I mentioned yesterday how our first baseman, Cal Franklin, was a very religious man (and very big too). Every ballclub I've played for has had its contingent of "faithful" players who get together on planes or buses or hotel room suites and discuss the bible. There are other players who aren't as religious as that who still go to church on Sundays. And there are those few who somehow can't speak a full sentence without bringing up the Father, Son & Holy Ghost. Cal is one of these guys.

He wasn't yesterday.

I find it interesting - no facetiousness intended here - that a man as religious as Cal could still harbor such an intense violent streak. No, he hasn't killed anyone. But the power he found yesterday when it came to subduing Corey Belle (once J.D. Bryant ripped Corey off of Lyman Gaye's esophagus) was the spontaneous kind; the kind someone finds within one's self when it counts.

I brought this up to Cal. My question, I guess, was did this ability to be a part of violence mean he wasn't as close to God as he thought?

The first thing Cal did was smile and tell me - not ask - that he knew I was asking to write about it. While true, I was also truly curious. I'm not a God-fearin' fella (pretend I said that with a cowboy accent) and only attend church (I'm an ordained Methodist person) three or four times a year. The faith Cal gets from God I either don't have or get from another source, i.e. my family.

"Think of our game," Cal said. "It's not a game for the passive. While not football, baseball still is full of violence; a violence I fully participate in." He was sitting at his locker, peeling the skin off of an orange. I pretended not to react when little flying drops of citrus struck me in my cornea. "I hit 34 home runs last year," Cal continued. "That's 34 incredible, short bursts of violence. I play first base, right? How many times do you guys throw the ball over to me in a game and I have to slap a tag on the runner? How man times have I collided with a catcher at home plate? Or a second baseman or right fielder or fans in the stands racing after fly balls?"

He looked at me. He does that. I had the feeling he wanted me to literally guess the number of times, even though he really didn't. But he just looks back at you sometimes after speaking and you expect more. But he's done talking, so it's awkward.

"Two thousand fourteen," I finally said.

"Huh?" He shoved a piece of orange in his mouth.

"Nothing. Go on."

"So when I bear hugged Belle Tower yesterday (one of Corey's nicknames) and wrestled him to the ground, I was playing first base. I was a ballplayer. Some guys say you can't separate God out of a man, but I add that you can't ever take a ballplayer off the field."

I nodded. He sounded like he had a good feel for this stuff. I asked him how and he told me he's been thinking a lot about this subject lately. He's about to work on a book that follows him and the presence of Jesus as they play through the season. "Kind of like what you're doing there on the web, but mine isn't in real time." I asked him if he was writing the book himself and he said no. He's about to decide between two beat writers who cover the team all year. He wouldn't tell me who. I asked him if they have to worry about conflict of interest, as they need to cover the team from an objective perspective yet if they're working for him, how can they, who is on the Cal Franklin payroll, criticize him in their columns as the season progresses?

Cal shoved half of the orange in his throat. He drooled a bit. (It was a big orange.) "There's no conflict when you go with the Lord," Cal said.

Yeah, but will his beat writer "employee" be going with the Lord or earning a few extra bucks?

Cal shrugged as if to say it wasn't his problem, nor was it His problem. "Faith," he said. "Live it, learn from it, let it justify who you are."

A clubhouse boy (this one 24) came buy and swept up the orange peels and chewed up (but unswallowed) pieces of orange on the floor in front of Cal's locker. I could tell Cal would spend all day talking to me, but I needed to go out and long toss. Since coming down to Florida, I haven't experienced any pain in my elbow. It seems to be coming along perfectly. I nodded to Cal and started walking away.

"Hey," he said. "How do you know your elbow won't blow out in ten minutes when you start doing the exact thing that blew it out in the first place?"

I told him hard work.

"That's where you and I diverge," he said. "You credit your work ethic. I credit it to faith. You've got it. You just label it in a different way."

Faith. Maybe. Work ethic. Maybe. As long as I'm healthy, I'll take anything I can get.