Missing the Signs

Missing the SignsGrace, baseball, and the field trip detour we call life

This past week, I chaperoned a school field trip, which meant spending two hours on a bus with sixth graders, hand sanitizer, and a driver who, God bless him, could not read a road sign to save his life.

We took the wrong exit. Then, he drove around for a few miles before the driver realized he was lost. At one point, we were doing a scenic loop through suburban Virginia that felt less like a direct route to the museum and more like a metaphor for the Israelites wandering the wilderness. We arrived at the museum to a couple of hundred sixth graders asking where we’d been.

A week prior, I was back at first base coaching my son’s baseball team. A job that mostly consists of yelling “GO!” or “BACK!” Most of the time is spent watching half the team miss the steal sign as if it were written in ancient Hebrew. The batter is given the take sign, and then the kid swings for the fences. I say, “Run on contact,” and they freeze like a deer in the batter’s box. And the next inning? Same thing. Missed signs.

It reminded me of that scene in Rookie of the Year, when Coach Brinckman is flailing his arms like a man possessed, trying to signal Henry to get in the game. He looks completely unhinged because Henry doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Brinckman’s doing everything short of setting off fireworks, and Henry just stares, clueless. And that’s us — God’s giving signs, and we’re squinting into the distance like, “Was that for me?”