On My Worst Day

This evening, the Beatles, in their first visit to America, appeared on the Ed Sullivan show; 728 people witnessed the event in Studio 50. Seventy-four million of us stared at it on television. Most of us will never be the same. I sat there, transfixed, as though watching a talent show from another galaxy. The next morning, at school, no one greeted each other without the next sentence containing the words “the Beatles.”

For me it was so much more than the excitement of a once-a-century phenomenon. It was my indelible introduction into a lifelong obsession with becoming famous.

I soon bought a Beatles wig and was singing “It Won’t Be Long” into the stereo speakers in our den—imagining I was lead singer and rhythm guitarist in a band which would eventually eclipse the popularity of the Beatles.

I usually pictured in the audience my teachers and all those who did not understand or appreciate me. Now they were leaning over to each other between songs, confessing, “I was wrong. This young man is so incredible. I always knew it, really.”

So, there you go. It’s not the Beatles’ fault. It was in me before they showed up. For a long time I would feel the need to prove a worth which matched my need to be loved.

It’s a chump’s bet, a longing that can never pay off. Even if people get it, they then wish they didn’t have it. As Steve Martin writes, “I was once not enough famous. Then I was too famous. Now I’m just right famous.”

Even today, I can’t defend my motives at any given time. I used to rough myself up for not having more “godly” ambitions. I was fairly certain he couldn’t use me if my motives weren’t almost completely right.

John, your motives will always be less than pure. I’m actually good with that. Maturity takes a lifetime. If I had to wait for humans to get their motives 80 percent right before I could work with them, soup wouldn’t have yet been invented! You know what will one day change? You. Your entire wiring. Yes, you will still sometimes want to be adored by all mankind. But you will find yourself increasingly more concerned about others, about destiny about having this life count. Don’t be hard on yourself. You’re right on time. …

As a boy, I remember thinking there was nothing as stupid or irrelevant as anything having to do with God. The Lynches were atheists. Dad progressively pushed to get us away from celebrating Christmas. His ultimate act was to have us open gifts the evening before. (Way to stick it to the man, Dad!) He brought home an aluminum tree in 1957 and we put it up every year through the late ’70s, after over a third of the limbs no longer had tinsel. Most of our few ornaments eventually slid to the center. Other kids had sprawling, flocked trees with color wheels, popcorn, cranberries, and shiny ornaments, all animated by the warmth of nearly endless strands of lights. The Lynches had sticks shoved into a pole, covered with shredded aluminum foil. I tried to not have friends over during December. Dad made sure we received mostly educational gifts or underwear, so we wouldn’t get enthralled with the holiday. Nothing says Christmas like unwrapping a bag of thin dress socks.

As a kid, every picture or statue I saw of Jesus depressed or spooked me. His eyes followed me, like he was trying to get my attention so he could tell me off. “Hey, you, kid. Yeah, you. Look over here at me! Wipe that grin off your face. I’m carrying the weight of the world, and you couldn’t care less … I didn’t come to earth for you.”

I was never supposed to get Jesus. I was sure God was, as Karl Marx had said, “the opiate of the masses.” Everything about me cried out against everything to do with God.

It followed me at night, on walks home. It stayed with me through the years when I mocked his name. I lived my entire childhood claiming to not believe in a God I secretly wanted.

You couldn’t walk any significant distance in my childhood Upland without going through an orange grove. In the winter, the owners kept the fruit from freezing at night through a series of oil-generated, heat-producing “smudge pots.” The ignited oil in those squatty metal drums placed along the rows of trees gave off a dirty, smoky warmth. The orchard formed a warm canopy and temporary home for drifters or those hiding from local authorities. What a different time it was in the world! My friends and I were always fascinated, getting to hang out with real hobos. We’d stand around them, speechless, like we were watching men from another planet.

I especially remember one in particular. He had thick oily hair, wore a flannel shirt and greasy jeans. He looked pretty beaten down. But he seemed so cool, living alone out under the sky. He was sketchy looking—pretty quiet and wearing a nervous tic. But he was kind, careful to not frighten us with the gruff realities of his journey. He showed us how to cook things with aluminum foil on an open fire. He’d grill up corn, pancakes, and pieces of what he called “sparrow meat.” He sometimes whittled while he talked to us. We never once thought about any danger.

Today, imagine a kid telling his mom, “Hey, I’m going with my friends to visit a vagrant out in the orange groves. He has a knife.”

It all set a course for me. It caused me to not fear those on the edges of society. Years later I discovered the ones who talk to me most genuinely, tenderly, and authentically about God are often those having the toughest time managing daily life in society. Somehow, they manage to most clearly see God in the midst of it.

This childhood freedom would teach me to give dignity with my time, attention, and presence to those who doubt their life matters. To those whose failure and weaknesses try to convince them they are a different class of human. Great beauty doesn’t avoid the most poor, fragile, or devastated. Sometimes dignity is giving importance to those who sit on the fringe. It is convincing them God loves them as well as anyone else. I think it’s why I love Cannery Row so much. Steinbeck gave dignity to those who have no visible footing in this world. I have discovered most of my favorite speaking events have been to the painfully common, limping, and inappropriate. More often than not, they enjoy my humor the most, listen most intently to my words, and lavish me with the most pie. Maybe it’s all because, behind my loud and articulate bluster, I am one of them.

I imagine that evening Jesus took Levi, the hated tax-gatherer, up on his invitation to dinner. A roomful of actively immoral outcasts, carrying all manner of visible scars of depravity, desperately trying to be on their best behavior. Quiet and awkward. If we could have filmed it, the camera would now pan in from above, through the room to where Jesus is reclining. … Soon there’s a circle around Jesus, all of them gradually sitting up, elbows on knees, chins on hands. Hardened sinners with expressions of wonder and innocence. We’re watching what happens when perfect love, grace, and purity invade darkness. The King has shown up to rescue prisoners from the enemy camp—where wickedness and perversion have seemed logical up until this moment. Suddenly there is, at least in this room, a hope life could be different.

The night air gradually blends into a mixture of the best humor, stories, truth, life, hope. Somewhere in the evening, the conversation turns.

“Who are you—really?” He unhurriedly lets them ask questions. Then there is silence. It is becoming clear exactly who he is. Few in the crowds outside, who’ve sought him for a miracle show, receive what these reprobates are receiving. They’re becoming desperate for who he is, not what magic he might wave.

Someone sitting next to him: “Why us? Why would you choose to be here tonight, with us?”

Jesus: “This may be hard for you to understand. I’ve known you and loved you since before there was time. I’ve watched it all. I know about the catch in your knee that takes until after noon to loosen up. I was there the evenings your father beat you. I was there when you were kicked out of the synagogue. And now, I’ve come from heaven for you.”

“Yes, I do. And I have the unfortunate ability to know the wrong things you’re going to do tomorrow and the day after that. The only sin which could possibly separate you from eternity with God is to reject the person who’s speaking to you at this moment.” … He smiles. “And, I gotta tell you, I’m being welcomed here tonight like few other places since I’ve been down here. … Now, may I finish this joke?”

… And two dozen men and women, who walked into this party ready for a fight, laugh deeply … and peer into his eyes, like convicts about to receive their walking papers.

Few foods captivated me in youth like cheesecake. I was always left frustrated, wanting more than I was allowed in any given sitting. My parents never allowed it into our home, treating cheesecake as a luxury only royalty should possess—like caviar or gold-leafed chocolate dishes. On the rare occasion Dad did take us to a restaurant that might carry cheesecake, he’d always made sure he pointed out the ridiculously high price of desserts. Reading the menu, he’d grumble under his breath, “These desserts cost about what I make in a day’s work. What sort of people would order such a thing?”

But on my birthday last year he took us to the Magic Lamp—the nicest restaurant in Upland. It had white linen tablecloths and bread sticks in a basket covered with a matching linen napkin. My dad allowed me to order dessert!

When it finally arrived, it was so incredibly thin and tiny. A sliver of cheesecake, nearly lost on the dessert plate. The waiter could have served it with tweezers. I’m thinking, “I could down about nineteen of these!”

When I asked if I could have a second piece, my dad looked at me like he might give his speech about people starving in the Congo.

… All of this is to help explain to you why this summer day in 1964 turned out the way it did.

I was pedaling my blue Sting-Ray into downtown Upland to watch a matinee at the Grove

Theater. I didn’t make it that far. Turning off Euclid onto Ninth Street, I was physically pulled by what smelled like freshly baked cheesecake. The aroma came from the Upland Bakery. I was suddenly positioned in front of the glass store window in time to watch an oversized man in a white baker’s uniform slide a majestic, freshly baked cheesecake from an oven with a immense wooden paddle.

(I am oft and accurately accused of runaway hyperbole, but none of what I am about to write bears the marks of such device.)

I walked into the store and up to the glass counter, on whose racks the cake had only now been placed. Pointing to it, while making eye contact with the woman behind the counter, I asked, “How much for this. How much does it cost?”

She quoted a nearly impossible amount. But I would find a way to purchase this. The thought that I could, for once, have all the cheesecake I wanted had suddenly become the single most important goal for this day of my life.

I spoke out, clearly and slowly, “Would you please not let anyone else buy this? I’m going to go home to find the money to buy it. Promise?”

Mom was not home. I had eighty-five cents already on me for the movie and snacks. I dug through my dad’s change cup in his dresser. I scoured every room of the house. I probably rounded up a dollar’s worth of coins—still pitifully short of the amount to own that cake.

A child of the depression, my dad now had many collections—perhaps as a hedge against impending poverty. He wanted me to have a similar passion. So he had purchased a fleet of these heavy cardboard blue booklets with slots for Indian Head nickels. A slot for every year they were minted. Dad helped me get started with some fairly rare coins. I soon got into it, and in the last several years had filled many of the slots.

Somehow able to ignore perspective, consequence, and future regret, I bent back the cardboard booklets and popped out coins—until I had over five dollars worth of nickels in the pockets of my jeans. I got back on my Stingray and raced to the bakery. There, I proceeded to pour out piles of nickels onto that counter.

I should have taken the cake home and shared half with my family. I did not do that.

I should have located a plastic fork and knife and eaten it at a local park. I did not do that.

I walked into the alley behind their store. Like a child raised by wolverines, I began breaking off huge chunks of warm, fresh cheesecake and shoving them into my mouth. It tasted so incredibly good.

To my credit, I was over halfway through the giant cake before it became oppressive. I was now slowly and reluctantly wadding it into my mouth. I started feeling sick two-thirds of the way through … and tossed the rest in a dumpster several feet away.

I wandered around to the front, a boy dazed by sugar and disappointment. What just happened? I thought, as I stared at the road, slowly weaving my bike through the neighborhoods toward home. What will I tell Dad about the nickels? Someday he’s going to want to see how the collection is going. Why did I do that? What is wrong with me?

I don’t think either of my parents ever heard this story. I can’t remember how I explained the missing nickels. But I walked forward from that day, on a more urgent mission—to find what food, entertainment, activity, or repetition of activity would satisfy me long enough to satisfy this unmet urge inside me.

John, I do not want to rub this in; but if you’d held onto those Indian head nickels, you could buy everyone in Upland a cheesecake … once a month … for the rest of their lives.

Trying to solve this internal craving will be the singular driving force for decades of your life. It will harm you more than any person can. It will break your heart. One day, no time soon, you will find what your longing and unmet urges are calling for. Then, you will begin to learn what gives food its maximum taste, experiences their full measure of joy, and sunsets their full beauty. I’m right here. Though you will go into some very strange places, this obsession will not destroy you. One day, your willingness to articulate your battle with it will make you safe and real and trusted to others. Until that time, you will crave the Jack in the Box taco combo like few things on earth. I’d say you could do worse, but I’m not sure I’d be accurate. …

These days I care mostly about running fast, listening to Vin Scully describe the Dodgers on the radio and convincing enchanting Lucille Engle to like me. Orange trees still outnumber homes. Life is pretty idyllic.

He has two older brothers who, for all I know, are already in prison. Or should be. I don’t yet know much about evil; but his family is evil. Carl has beaten up three kids in our class … and it’s only October. He doesn’t hit me because he’s entertained by me.

One day he informs me we are to meet at the railroad tracks this coming Saturday morning. These particular tracks run through the center of town, ending at an orange-packing plant. For us kids, that plant is a glorious place. Upland is one of the great citrus hubs. Dozens of open-topped freight cars are three-quarters filled with oranges, waiting to be sent out to places like Billings or Topeka. On late afternoons, after cul-de-sac Wiffle ball or front-yard football, dozens of us could be found lying on our backs inside train cars filled with huge, nearly fluorescent oranges. The workers didn’t even care we were in there. There were so many oranges. We’d eat them until our mouths burned. Nobody had scurvy in our neighborhood.

On this day, like six-dozen times before, I climb the train’s steel ladder and dive into orange heaven. But it’s early Saturday morning. No one else is yet in the cars. Carl follows me in. He leans slowly against the back wall, saying nothing. He’s staring at me, intensely. I am experiencing the sensation of being trapped for the first time in my life.

He slowly informs me what he will now do to me, and what I will now do to him—twisted perversion I’ve never before heard or thought of.

… That morning changes my life. I remember little of what happened after emerging from that boxcar: how I got home, or what I did when I got there. I have no memories of Carl after that morning. I do carry this embedded maxim, which has clung to me like a wet sweater all my life:

“No one must ever know what happened. I will go this alone. I must find a way to never think about this again. I will be all right. I will be all right. …”

And a previously innocent and playful kid walks with a limp from that thought on.

I’m still funny. I still seem like a normal kid. I will pitch on my town’s Little League All-Star team. Lucille Engle will like me. But something insidious is going on inside. All alone. Inside.

Shame tries to convince us that we caused the evil which happened to us. It continually whispers if anyone could know the truth about who we are, they would leave or pity us. So we are left to bluff and posture, guard and defend. Shame teaches us to perform for God’s acceptance, to keep paying for something we eventually can no longer even name.

It will take forty years before I risk even a hint to anyone that something happened back there.

The boxcars still stand. Rusting and silent. A visible and definable part of Upland’s past. My past. I’ve driven past them dozens of times, bringing my family to see the town of my childhood. No one in our car ever noticed me staring at those boxcars as we drove by.

Jesus, you make no mistakes; you make even better beauty out of the most heinous. You never left my side. You hated it more than I did. You give me dignity. You continue to stand with me in the arena to protect my heart and reputation. You are redeeming and will redeem all this damage. You died to take away the power of this shame. Jesus, you dropped everything to stand over me the day it all turned dark. …

In my childhood, all the kids wore their costumes to school. All day! And there was no political rightness to navigate. Nearly every ethnicity and station in society was represented and welcomed. Indian chiefs, ghosts, angels, and Vikings played kickball next to minstrels, Moses, belly dancers, sombrero-wearing Spaniards, and hobos.

Imagine my mom at Coronet’s department store, sorting through all the costumes: cowboys, doctors, astronauts. “Hmmm. Look at this. The devil. Yes, I think that’s the most fitting outfit for my son. I’ll get him the devil costume.”

Trick or Treat in the ’60s was so different than today’s sanitized “Tribute to Harvest,” or whatever it has become. Our own neighbors created haunted houses, with all manner of horrifying dramatics, designed solely to horrify children. A snarling, snapping German Shepherd might meet us at the door—within feet of us. On a leash, but still showing his teeth. Strangers would leap out of bushes with real axes or shovels in their hands, shouting at us. Then they’d laugh and hide back in the bushes for the next wave of kids. Unexplained explosions and shrieking filled the night air. No wonder my generation ends up in more counseling than any preceding it. …

Old Mr. Dobbs, three houses up our street, was a Halloween legend. An odd, grumpy recluse who on Halloween night came to life. He positioned dry ice and cobwebs all over his compound. You could hear his eerie music and sound effects blocks away. His entire family would dress in black—each with a singular goal of scaring the pee out of children. One might jump from the roof, squirt fake blood on us from a missing arm, and then run off. Or from under a car, one would suddenly grab my foot as I walked up the driveway.

Each year Dobbs made “eyeball soup.” We were certain that neighborhood cats were unwillingly involved in his recipe. … I still am.

Parents didn’t walk with us after, say, age six. Packs of us would roam the neighborhoods; pillowcases in hand, wearing outfits with plastic masks which caused us to keep breathing our own air.

Total strangers gave us candy! Big time candy. We might be handed two full-sized Snicker bars, without a blink.

But the best part of the whole evening was afterwards. I’d haul my candy into my room, close the door, and begin the sacred candy sorting ritual. I didn’t know anyone who didn’t do it. There were the “A” candies: Snickers, Butterfingers, Baby Ruth bars, etc. “B” candies included Big Hunk, Mike and Ike, and the rest of that ilk. Gum, lollipops, Boston Baked Beans and such made up the “C” category. And then there were the wretched “D” candies: candy corn and those Styrofoamlike Circus Peanuts, with colors not found in nature.

I’d lay them all out in rows of merit and then stand back to admire my evening’s effort.

… The next day, arriving home from school, most of rows “A” and “B” and some of row “C” were gone.

I first blamed my brother. I even blamed my parents. It was a mystery which drug on for months.

She lived her last several years with us. She and I were not especially close. Living in our den, she mostly only came out at meal time. She was in her late eighties, which at that time was like being in her late one-hundred-twenties.

One afternoon, as my parents were packing up her belongings, my mom called me into the den. “John, come look at this.” And there, in the top drawer of her desk, were the wrappers and remaining pieces of uneaten candy. My candy.

My grandmother had shuffled into my bedroom when no one was around and filled her spindly, saggy little arms with my candy. She probably had to make several trips. I’m not certain I’ve forgiven her yet.

Somehow, I wound up with her Bible. She had underlined verses and wrote the date next to them. Some of the citations were from back as far as the 1880s. I’d think to myself, “Wow, there wasn’t electric lighting yet. She’d have to read her Bible with a kerosene lamp!” Until one day someone mentioned in passing, “Or, maybe she read it during the day.”

“Ah, yes. Perhaps she read it during the day. Certainly a viable option …”

John, I recently asked your grandmother if she ever regretted taking your candy. These are her exact words: “No. Not once. He was an annoying child. And I do so love the chocolates. No, I have no regrets.”

I won the fifty-yard dash two years in a row at Camp Oaks, up near Big Bear Lake. I still have the ribbons somewhere in my attic. No one had ever won two years in a row. And probably no one had ever made themselves more sickly nervous before a race. The rest of the kids ran because it was fun, or because they thought they had a chance to win. I ran it knowing anything but a win would be tragic. It was what I did, what I was known for. Winning that ribbon would prove for another day that I was enough. Winning it would cause me to be valued and popular. There was no other option. At that age, I thought I might be the fastest boy in my age group, anywhere. My “anywhere” was the size of Camp Oaks and the two hundred some campers on site during my week.

Looking back, none of my friends were there. Most of the camp kids I never saw again. My parents thought it would be a good idea to send me to a camp. When I got home, I proudly displayed my ribbon on the living room table. My parents both nodded and smiled politely. But it wasn’t that “Oh my gosh, you’re amazing!” kind of response. Dad said something like, “See, son? That’s why we send you to camp. Everyone gets to win at something.”

So who was I running for? I didn’t enjoy a thing about the race itself. I hated the nervousness I felt for hours before it. The pushing and shoving directly before the gun sounded was chaotic and ugly. Intimidating bigger kids shuffled the weaker and smaller behind them. The race itself was only terror—two hundred screaming kids, all clawing out of the gate to take away my destiny. The honor after the race was almost nonexistent. Moments after ours, another race started, followed by another. By dinner, most of the day had blurred into one long camper decathlon.

It shouldn’t work like that. Greatness should be rewarded. Greatness should result in happiness. I’m sure many of the “average” kids thought I was living the dream. Turns out we were all kidding ourselves. We were all fighting our own story of insecurity. And insecurity is not solved by achievement. Insecurity is not solved by not worrying about achievement. Insecurity, it turns out, is solved only by believing the truth about how you’re seen by the only one whose opinion ultimately matters. … And he and I were not yet talking.

That evening, lying in my bunk, arms folded behind my head, I felt very alone in the world.

I wish you could hear me tonight. I will watch you repeat this cycle too many hundreds of times. I wish you could have seen what I saw today. You were magnificent! You blew everyone away and kept pulling further ahead. But you keep missing it. You’re already worried about the next race before you receive the ribbon for this one. So soon, you’ll be older and your knees will hurt. You’ll be too heavy to want to sprint from place to place. I made you with this gift to enjoy, now. And you’re missing it.

One day you will let me in. You will discover I do not ascribe to the false story of your unacceptability. Your proving and grinding will be gradually replaced with contentment, as you begin to let me achieve great good in you for others’ benefit. That day is coming. In the meantime, though no one noticed or cared enough today, I did. I’ll show you the tape when you get home. I’ve already showed it around here a number of times. Now go to sleep, my friend. That’s another thing you won’t be able to do as well when you get older.

When my parents hurt my feelings, the biggest threat I could drum up was that I might run away.

One day I told them I was going to run away. Now I had to now actually do it, for at least an afternoon, or I’d forever lose the only real leverage a kid has.

My dad, calling my bluff, gathered up some items, saying, “Here, let me help.”

I packed some sandwiches, another shirt, and a jacket into a grocery bag and walked out the front door, into my future.

They let me walk out! They said goodbye like I was heading across the street to a friend’s house. There were no cell phones back then. They had no way of calling me to beg me back.

I made it as far as the Red Hill Bowling Lanes, four miles away. I spent the afternoon watching people bowl, eating my sandwiches, sitting in the booths above the lanes. It doesn’t take long watching bad bowlers to arrive at the conclusion life on the road might be a bit overrated.

I returned home six hours later. They were out shopping. When they did eventually come home, they acted like nothing had happened. We never talked about it. We just sort of went on. … So much for leverage.

As I grew into a teenager, I began to imagine the day when I would run away. They would deeply regret their capricious use of authority.

I never did it. But over time, the concept itself has become my default button. Only now, nearly fifty years later, my bags are a little bit more sophisticated. But they are packed. You might not know it to look at me. I’ve owned the same home for a quarter century. But almost every day I envision an “out.” You get revealed if you stay in a community long enough. And the community gets revealed too. We can begin to imagine life somewhere else is much better.

Maybe I’d go to a beach town. I’d be on a friendly, chatty, waving relationship with dozens of the locals. Stacey and I would know several couples fairly well. But this time I’d play it closer to the vest. I wouldn’t dream nearly so much, risk so much, reveal so much. I’d be known as someone who once did something. But no one would know enough to have my weaknesses revealed.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be free of packed bags. I’m not sure it’s even the point. Grace anticipates mess and ongoing imperfection. If my needs went away, I would never experience the love of others. So, I will always carry junk, unresolved sludge, weakness, failure; things that go bump in the night.

Love eventually finds people who will not let us put our bags into the car. Who will love us for who we are, not who we can present on our best day. It’s a scary risk. It gives something and takes something away. It gives us a place. But it demands us to have a better reason than shame or fear to leave to a place which is not our home.

Among my six favorite days on this planet is the one Dave Barrows and I spent in the summer of 1966. We decided to hitchhike from our home to Dodger Stadium in L.A. We never thought twice of any danger. I mean, we were nearly fourteen! I have no memory of how we got there, but vivid, Technicolor memory of nearly every moment once inside the stadium. The Dodgers were playing the Giants in a doubleheader. One price, two games. Three times the magic!

What we could afford was up in the top row of the stadium. When we finally made our way to our seats, neither of us spoke for a while. We were out of breath and deeply disappointed. Far below, the players looked like ants in uniforms.

Several minutes into trying to convince ourselves these seats would work, we decided to take a huge gamble. We had no game plan. But we would find a way down into the bottom section. The stadium was packed but we had to try. Even if we could only watch close up for an inning or two, it would be worth spending the rest of the day in a basement office with security guards.

We eventually conned our way down to the entrance of the bottom level. We didn’t see anyone asking for tickets so we started our way down toward seats our own parents could never afford.

I think we might have made it. Except this kindly looking older man, wearing a Dodger-blue straw hat called out, “Gentlemen, excuse me. One moment.”

He gestured us toward where he was standing. “May I see your tickets, please?”

“Well, um. You see, our parents are down there and …” Dave took over. “They’ve got our tickets. We told them we’d be right back.”

He looked at them. Then he looked at us. Then he leaned his head way back, up to where our seats were. Then he looked back at the tickets. Then he looked at us again. He made a sucking sound older people make with their teeth and lips when they’re considering something. He mumbled to himself. Then, very seriously he spoke, “Follow me.” We did. He walked us down into the great bowl: past the wealthy people, past the players’ wives, past the scouts, past the owners … all the way down to directly behind the third base dugout. The Dodger’s dugout! Without smiling, he looked at our tickets and then at us, saying clearly and loudly, “Gentlemen, I believe these are your seats.”

By the time we sat down, stared, and realized what had happened, we turned and he was gone.

We watched a double header from where God sits when he watches the Dodgers play.

Koufax pitched one of the games. Sandy freaking Koufax! Maury Wills stole a base. Willie Davis dove to make a one-handed catch in center. We bought Dodger dogs and frozen malts. It was a bright, sunny Southern California summer day. We took off our shirts and swung them over our heads. We cheered like drunken sailors on leave. We listened to our hero Vin Scully echoing from transistor radios throughout the stadium. We’d call out the names of the players and they’d wave back. Wes Parker tipped his hat to us. We chased down foul balls. They truly were six of the finest hours of my entire life. Afterward, we waited and got autographs from Willie Davis, Bill Singer and Al Ferrara!

For thirteen-plus years, life had been methodically teaching me the actual event never meets the anticipated expectation. But this day exceeded all anticipation. The only thing keeping it from being more perfect was the setting sun, sending us onto the freeway onramp and back into our normal lives.

John, I don’t know who is happier this day—you or me. I’ve seen this one coming for a long time. I lined up Koufax to pitch for you. That was no small feat. He was scheduled to face Marichal on Sunday. I had to give Claude Osteen a stiff shoulder so Walt Alston would be forced to move Koufax up a day.

I know you’ve already discovered much of life isn’t as spectacular or satisfying as the anticipation. I’ve watched this break your heart. It will actually serve to draw you to me. I’ve built into you this longing for a world which doesn’t disappoint. Today, I only wanted to see you enjoying this life as completely as your being can hold. I love you a lot, kid. I can’t wait until we get to meet. In the meantime, most of the day-to-day will be fine. You’re going to throw a couple no-hitters in high school. Your girlfriend will be prettier than Petula Clark. I’ve got a trip planned where you and a friend drive up the coast to San Francisco in your dad’s Chevy Nova during college spring break. On that trip, I’ll have your car break down near Santa Barbara, because I want you to get acquainted with it. You’ll live on the beach there in Isla Vista during your wandering years. If you’re going to run from me, you might as well live in a nice area.

George Schilling. He was my junior high P.E. teacher—the first adult I can remember hating. Each day he entered the gym with a thick wooden clipboard, wearing a baseball cap with his initials written across it. George A. Schilling. GAS. Appropriate. It’s what he gave everyone around him. He was also the first person who taught me the destructive power of appealing to the shame and humiliation of Law.

When I first saw the play Les Misérables many years later, I sat spellbound at the unflinching, crushing authority of detective Javert. I was suddenly in the presence of coach Schilling all over again. He thought he could make kids behave by appealing to intimidation. It worked on all of us. None trusted him but all feared him. We also rebelled against him and lied to him, if we thought there was a chance we could get away with it.

He couldn’t understand why we played so robotically for him on the flag football team. It was because no one would dare risk creativity, for fear we’d screw up and be publicly humiliated. He didn’t realize his methods of turning us against each other in humiliating contests, and public swattings with his wooden clipboard, would actually turn on him.

The power of affirming love is exceedingly greater motivation than what could be gained through intimidation. When we do anything to pacify or appease a disgusted and superior-acting authority, we begin to lose our person. Something sacred inside of us tucks away. We will protect that place more than blocking a blow to our face on the playground.

Schilling taught me to rebel. He taught me that who I was wasn’t welcome. He could sense anyone who might be funnier, articulate, or more clever than him. Over time, he would systematically put us down enough to rob it from us.

I won’t hate George Schilling as an adult. He was a product of parents and culture teaching a similar, often well-intended devastation. But the spirit behind what drove him crippled millions from my generation. Here is the most damaging reality of that crippling. When we became adults, we found ourselves drawn to teachers and leaders who motivated from similar motivation. They were more handsome, self-assured, and didn’t have a scary clipboard. They would have a scary Bible. They would appeal to our flesh, our success, our manhood. They would subtly shame us. Many of us, although we hated it then, will buy their crap now.

If I tell you only what he did wrong, you wouldn’t know he was a great dad. For over ten years he quietly woke only me early each Saturday morning. Other fathers would take their sons fishing. My father took me into the kitchen, where the two of us would sit at a linoleum-laminated table, eating a thick concoction of Maypo cereal, whole milk, and serving-spoon scoops of crunchy peanut butter. You could spackle a hole in a wall with the consistency of what we ate.

On summer weekend afternoons, Dad would furtively pull two cans of Vernors out of the refrigerator—like he was handing me a dusty bottle of bootleg rum. It was only ginger ale, but he made it seem so dangerous and forbidden. Each time he’d hand it to me with these words: “Don’t tell your mother.”

One afternoon, after work, he called me into the living room. He’d put his forefinger through a Dixie cup, and surrounded it with cotton and ketchup. He allowed me to look for a moment directly into the cup, to see a bleeding, wiggling finger.

“A shop worker down at the plant cut off his finger today in one of the sheet metal machines. He told me I could bring it home and let you see it.”

He was the most honest man I’ve known. He sacrificed incredibly for our family. He made sure we visited every state and most of the national parks in the continental U.S. He taught me to compute batting averages with a slide rule.

Before one of our vacation trips, he hid a MAD magazine in the glove box. He knew, at some point driving across the country, he would have to discipline me for something … and he figured we would then both retreat into hurt silence for miles. It, of course, happened. During one hideously long stretch of Midwestern driving monotony, my brother and I began bothering each other in the back seat. He flicked my ear. Twice. So, I tore a page out of what he was reading. He told on me. Dad immediately pulled off the highway. With cars whooshing by us, he completely turned around in his seat and started yelling at me. His face was bright red. He sounded like a TV preacher, bemoaning why they would spend so much money to take vacations so their kids could fight. Next thing I know I was in the front seat across from him. It was all painfully silent and seething … for what seemed like an hour.

Then, the moment my dad had been waiting for. Driving across the plains of Nebraska, he broke the standoff.

“You might want to check the glove box. Maybe there’s something in there that might interest you.”

I found the magazine. … Suddenly, the last fifty miles of angry silence was forgotten. I read him sections all the way into the night, my brother and mom asleep in the backseat, on our way to that evening’s Travelodge.

… But my father was a child of the Great Depression, the son of an uneducated immigrant who pushed a fruit cart through their eastern Pennsylvania neighborhood.

Dad was stunningly intelligent. He became a member of Mensa, “The International High IQ Society.” He was in the top half of Mensa! He vowed to himself that by dogged diligence and intense focus, he would make himself someone much more financially secure than where he came from. He excelled as navigator on the B-17 bombers, whose accuracy hastened the end of

World War II. He later became deeply respected analytic forecaster at General Electric’s headquarters in New York City. He retired as a distinguished economics professor at what is now Thunderbird School of Global Management.

So, here is this nearly genius, high capacity, driven man living his entire life with a fear he’ll fall behind and return to the poverty of the Depression.

Later I discovered his intelligence reached well beyond his wisdom. He thought intelligence and more education alone would solve the world’s problems. I wonder if many extremely intelligent people fail to learn great wisdom because they lack the humility demanded to receive it.

I would rebel against his strict demands and his inability to affirm. His approach would allow him to rarely enjoy who his son actually is—a moderately intelligent dreamer, who loves wistfulness, humor, kindness, affection, affirmation, and talking late into the night. I would become student body president, and an All-State pitcher. I would date the homecoming queen. But it was not the “right” success for him. It would not translate into a law degree from Stanford. I spent too many adolescent years resenting and missing out on enjoying him, because he refused to value or affirm who I actually was. He taught me a lifetime of doubting the value of the particular way I was fashioned.

I may have rejected many of his values, but I inherited most of his prideful fear. Kids from the Depression hated watching their parents be in need of handouts. Dad would not let anyone help him. If someone gave a gift or did a favor, he would quickly try to even the score or surpass it. I’m convinced this transferred fear kept me from letting others in—to see my pain, my weaknesses, my hidden brokenness, and my self-destructive choices.

Later, my dad and I would both grow up. He became an outstanding grandfather. We grew to enjoy each other with deep and tender affection. He would carry his claim of atheism to the grave. He would continue to mock every men tion of God, but learn to give my family a pass. He would kindly sit by our nonaluminum tree on Christmas mornings and watch impractical gifts being exchanged, without snide comment. In his last few years on this earth he would say to me: “John, you’ve done great good in your chosen profession. I’ve watched how you parent your children and love your wife. You’re living this life very well. I’m very proud of you, son. I love you very much.”

Not every son gets that blessing. I’m grateful. I wish he could see my children and their own children. He’d be deeply proud of how his name is being lived out in them.

John, this trust of me you’ve risked—it has been clumsy and sporadic, but real. I have inhabited it completely. But you will continue to be haunted by patterns you thought you’d someday be freed of. Some of these historic illnesses of your family line may follow you until you leave this earth. But your choice to learn to trust me will protect your family and their families beyond what you can understand now. I know. I’ve been up ahead. The legacy is being reformed. It fills my heart with joy and my eyes with tears telling you this.

… I too have loved your dad. You can’t yet have any idea what transactions people make in their hearts they cannot bring themselves to tell others. Sometimes even Mensa atheists.

My dad gets a big promotion in Phoenix. So, the movers come and pack us up. I still remember; we leave Upland on June 24. And my entire world begins to grow smaller and smaller in the side view mirror of our Chevy Nova. I’m in the back, sitting between our dog and a caged, medicated cat. The after-manufacturer air conditioner stops blowing before we hit Blythe. Our headlights go out shortly after Quartzite. In the car, there’s only shocked silence—except for the noise of the highway from our fully opened windows. One of them has my t-shirt taped and flapping in front of it. We soaked it in water back in Blythe. It now forms the centerpiece in our hopes for survival. We must look like a scene from the “Grapes of Wrath.” Eventually we stumble into our new city, feeling as though we’d driven a covered wagon through the outskirts of hell. It’s ten in the evening and still over one hundred degrees. I already hate every single thing about Phoenix. I can’t believe my father would take us from all we’ve known and bring us here to die. … I clearly express this to him this upon our arrival.

… All this will change in a few weeks, when I meet Jim Adams. He lives three houses down. He owns a bitchen yellow Telecaster guitar and plays songs I’ve never heard before! He is my introduction into music and all things cool. Half the girls in our neighborhood have a crush on Jim. It’s summer and he’s bored playing rock and roll all day by himself. He persuades me to take up drums. Promising my parents good grades, I convince them to buy me a set. Although they are purchased at a pawn shop, the snare is a Slingerland and the cymbals are Zildjian. I have, in one purchase, gone from new kid to cool new kid. By the fall, we’ve formed a band. We name ourselves Metallic Wax. We now must find other musicians worthy of such a moniker. Within several weeks we are joined by Bob Harper on bass and Mark Finezza on rhythm guitar. By the spring of ’68 we’re one of the better new groups in our surrounding three-block area.

Like kids in open garages all over America, we’re learning to make music. I think I’d trade my car and most of my clothing to experience again what that must have been like. I only remember wanting to play all night, working on a song over and over until it worked. It’s a moment mediocre garage bands have in common with The Spencer Davis Group, Santana, and Miles Davis.

We play a couple of birthday parties and are promised money for one gig, which later gets cancelled. By March, Metallic Wax has gone the way of Strawberry Alarm Clock. We disband. Sports, girls, and our general lack of talent appear to be our undoing.

But now I have music. I will live with a soundtrack running in the background nearly every waking moment. I will create internal playlists, guiding me through breakups and moments of anticipated greatness. In the fall of 1975, in Tucson, I am limping from a breakup with a girl I thought I’d marry. Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” mixes with the wind as I wander the desert, searching for the voice of some higher power.

Music becomes the way I will later communicate my life with Jesus. My most intimate, honest and vulnerable moments are spent out in neighborhoods, on beaches, or in cars, alone, making up lyrics and tunes to God. Nothing is more sacred to me.

My formal attempts at sitting and talking to God can feel forced and contrived, often degenerating into what I imagine God might want me to say, in a voice and patter even I don’t trust. But when I sing to God, counting on the tune and words to find their way, I am as authentically John as I can be. It usually starts off key and faltering but often moves into a place with God I can find in no other way. I’m trusting God to give me a song so I can stay in the moment long enough to trust him with me.

I wonder in heaven if we get to see scenes we never captured down here. I’d sure like to see the four of us, playing loud and gritty rock and roll, while neighbor kids stop and stare, in awe.

John, I’ve got several clips of you rehearsing in Finneza’s garage. Maybe I should keep looking through the archives. I haven’t seen any yet where the neighborhood kids are “staring in awe.”

… Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.

My brother doesn’t join us in Phoenix until later in the summer. He’s been working as a counselor at a Boy Scout camp.

He’s an All-District tennis player, an Eagle Scout, part of the Order of the Arrow. He’s my big brother—good, kind and deeply respected. He’s my magnificent protector when my humor gets me into trouble with older kids.

Then something happens none of us saw coming. He is sent home from camp early. We thought he’d maybe caught a bad case of flu. But upon his return, we quickly discover something is very, very wrong. Something has snapped inside my brother. He has become mentally ill, deeply psychotic. He suddenly hallucinates, speaks to himself, and has ongoing conversations with others who don’t exist. This truly great human will now become part of the best and worst mental health facilities all over the country. My tenderhearted brother will now undergo experimental drugs, shock therapy and the terrifying life away from his home—locked up with others as tormented as him. Like every other family who has ever faced this, we have no idea what to do. That first summer, hoping I can shock him out of his stupor, I actually slug him in the face. It only scares and confuses him more. I still remember him looking shocked, dazed, and hurt. “John, why did you do that?” His rapid decline radically changes our family. We will never be the same.

Since that summer, over forty-five years ago, I’ve felt like a ticking time bomb, wondering when the same will happen to me. When I get overstressed or Stacey and I get into a hard enough place, I can go there. I fear one day the people who now respect me and enjoy my humor and insight will talk around me, or more slowly, or more loudly. After all, Jim was my brother. Whatever it was came from our line.

Jim passed away seven years ago. This once normal, healthy athlete learned to smoke three packs a day inside mental health facilities where nearly everyone chain smoked. Lung cancer caught up with him. Before it was diagnosed, it had spread all over his body. Within six months my brother was gone.

But one day, in his forties, God worked through the hazy slits in the blinds. My brother allowed in light. I was sitting with him in a restaurant one afternoon, embarrassed by his bursts of loud, inappropriate, crazy talk. On this particular occasion, for a reason I don’t yet know, I didn’t try to quiet him down. Instead I said, “Jim, there is a place, a land, where no one is mentally ill. My brother, there, in that place, you will be as sharp and awake as any other person.” He leaned forward and whispered with lucidity I’d not seen for decades, “Where is this place, John?”

Sitting there over the next hour in that restaurant, I told him nearly everything I knew of Jesus. He asked, “John, how do I get there?” That day he trusted Jesus, and then patiently waited for the day he would take Jim to the land where his mind would work again.

Arlene Ellis is another girl in the crowd. Freshman year she wore braces. But suddenly, today, this first day of school, in Spanish class at Washington High School, I cannot stop looking at her.

I’ve dated several girls before, but this is the first time I will realize I’m not a kid. Several evenings later I risk what seems my entire existence to call her.

This can go so wrong on so many levels. I might become a source of nearly legendary mocking and derision if I screw this up and word gets out. I’ve never risked anything like this.

Everything has to be exactly right for this call. First, I must find a window of time when my parents aren’t home, so I can have run of the family phone and adjoining pacing areas. I’ve written out a script of what I’ll say, with alternate sections depending upon her responses. Now, minutes before the call, a clumsy script rehearsal and a final edit. I have a song selected to play in the background.

If there is a god out there, I promise right now to devote my life to feeding lepers in Nepal, or whatever you’d like, if you’ll just cause her to hear me out when I call. I’m willing to follow any god out there who can make this happen. Do you hear me gods? I’m asking only for this one thing!

I’m nearly dry heaving, I’m so nervous. I’m continually shoving back the blinding anxiety, and the utter sense of my universal inadequacy. I dial all but the final number and hang up several times. I fear the first thing she’ll hear will be the sound of me clearing my throat. I fear she won’t recognize my name.

I dial. I hear the phone ring on her end. She answers. She sounds not unhappy I have called. Somewhere amid my prepared sounding patter, I do manage to slip in that it would be nice to “go get a soda together sometime or something … um, like to talk over the Spanish assignments.” She says she’d “like that.”

Now, to get out of the conversation without swearing or sneezing into the phone. I stumble off the call like a blindfolded man maneuvering over a gauntlet of flaming furniture.

I hang up. I am intact! She and I will be drinking a soda at the same table sometime in the near future. I did it! I am not a loser! I fist pump my way around the house for the next few minutes, shouting and doing something approximating dance.

In that short, clipped conversation, I become a different person. Over the next several years I will live with a confidence and sense of bearing I have not known before. We will now begin to tell our lives to each other on that phone, for hours, almost every evening. I soon realize I have the capacity to give and receive love. I’m being taught to articulately express affection and affirmation because I need to find exact words to convey the depth of what I am experiencing.

Those first two years are some of the most innocent, playful and winsome days of the first half of my life. I will not know love like this until I am introduced to Stacey Marie Pilger. By then I will be almost mature enough to begin to understand what to do with it.

So, that promise about devoting your life to whoever could pull it off? Well it wasn’t Zeus. I should mention, for the record, you won’t make good on your promise. You will ignore many more such promises before we get it right. I’ve never held you to them.

But you are learning incredible truth these days. You are learning to believe love is indescribably powerful—that it transcends all else. Later, your hungering for a love which refuses to leave when others’ loves do will draw you inexorably to me. In the meantime, enjoy. You will spend a lot of money at expensive ice cream shoppes and movie theaters. But you will learn you are lovable—that someone wants to be with you. You will learn you have much love to give and unique ways of expressing it.

When there is no other conflicting issue on the table, I will always defer to giving you the best experiences of joy available. I’m not who you have pegged me. I have loved you completely and perfectly from before the world began.

In the meanwhile, know this: nearly every high school guy resents and admires you for calling her first. Well played, young man, well played.

Pyracantha is nearly irrefutable proof of the existence of Satan. I believe it to be his personal plant of choice. In even the harshest climates it steadily matures into a sticker-hedge of death. I’m almost certain, as a boy, I witnessed a neighbor’s dachshund chasing a ball into the pyracantha … and never coming out. A tiny yelp and then eerie silence. Two hedges of it came with our Phoenix home purchase. Front yard and back. Picture green barbed wire, with inedible red berries.

Trimming it was part of my particular list of “chores.” Chores were at the center of the tension between my father and me during high school. He thought I should do them.

Especially during summer. I thought I should not be asked to do anything during summer break but stay out long after the streetlights came on.

I was to pick up the dog poop, clean the pool, make my bed, wash the car, mow the lawn, and keep up with the ever-advancing pyracantha. Nearly every day it was the same:

And so it went. My halfhearted keeping of chores, after enough nagging and threats.

One June morning, this all changed. Before he walked out the door for work, he found me. I was doing nothing, preparing for an entire day of doing nearly nothing.

He was wearing black dress slacks, a starched white shirt and a red tie, held to his shirt with a clip.

“John, I don’t tell you enough how much I care about you. You bring a lot of life and laughter to our home. Your mom and I are so proud of you. Do you know that?” Then he headed to the door, turning back to say, “If you want, when I get home, we could play some catch.”

Then he was off. So were my plans for the rest of the day. I still don’t know what happened. Did he take a parenting class the evening before? Regardless, almost involuntarily, I walked to our shed and pulled out our hedge trimmers. They were rusted and jammed. I had no gloves. I poured a jug of water and walked out into the Phoenix summer heat to tackle the hellish pyracantha.

I dug deep into that spreading vine of death. I reshaped that ignored mass of thorns into something almost resembling a manicured hedge. It took me almost all day. I didn’t care. I don’t think I’d ever worked so hard. My hands were blistered from the antique hedge trimmer and my arms were bleeding from picking up thorn-covered vines formed during the Hoover administration. I took garbage can after garbage can to the alley and mowed up the last scraps I couldn’t get by hand.

I was in my bedroom when I heard his ’62 Chevy station wagon turn into the carport. Mom greeted him at the door. “Jim, you have to come and see what John did today!” Through the mostly closed blinds on my bedroom window, I watched him walk out to inspect what I’d done.

Then, the reason I had cancelled a summer day with buddies. He smiled. I rarely got to see that smile. He was beaming. He was proud of his son. I was getting to be the son he described to me before he left for work.

A rebellious high school kid turned friend in one interchange. Though my dad didn’t have God as his motivation, something about being formed in the very image of God caused him to affirm and bless a son who less than deserved it. And that son found himself wanting to bring great joy to his father.

The moment I first see Koufax I want to be a great pitcher. I never worked at anything as hard. I give up all other sports by my junior year and concentrate on whatever I can do to become an All-State pitcher and help Washington High win a state title. In the offseason I run up mountains and lift weights. Most free moments I roll a ten-pound weight, attached with rope to a stick, up and down, to strengthen the muscles in my pitching hand. My parents allow me to build a mound in our back yard. I cement two beams sixty feet and six inches away and hang a mattress between them. I pitch thousands of baseballs into the square I draw onto it. I can still hear the thud of a fastball hitting that thrift-store mattress.

In my first six games I throw two no-hitters, a one-hitter, a two-hitter and two three-hitters. I’m striking out two batters an inning! As a lefthander, I’m averaging a pickoff a game. I dream about setting up a hitter with a high, inside fastball and punching him out with a low and away curve that will buckle his knees. I’m copying what I’ve watched Koufax do all those years—with his same high leg kick.

One June morning, I’m reading the sports page and I turn to the feature article titled, “The Arizona All-State Baseball Team.” I search for my name. … There it is.

My mom walks through the neighborhood with scissors to capture as many copies of the article as possible. Life feels about perfect this day. …

But, when you’re dreaming a dream, you often don’t see past the moment of its realization. You see it happening and imagine all manner of stupendous good following it. But it doesn’t always work like that. Even dreams coming true often carry an ugly asterisk next to them.

The Arizona All-State game in 1971 is played at the Cleveland Indians’ spring-training stadium. In the rows behind home plate are dozens of scouts with speed guns monitoring everything in front of them. I pitch second for the North team and don’t allow a hit over my two innings. I’m hoping I’ve done enough for someone to draft me.

After the game, a scout for the Giants finds me. “John, that was a mighty fine performance out there tonight. I’ve got to talk to some folks upstairs, but I think we’re going to take you in the draft next month.”

I stood there frozen … with my dad, some friends, and a scout for the San Francisco Giants! It seemed too good to be true.

He ended with the words, “All right, John Pierson, keep your nose clean. You’ll hear from us.”

The scout had mistaken me for John Pierson, my teammate from Washington High, who had also played in this game. The John Pierson who was once a close friend. The John Pierson who had recently stolen away my girlfriend.

By reflex I got out the words, “Um, I’m not John Pierson. I’m John Lynch.” “Oh, sorry. Could you point out John Pierson to me?”

As my friends found excuses to leave that moment, my dad and I began to make our way out from under the lights and into the dark neighborhoods where our car was parked. Nothing was spoken. But another layer of shame got added to the story, which begins with the words, “Lynch, there is something uniquely and particularly wrong with you.”

For the rest of my life, I have watched many versions of that story get played out. It kicks the wind out of you. If you know God, it can twist your picture of him.

As long as I believed God’s goal for my life should be painless and smooth, with only happy endings, I would live in a cognitive dissonance, which would make me pull back and protect myself. I can slip into dangerous thinking that if he’s good and powerful, our lives should be smoother and less messy than others. Bad guys should lose more often. Good guys, with a big curve and a dream should most often win. Sometimes it works that way. Often it does not. Not yet.

God apparently allows some of the pain of a fallen world to get through to us—believer or not. It’s what he does with the pain and bad endings that ultimately proves his love and goodness. If he is able to take all of the twisted mess that finds us and is somehow able to turn it all into our good, that would be something very amazing indeed. For all the accusation he has promised too much, this is exactly what he says he is doing. “I will cause all things to work together for good” … for the likes of us.

That night at the All-State game made no sense to me. How can something I worked this hard for end up more painful than having never tried anything at all?

His answer to this question will come decades after this game, only after I’ve trusted him with the answer.

John, I watch how hard you try to continue to draw near to me, even as I allow things into your life which utterly exasperate you. You’re clinging to the belief that I am fully for you, and care more about you than you do. Then something happens which seems to undermine it all … I know. I watch. It deeply hurts me to watch you experience such disappointment and a broken heart. You might try to let me off the hook by reasoning I’m not fully in control of your world. Such thinking might maintain a measure of your affection for me—like giving a pass for a grandfather who loves you but can’t always remember your name. But this lie will ultimately ruin our relationship. I am fully in control of your world. There is nothing that happens, doesn’t happen, refused, or delayed without me seeing it, or allowing it. I am in control of your life. And I love you more than you love you. My character cannot and will not do wrong. I take whatever your race has brought on, and I redeem, refashion, and rework it all into beauty beyond anything you could have possibly imagined. All things. Horrible things. Evil things. Chronic things. I decide what is allowed through and what it will accomplish. I decide what needs to be refashioned. But mostly I stand in the arena, when you cannot stand, defending you and protecting you. I do not lecture; I do not mock. What I do is love you, no matter how angry you are at me, no matter what you imagine in your heart about me. I enter into your pain more deeply than even you. This I can do. This I will always do. Until we are home together in the land where tears cease.

It was always about playing hard, and coming home tired with enough memories of glory to sustain our dreams. It was always about laughing hard and having a great adventure. When we were done with the day, we’d lie on our backs in cool grass, with our arms folded behind our heads, staring at clouds, and retelling to each other a version of a game much better than what actually happened. In my neighborhood, nobody talked about discipline or taking it seriously. But we played harder, enjoyed it more, and had each other’s back better than any organized team we will ever play on after it.

That’s why it hurt so badly to get trashed by a coach for enjoying it so much when I got to college.

I had scholarships to other schools after high school, but Arlene Ellis chose Arizona State University. So, without a scholarship and way over my head, I continued my boyhood dreams at ASU, under coach Bobby Winkles. He was the man! A legendary backwoods, tobacco-spitting, old-school coach, he had turned Arizona State from nearly intramural baseball to a program yearly competing for an NCAA national championship.

He liked me. He appreciated my passion and love of the game. He started me in center field one practice game. He rarely put pitchers in other positions. I hit the first pitch from Dale Hrovatt over the center field fence at Goodwin Stadium! Next inning, I misplayed a fly ball, and was back to pitching. But still! I don’t think I ever enjoyed playing for a coach as much.

I was surrounded by nationally recruited, blue-chip, flame-throwing sensations; most would go onto long major-league careers. I was now a junk-throwing local kid with a damaged shoulder and a memory of a fastball. I shouldn’t have tried to hang on. But I wasn’t ready to leave the game. I’d thrown some surprisingly good winter ball stints in relief. I still thought I’d make it back and would get drafted in late rounds.

But mostly, baseball was still fun to me. Warming up is nearly every ballplayer’s favorite part of the sport. The fifteen minutes before drills, batting practice, fielding, and inter-squad games. It was our refuge—from schoolwork, from responsibility, from the looming seriousness of life.

Each of us had warmed up thousands of times in ball fields all over the country. We knew that ball-hitting-glove sound like our own voices. It was therapy and a theme park all at once. This is where the best humor came out. We’d mock each other. We’d work on our invented knuckleballs. (All college ball players think they can throw a knuckleball). We’d turn our gloves inside out. We chewed tobacco and sang jingles from commercials. We’d talk trash about each other’s girlfriends. … And, in a raw and clumsy way, we learned to have each other’s back. We knew when to get serious. All of us did. But as time honored as any unwritten baseball rule, screwing around while getting loose has always been near the top.

In one of our routine team meetings, sitting on the grass in the outfield, the assistant coach wanted to talk about “discipline and taking things seriously.” He chose me as the scapegoat to make his point. He tore me apart in front of my friends and fellow ballplayers.

“Lynch, you think you’re so damned funny. You think everything’s a joke. You know how to get others to screw around, until my good players forget why we brought them here. Lynch, you’re like a cancer to a team. Did you all hear me? Players like Lynch are a cancer. They poison the water and others don’t even notice it. Well, that’s not the way we won a national championship when I played first base here, and it’s not the way we’re going to play ball now, dammit! So, Lynch, you decide what you are—a ballplayer or a comedian. … All right, everyone, get to work.”

It’s a uniquely horrible feeling to be shamed as an athlete. Something in your masculinity, in your very person gets diminished. The respect and hard-earned trust between ballplayers is experienced at every level. We were used to getting called out for not running hard on an infield popup. But none of us were prepared to have our personhood attacked. This coach knew what he was doing. He was ostracizing me from the rest of the team. Hanging out with me would risk becoming this coach’s next target.

That was the last day I would enjoy playing baseball. I would leave the game forever three weeks later.

John, I formed you to encourage community—to affirm, bless, enjoy, and bring out the best in others. When you run up against an insecure person who can coach only by threatening and belittling, your motive will always be misunderstood. And you will get hurt.

This moment will help develop a conviction you will teach for the rest of your life; people work best and hardest in a place where they know they are valued.

I am going to surround you with some strong friend, who will protect you as you model and teach this way of life.

None of this will help you much for about twenty years. What happened today will wound you. You will have no one to protect you. Until this moment, you have respected and obeyed even bad authority. But this will change you. It will give you increasing permission to mistrust all authority. You are about to enter a brutally hard time of your life.

I’m here. One day, you’ll understand I suffered under insecure authority which ultimately tried to destroy one who would threaten it with good. You’re in good company today. You just don’t know it yet.

By the way, that coach, he knows he’s wrong. He will go home after today’s practice and sit in front of a television set and know he’s wrong. You’ll be teaching this way of life to his sons and daughters. Hold on, kid.