Willie Nelson\u2019s heroes may have always been cowboys, but for many of us our heroes have always been baseball players. As hard as it is to admit, most of our heroes have not been lifestyle heroes. We have cheered for Mickey, Willie, and the Duke. We celebrated with Hank when he surpassed the Babe. We pulled for Pete to surpass Cobb.<\/p>\n
Four decades ago, our heroes\u2019 personal lives were virtually unknown to us. Our heroes were numbers on uniforms who performed on the field. We collected their cards from bubble gum packages and cereal boxes. This was as close as we were allowed to get. But this was typical of our society at large. Fifty years ago, millions of Americans hoped that Mr. Roosevelt would save us all. Yet, less than 50 percent of the American population even knew the president was paralyzed. He was not ever pictured that way.<\/p>\n
We loved Mickey, but we didn\u2019t realize he had a drinking problem. We loved Pete, but we had no way to know he was an addicted gambler. As teams have moved from city to city in search of bigger markets and as players have moved from team to team in search of bigger bank accounts, something seems to have been lost.<\/p>\n
The days when Carl Yastremski belonged to Boston, Brooks Robinson to Baltimore and Willie Stargell to Pittsburgh seem to have vanished. The response of players when these questions have been asked has been, \u201cWe aren\u2019t paid to be role models.\u201d That\u2019s probably true, but the reality is for many a young person in this country these players are role models.<\/p>\n
The changes in baseball over the past four decades are indicative of changes in our country and culture at large \u2014 changes motivated by materialism, individualism and privatization. Changes that resulted in the Dodgers moving west, World Series night games, free agency, elongated contract disputes and striking players.<\/p>\n
The future of baseball in the summer of 1995 has looked bleak \u2014 as bleak as other cultural and moral indicators around us. Yet in early September all of that seemed to stop. Cal Ripken Jr. equaled and surpassed the long-standing record of consecutive games played held by the great Lou Gehrig \u2014 a record that seemingly was unsurmountable. Yet, to everyone\u2019s amazement Ripken played in 2,130 straight games to tie the record, and then 2,131 to break it \u2014 and he did it by dramatically hitting home runs in both games. More amazingly, he has played all of these games with the Baltimore Orioles, each day in pursuit of excellence with determined effort.<\/p>\n
When the record was broken, the fans in Baltimore applauded spontaneously for 23 minutes. Baseball fans around the globe celebrated. Baseball players around the country, past and present, were visibly moved. Then came words of appreciation by our new hero. Surprisingly, they were words that praised his parents and teammates. There was little \u201cI\u201d and much \u201cwe.\u201d Special words of appreciation were offered for Eddie Murray, an African American and a star in his own right. Then the touching tribute to his wife and children.<\/p>\n
Before our very eyes from those whom we\u2019ve come to expect grand self-promotion came clear testimonies to virtue, humility, loyalty, teamwork and community, family, racial harmony and dedicated hard work. What better example of the preacher\u2019s words about faithful work, \u201cwhatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might\u201d (Eccl. 9:10). We offer our congratulations to Cal Ripken, Jr. Let\u2019s hope we have seen the beginning of a new kind of hero.<\/p>\n
====================
\nDockery is vice president for academic administration and dean of the school of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky.<\/p>\n
Copyright (c) 1995 Baptist Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Willie Nelson\u2019s heroes may have always been cowboys, but for many of us our heroes have always been baseball players. As hard as it is to admit, most of our heroes have not been lifestyle heroes. We have cheered for Mickey, Willie, and the Duke. We celebrated with Hank when he surpassed the Babe. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1371,3094,338,742,2194,341,752,3096,2054,3095,3097,51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}