Uniformed, a dreamy look in his eye, baseball glove in hand, he wistfully asks, “Is this heaven?”
It’s a scene lifted from the motion picture Field of Dreams.
The character, soiled by a gambling scandal and suspended from Major League Baseball half a century ago, suddenly appears on a freshly carved field.
Gradually, all the elements unfold for him to get back in the game.
Best yet, he still has a keen eye at the plate, and his legs and arm are as dependably energetic as at the pinnacle of his career.
Heaven? No, it was a just somebody’s homemade ballpark in Iowa. Or was it?
The other day I received a letter from an old fella, an ex-baseball player.
He wanted to chew the rag about the back-yonder days, and before signing off left me with a joke. Ready?
Two pitchers warming up in the bullpen got to wondering if baseball was played in heaven.
They agreed that whoever died first and reached that splendid spread up there would call back and fill in the other.
Not long thereafter, one of the players died and did call back from the great hereafter.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” he said. “The good news is they do play baseball in heaven.”
“Oh, great,” said his buddy. “What’s the bad news?”
“You’re scheduled to pitch up here tomorrow.”
So. Wiping that smile off my face, I’m here to tell you that I’ve been engaged lately in the sport of meditation about that eternal comfort zone called heaven.
It’s my guess that most of us dabble in this drill in some manner, at least intermittently, perhaps more earnestly as the years stack up.
Not long ago someone pointed this question at me, “Do you believe in heaven and hell and all that?”
To which I responded, “Absolutely I believe in all that.”
Left unsaid was that I believe in right and wrong, and that if good shalt not prevail in this world, it wilt unquestionably be rewarded in the next.
More pointedly, a tyke once quizzed me, “What if I get to heaven and don’t like it?”
As my Brooklyn-bred wife is apt to put it, “What’s not to like?”
Well, for one thing, there could be a baseball game in the works every morning, afternoon and night, and while some fanatics might be rhapsodic about this menu, others might feel more depressed than blessed.
“OK,” I said to the kid, “worry about how you’re going to get in heaven, not how you’ll like it.”
Here’s what I’d really wanted to say, “Heaven might be the sound of the crack of a bat, or a Caruso-Pavarotti duet. In other words, kid, it’s pretty much what you want it to be. Maybe you’d like to sit at the feet of John the Baptist? Shake Abe Lincoln’s hand? Doze in the shade till Mom calls you in for supper?”
If I’m off base in this, God help me.
