Lessons I’ve learned from baseball

I’m a Cleveland Guardians life-long fan, having followed the team since I was a boy in the 1960s. My sister and I used to sit by the family stereo in Hartville, Ohio, on a Saturday night with a bowl of popcorn and listen to an Indians game for entertainment. More recently, I listened to every game of the 2024 American League Championship Series. I’m disappointed the Guardians lost in a typical heartbreak style to the Yankees, but maybe we can win next year—it’s been 76 dreadfully long years since we last won the fall classic.

Aim for a hit, not a home run. Good hitters aim to meet the ball squarely and get on base. Only occasionally do they hit a home run. The Guardians are a scrappy team, eking out singles and doubles, stealing bases, and getting just enough clutch hits to achieve a winning record. At the beginning of the season, few experts expected the Guardians to make it to the American League Championship Series. Indian hitters went to the plate game after game, aimed for singles, and occasionally smacked the ball over the fence. My first life lesson is to hit the ball coming across my plate squarely, try to get on first base, and once in a while, I may get lucky and hit a home run.

Elwood Yoder

Do the little things. Learn how to bunt, make sure you catch the ball before you throw it, always run hard to first, and touch every base when you run. One hitter in the 2016 World Series between the Cubs and Indians watched his grand hit, and ran slowly because he thought it was a homerun, but it bounced off the top of the wall back onto the field. If he would have run hard he would have made a triple instead of a double. For me, doing the little things meant being ready to teach every time students walked in my classroom door, noticing each student, greeting them, caring about them, and doing my best to make history classes interesting. My life lesson is that doing the little things adds up and helps to win a few games over a career.

Forget about yesterday’s loss. Professional baseball players often have only one night to think about the last game until they have to get ready for the next day’s game. In baseball, you will lose about half your games, but the best players learn how to move on quickly and forget about yesterday’s loss. I’ve had some losses in life, some disappointments, and each time I’ve had to decide how to respond. Will I get up the next morning and go on, greeting the new day with determination and a smile, and attempt to do my best in spite of yesterday’s loss? That’s my goal, and it’s a lesson I draw from the Guardians, who, over my six decades of listening, have lost their fair share of games.

Play like a professional. One of the reasons I follow almost every game the Indians play is because of their radio announcer Tom Hamilton. He is an outstanding professional commentator, and he continues to entertain and call interesting games, even when the Guardians lose a lot. Hamilton does his background reading and research, he shows up for work, and he stays interested until the 9th inning, even when we’re getting pounded by the other team. After one dismal season a few years ago, I wrote Hamilton a letter, thanking him for his outstanding work. About two months later, I received a nice handwritten note from Hamilton, thanking me for listening to him call games. Tom Hamilton announces in a way that inspires me to play the game of life like a pro.

Learn how to play for a new manager.  The Guardians have gone through their share of managers over the years. During 39 years of teaching high school history, I worked for several managers. Each one was different, had different values, and emphasized different elements of the educational enterprise. It was up to me to figure out the new manager and play hard with a new lineup. The players in the Guardians’ dugout have to figure out new managers when they arrive, and so do I.

Encourage the team. Over a season of following the Guardians, I can tell who the team leaders are. They encourage the other players, speak in positive ways, and play hard until the last out. Baseball is a team sport, but the game relies on the success of individual players, which is why I find it a great mix of individual players’ skills and teamwork. On my faculty, I wanted to be a team player, encouraging others and noticing their successes, but I’ve learned from baseball that to be a good teammate I need to carry my share of the load.

Following the Cleveland Indians and Guardians over the years has taught me good lessons for life. Maybe if the Guardians apply these lessons to their game next year we can win the World Series.

A 1980 Chapel at Eastern Mennonite College

On May 14, 1980, while students on the EMC campus in Harrisonburg, Virginia, used typewriters, a wooden card catalog with drawers in the library, and wired landline phones to call a friend in another dorm, one of the more memorable chapels in campus history occurred. Jim Bishop sat on the auditorium’s front bench. Student leaders surprised and honored Dr. Myron and Esther Augsburger for their fifteen years of service to the college, 1965-1980. Ordained in the Virginia Conference, Myron Augsburger spoke in North America and other continents, raising the school’s profile. Enrollment doubled during his tenure, and in 1980, it peaked at 1,014 full-time undergraduate students. Myron pulled a rope to conduct a prank the students affectionately set up for him since he had dealt with pranks in the chapel during his presidency. Confetti, balloons, and rice cascaded onto the cheering, roaring, appreciative, and packed Lehman Auditorium crowd with people sitting in the balcony. Jim Bishop’s younger brother, Michael, directed a rousing rendition of “606,” a hymn from The Mennonite Hymnal.[i] Among the undergraduates in the auditorium were students from across the United States, including from the Virginia Mennonite Conference, some of whom wore the traditional prayer veiling. That Wednesday chapel, at the end of the school year, with spiritual input, robust singing, and sharing from the legendary Augsburger couple, during an era of growth and good feelings, was one of the high moments of college life at EMC during the twentieth century.


[i] Elwood Yoder and his wife Joy Risser Yoder, married six months earlier and undergraduate students at EMC, attended the May 14, 1980 chapel. For more information about the chapel, see “606: The Persistence of Community,” a video by John L. Ruth, at https://discoveryvirginia.org/606-persistence-community, and Donald B. Kraybill, Eastern Mennonite University, 2017, 235-236.

College Travelers 1978

In the late 1970s, two EMC roommates from northeast Ohio worked through college using typewriters for their papers, dabbing on white-out for mistakes, and opening a wooden card catalog cabinet in the library to find books. They attended local Mennonite churches during their time in Harrisonburg. Of 1005 undergraduates in 1978, thirty-one percent came from Virginia. EMC sent the roommates to the Mennonite Church Assembly at Estes Park, Colorado, to perform Jesus-people-style folk music with their guitars in a Mennonite youth coffeehouse in the summer of 1977. Sixty-three percent of the men’s classmates at EMC were Mennonite.[1]

The men grew restless, however. One needed a break from academics, and the other resisted the progressive Bible instruction he received at EMC, laced with peace and justice themes that made him uncomfortable and upset. EMC President Augsburger’s global travels were legendary as he spoke in many locations worldwide. In an era of globalization, when people could travel on airlines to distant countries and cultures grew increasingly interconnected, the two young men dropped out of college and, from January to June 1978, traveled through fifteen countries in the Middle East and Europe. With two additional Mennonite men, also of college age and no cell phones or professors with them, they set their traveling itinerary from day to day.[2]

The late seventies were the years of the highest undergraduate enrollment at EMC. Both men were in the May 14, 1980, chapel when Dr. Augsburger was honored by the students for fifteen years as college president. Ordained in the Virginia Conference, Augsburger spoke in many locations in North America and on other continents. Enrollment doubled during this tenure, 1965-1980. In the chapel, Augsburger pulled a rope to conduct a prank the students affectionately set up for him since he had dealt with pranks in chapel during his presidency. Confetti, balloons, and rice cascaded onto the cheering, appreciative, and packed Lehman Auditorium crowd. A student directed a rousing rendition of “606,” a hymn from The Mennonite Hymnal. That chapel may have been one of the high moments of college life at EMC during the twentieth century.

Samuel Augsburger (left), Dave Ramer, Elwood Yoder, and Jesse Martin, Madrid Spain, 1978

But the men could not run from Myron Augsburger even when they dropped out of college. During an era of globalization, Egyptians greeted the men with open arms, seeking to practice their English during negotiations for the Camp David Middle East Peace Accords of 1978. When the men sang in a Baptist choir on Easter Sunday, March 1978, far from Harrisonburg in the Garden Tomb, Jerusalem, Israel, they wore frayed bell-bottom blue jeans, their best flannel shirts, and had grown long hair. Everything they needed to travel with was in the bottom half of their backpacks. In the front row of the Garden Tomb crowd of approximately 2000 observers, the men were surprised to see Dr. Myron Augsburger, with two EMC professors and eighty alums gathered for the program.[3] In the next several years, EMC developed an intercultural program for their students and, in the early ’80s, called their revised curriculum the Global Village.


[1] Samuel Augsburger and Elwood Yoder roomed together at Eastern Mennonite College in the late 1970s. They both graduated from EMC in 1981.

[2] Jesse Martin and David Ramer traveled with Augsburger and Yoder.

[3] Dr. Augsburger traveled with Professors Herbert Swartz, Jay Landis, and a group of alumni from March 21 to April 6, 1978.


Information Superhighway

The Information Superhighway has changed schools.  In the 1970s high schools had books, magazines, and traditional libraries.  Today students can access a world of resources on computers in their classrooms.  The Kennel Charles Church History desk (right), with Martyrs Mirror on the top shelf, hosts a state-of-the-art computer that brings information to the student in the history teacher’s classroom at Eastern Mennonite High School, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

March 2014 EMHS

New bridge over Linville Creek

New bridge over Linville Creek replaces 1898 wrought iron truss bridge that many Broadway, Virginia, residents, including Mennonites, used in early 20th century by MennoniteArchivesofVirginia
New bridge over Linville Creek replaces 1898 wrought iron truss bridge that many Broadway, Virginia, residents, including Mennonites, used in early 20th century, a photo by MennoniteArchivesofVirginia on Flickr.

Mennonites in the Northern District of Virginia Mennonite Conference often used this old iron bridge to head west towards mission stations in the West Virginia highlands. Today a modern bridge over the steady Linville Creek reduces the 1898 bridge to a foot and bike path. The old bridge in Broadway, Virginia, is on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia.

Massanutten Mountain from Greenmount and Sky Road intersection, Rockingham County, Virginia

On a trip from Singers Glen, Virginia, to Harrisonburg, Virginia, the historian spotted this grand view of the Massanutten Mountain. On his trips to Harrisonburg, musician Joseph Funk probably paused to relish in the ancient beauty of the distant mountain peak. Perhaps it was inspiration for his printing and musical work in the valley.

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Amish

In the late 17th century Amish began migrating from Europe to Philadelphia, PA, and eventually moved west to Lancaster County, PA.  From there they migrated west to Ohio and other states.  In Lancaster County, the Amish maintain their agricultural way of of life, in spite of rapid urbanization and modernity all around them.  They are the fastest growing religious group in North America.  This Amish farm is in Smoketown, Lancaster County, PA.

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Massanutten Mountain 2013

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Mennonite Bishop Lewis J. Heatwole wrote an article for the Daily News Record, Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 1921, in which he explained the meaning of the word Massanutten.  From his research he concluded that Massanutten is from two Indian words for “ground” and “potato,” which when put together mean “Potato Ground.”  Today the old peak still towers over the valley, easily seen from a jumbo jet descending on a Washington, D.C. airport from the south, and visible from about any point in the Shenandoah Valley.  The encroachments of civilization have not dimmed the spectacle and grandeur of a mountain that has provided a visual feast for ancient Indians and modern travelers.