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Yesterday, 28-year-old Jamie Westbrook came up to bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of a game between the Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers.
The score was 4-4. The potential winning run for the Red Sox was in scoring position at second base. Westbrook, after 11 years in the minor leagues, had just received a call-up to the majors. This was his first lifetime at-bat in the bigs. A camera showed in the stands Westbrook’s excited father, mother, and wife (holding their 7-month-old).
Let’s say you’re neither a Red Sox nor a Tigers fan. What, in this Year of the Lord 2024, would you like to see happen?
Some would want a storybook headline: a hit for Westbrook, the winning run scores, his teammates hoist him to their shoulders.
Others might prefer a strikeout, fitting for the depressed American land, a metaphor for our miserable presidential election alternatives.
Which do you think happened?
Neither. Westbrook, showing good plate discipline, walked.
The next Red Sox player just missed hitting a home run. His fly ball to rightfield was just a long out. The Tigers won the game in the tenth inning. Westbrook’s debut made no big difference in the annals of baseball history.
But here are some numbers. Seventeen million Americans play baseball. Three percent of them play high school baseball. One out of 200 of those makes it to the minor leagues. One out of ten of those ever make it to the major leagues, even briefly.
When I teach a journalism course next year, I’ll talk about Jamie Westbrook’s debut. Some reporters are publicists or propagandists: They’ll see a walk but turn it into a game-winning hit. Others are professional grumblers and cynics: They’ll expect a strikeout and, if it doesn’t happen, they’ll nevertheless tell a story of defeat.
Baseball is not like life, because the box score of each game shows what happens. The line for Westbrook yesterday shows that he received a walk. A journalist who made up something different could and would be quickly exposed. But we don’t know much of what happens in life. We depend on reporters, and these days, sadly, many like to opine rather than report.
Baseball is like life in that much of it is neither a game-winning hit nor an out. It’s a walk, and in God’s economy that’s still important.
What makes a good, honest reporter? Someone who neither minimizes nor maximizes a walk but sees, writes, and leaves the prophecy to others. ###