CLERGY CORNER: We’re No.4

Posted on 10 November 2011 by LeslieM

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Major League Baseball Season came to an end. Baseball isn’t just the Great American Pastime. Baseball has always had a special place in the heart and soul of The Jewish People.

I suspect it started way back before anyone ever heard of Abner Doubleday. In fact, it started way back in Biblical Times. Why else do you think that G-d chose to start the Torah with the words, “In the Big Inning?”

Come to think of it, why else would G-d tell one of the Patriarchs to make a sacrifice …

And, even though the ancients may have lived in a Patriarchal society, even the women got into the game because every Purim we read about Queen Esther throwing a ball. And if throwing a ball was good enough for the Queen, then maybe Polo shouldn’t be the sport of Kings. Maybe they should try playing some baseball.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that we read Parsha Lech Lecha. In this Chapter of the Bible, G-d has picked the roster. He has chosen the starting line-up and, he has decided that Abram should, “Go  fourth.”

In baseball, the one who bats fourth is lovingly referred to as the “Clean-Up Hitter.” This is the player who is statistically most likely to do something that enables all the other runners on base to make it home … and, as Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz, “There’s no place like home.”

Most of you reading this column have your home down here in sunny South Florida. But I suspect that many of you are not aware that we, just like Abram, and just like the clean-up hitter, were recently called “fourth.”

Unfortunately, the fourth we were called was not about heading to Canaan, nor was it about bringing others home. Then again, maybe it was about bringing others home if you are talking about the heavens as your final home; because it seems that we of our beloved Sunshine State were just listed as the fourth worst drivers in the Country … and I am not talking about a drive out on the golf range. A clearinghouse for car insurance information put us fourth in a research study that took into play things like traffic fatalities, citations and arrests; and we did not score so well.

In baseball, even if the clean-up hitter hits a homerun, he can’t bring anyone else home unless someone before him gets on base, which brings us to the first batter, the lead-off man.

And again, sadly, we, the drivers of Sunny Florida do indeed lead-off. We come in first in the rankings in the number of traffic citations issued and, talk about semi-pros, we are pretty close to No. 1 in, surprise of surprises,  careless drivers. So I guess I better stop keying this into my computer, put my coffee down and stop talking on my cell phone until I get off the road …

So ladies and gentleman of South Florida, were you paying attention?

We came in fourth, but we can do better. Let’s clean up our roads. Help others make it home … and may the Great Umpire in the Sky be by our side in our driving, in our going fourth, and may He bring all of us home safely.

 

Shalom My Friends,

Rabbi Craig H. Ezring

 

Rabbi Ezring is a Hospice Chaplain and Member of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains. He also provides Professional Pastoral Care Services to a number of health centers in Broward County.

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