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.

We Came Seeking Peace

(A devotional shared with the Board of Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, May 2024)

Our spiritual and biological ancestors came to the Shenandoah Valley seeking peace. In the 1750s, Dunkers migrated to Virginia. By 1860, Dunkers had seventeen church buildings in the Shenandoah Valley. It helped with migration when the Great Valley Road improved in the 1840s, making travel to Rockingham County easier for the second and third wave of Dunker immigrants.

The Mennonites also came seeking peace, migrating to Virginia in 1728. However, their settlements were short-lived as they were forced back to Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). They returned in large numbers after the Revolutionary War, again seeking peace, settling in the Linville Creek region of Rockingham County. By 1860, their perseverance had borne fruit, with seven congregations established in Virginia.

Dunkers and Mennonites came to Virginia amidst the enslavement of Africans. They sought peace after European settlers pushed the Catawba, Iroquois, Algonquian, and Siouan further west.

During the American Civil War, seventy-two young men, about half of them Dunkers and half Mennonites, headed north, seeking to escape the clutches of Confederate conscription. Though they sought peace, the men were caught by two scouts, only two, and then imprisoned in Richmond. There, the Dunkers and Mennonites convinced the Confederate government of their principles of peace and nonresistance, and the legislators gave the Brethren and Mennonites exemption from fighting in the war.

Our Brethren and Mennonite paths of peace continued to intersect into the twentieth century. In the early 1900s horse and buggy era, Mennonites couldn’t always go to their church because of distance, mud, or snow, so they visited nearby Brethren, Baptist, and other denominational churches. Mennonite Samuel Blosser figured out how to artificially incubate chicken eggs in 1885, while Brethren businessman Charles Wampler Sr. was the first to incubate turkey eggs in 1922.

In 1909, Henry and Bettie Keener led the vigorous twentieth-century Mennonite mission movement in West Virginia. Henry moved to Harrisonburg from Maryland, attended Bridgewater College, and was ordained by the Mennonites for mission work.

The Brethren, Quakers, and Mennonites united in their pursuit of peace and worked together after World War I. Their collective efforts led to the creation of the Civilian Public Service, which allowed conscientious objectors to perform alternative service during World War II.

During the 1960s, Charles Zunkel, pastor of Mill Creek Church of the Brethren, chaired The Rockingham Council on Human Rights. Zunkel worked on a steering committee with John A. Lapp and Eugene Souder, both Mennonites. The Council on Human Rights used the church’s influence and teaching for needed social change without conflict and violence. They worked to acquire housing for African Americans in Harrisonburg, integrate public schools, reform the hospital to assist African Americans better, and sought to have restaurants serve African Americans. Zunkel and Lapp went together to attend Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech in August 1963.

A full-page Daily News-Record ad appeared on January 31, 1967, strongly opposing the U.S. war in Vietnam. The writers addressed their letter of concern about Vietnam to the U.S. President and members of Congress. About half of the several dozen well-known Valley signatories were Brethren, and half were Mennonites.

In 1973, leaders from sister denominations attended when four to five thousand Mennonites met under a large tent at EMC for their national gathering. Dr. Wayne F. Geisert, Bridgewater College President and Moderator of the Church of the Brethren, attended the week-long Mennonite Conference in Harrisonburg. During the 1970s, Brethren and Mennonites worked together in a local chapter of New Call to Peacemaking.

A Church of the Brethren farmer, Fred Smith, joined Mennonite Pastor Eugene Souder, and they chaired the Rockingham Concerned Citizens in 1979. They worked hard but did not stop Coors from building a brewery in the Shenandoah Valley. Souder raised moral concerns about alcohol, and Smith opposed the pillaging and commercialization of 2000 acres of prime farmland.

Since the early 1990s, the Brethren and Mennonites have worked together to produce a thirty-five-volume Believers Church Bible Commentary. Scholars like Christina A. Bucher, Church of the Brethren, and Mennonite theologian Willard Swartley led the project. Many of us sing from Hymnal: A Worship Book, a testament to our shared values and beliefs prepared by churches in the Believers Church tradition. A dozen musicians from the Church of the Brethren and an equal amount from the Mennonite Church (MC) worked on the hymnal project, produced in 1992.

Since 1989, many Ukrainian families have migrated to the Valley, seeking peace like Mennonites and Brethren. The Ukrainian immigration story is much like the Mennonite and Dunker stories of the 19th century—each group came seeking peace. A JMU professor credits the Mennonites and Brethren for helping many immigrant families in the past four decades, like the Ukrainians who came seeking peace.

John Jantzi, administrative executive of the Shenandoah District of the Brethren, grew up Mennonite in central Ohio. Jantzi’s father taught me at Rosedale Bible College when I was a young man. Jantzi and I come from the same Mennonite background. Our fathers were both named Elmer, and both lived from 1925 to 2007. Both John and I came to the Shenandoah Valley seeking peace.

I’ve driven to the farms of two millennial Mennonite families from Augusta County who attend Zion Mennonite Church in Rockingham County. They bring their children on a 45-minute one-way drive to Broadway, Virginia, where my wife and I attend. We’ve traveled to visit them on several occasions, taking them a meal when a baby arrives or showing up for a cookout. Both families live along Westview School Road, and I was surprised recently to discover that the Shenandoah District Church of the Brethren office is at the corner of Westview School Road and Valley Church Road; we’ve driven by the office many times, not knowing it was there.

Perhaps that’s an analogy of Mennonites and Brethren in the Shenandoah Valley. We’ve lived side by side in Rockingham and Augusta Counties for 250 years or more, often passing each other. However, for twenty-five years, we have worked together at this wonderful Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, an invaluable resource for all to come and learn the story of denominational cousins who came seeking peace.

Agricultural Heritage

Cloverhill going north looking west

Mennonites migrated into the Shenandoah Valley as early as the 1730s, though not until after the Revolutionary War did the trickle turn into a steady migration from points north.  Most 18th century Mennonites farmed, whereas in the twentieth century many diversified their economic pursuits into other areas of work.  The farming heritage in the western part of Rockingham County near Clover Hill, Virginia, with the Allegheny Mountains as a backdrop, is still strong and deep.

Burkholder house with Massanutten Mountain 2013

On a crisp July Sunday evening after a thunderstorm erupted across the Shenandoah Valley, a group gathered in the Cove schoolhouse at the CrossRoads Heritage center to listen to stories about 19th century Martin Burkholder documents.  “Grace is a treasure,” Burkholder wrote in 1853, a fitting description for any era, including ours today.