My Sunday Feeling

President-elect Obama has said that his election is proof that anything is possible in America. This is only true in the mathematical sense that everything in life is at least a 50-50 proposition. Either something will happen or it will not.

As adults we tend to bet the under on life. This is not mere cynicism. It is prudent. The economy is in the dumper. The poor will be always with us. There are wars and rumors of war. The Cubs and the Saints will always suck. And the Phillies rewarded their long suffering fans by jacking up ticket prices.

We shrug our shoulders and move on. Somewhere between the house payment and skin cancer most of us have long since lost our capacity to be amazed or to give ourselves over to unbridled hope. It's not the smart play.

The boy in the picture is named Spencer. He is one of our Miracle League kids. Yesterday we had our annual fundraiser. About 9 or 10 Major League players including Cy Young award winner Cliff Lee and All Star pitcher A.J. Burnett showed up to spend the day with local kids. In the afternoon, they played a "game" with the Miracle Leaguers.

Spencer has had a tough year. He spent most of the Spring in Children's Hospital. He spent 3 days there last week when his pneumonia came back. His Dad told me that Spencer bargained with the doctors to let him come out yesterday. And so he did with lines running into his body from his fanny pack. Indeed, he wasn't able to finish his initial attempt at batting because his pack, with all his IV lines started slipping.

No problem. At Miracle League we refer to this as an equipment change.

I don't know if A.J. Burnett knew about Spencer's week. All I know is that when the kid came back up to the plate, Burnett asked for the ball. And the picture above shows Spencer's reaction to the sight of A.J. Burnett coming to pitch to him. And he got the full treatment too. Burnett gave him the back-to-the-plate-right-knee-to-the-chest-hide-the-ball-windup before gently tossing him the ball underhanded. And Spencer stood there thus transfixed for at least the first 3 pitches after which he was gently reminded to try to hit the damn thing.

Yeah, we as adults lose the capacity to be amazed. We also forget that there are good people in sports. We seem to get a steady diet of criminals like Pac-Man Jones or knuckleheads like Manny Ramirez. Now the guys that showed up yesterday would probably scoff at the notion that they were heroes. They all seemed pretty normal to the extent that one can be "normal" when you have as much money as they do at that age. But Cliff Lee seems to get it. When asked by the local paper why he was out there yesterday he simply said that he owed his living to the fact that people like baseball and that he wanted to give something back.

There you go. Screw Manny Ramirez.

Mr. Obama won an election using hope as his platform. But that's politics. Hell, you can't be Spencer or any of those other Miracle League kids without hope.

Look at that face attached as it is to his frail little body. Ask yourself: who had the better day?

You or my boy Spencer?

Get back with me on that.