Anticipated Location

I have been a sports fan as long as I can remember. When my brothers and I were boys, we loved it when Dad loaded us into the car on a summer evening and drove to Cincinnati to watch the Reds play. Nothing looked greener to my young eyes than the emerald grass of old Crosley Field, and nothing tasted better than a ballpark hotdog on a steamed bun with plenty of mustard.

More than 40 years after it happened, I still recall Willie McCovey’s majestic left-handed swing as he swatted a grand slam home run into the right field bleachers. It cost my team the game because McCovey played first base for the San Francisco Giants, but I was awestruck because I had never seen anyone hit a ball so high and so far.

Imagine my fascination, then, with my friend Jim Tuttle. We’re the same age, but the year both of us graduated from high school I spent the summer bailing hay on the family farm, while Jim was the first-round draft choice of a Big League team (the Oakland A’s), starting a promising career as a professional athlete. A hard-throwing pitcher with a competitive spirit and a nasty fast-ball, soon Jim was pitching in the majors. Unfortunately, his career was cut short by arm troubles, and he was out of baseball when he was still in his 20s.

Jim later found success as a businessman, but he also could be a comedian. He entertains listeners with stories about his glory days in baseball. Recently we were discussing how hard it is to hit a 95 mile-per-hour fastball. Jim said, “The best pitchers are the ones who learn it’s not just how hard you throw the ball, but where you throw it.” He explained that skilled Major League hitters have such quick reflexes and sharp eyes that they swing the bat based on “anticipated location” (where they expect the ball to be), and about one time out of three they get it right.

Come to think of it, “anticipated location” describes a skill we all need—to plan well and think ahead, envisioning future results and consequences. An ounce of foresight beats a pound of hindsight. When asked about the key to scoring goals, hockey great Wayne Gretzky advised, “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it already is.”

How many senior adults would have made different lifestyle decisions years ago if they had anticipated where they would end up later in life? Would the infatuated young couple go ahead and marry if they anticipated how difficult marriage would be? Would the church’s elders commit to such an elaborate building program if they anticipated an economic recession and the burden of long-term debt? Would the skeptic mock the Lord and consider the Bible irrelevant if he knew his life would soon be cut short by some unanticipated illness or accident?

What about when it’s time to die? The grave is a location all of us can anticipate—and then what? “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Anticipating that location would change the way we live, don’t you think?

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth,” the Bible says (Ecclesiastes 12:1). Because life flies past like a 95 mile-per-hour fastball—and sometimes it throws you a curve.