Seeing The Whole Field

I absolutely love sports. In some ways, this love was inevitable. My Dad loved sports, and played quite a few. He played football and ran track in high school and in college. My brothers and I heard the tales of his athletic exploits so often that each of us can probably still recount them verbatim. My father also loved boxing. During my adolescent years there was a television show called The Wide World of Sports. Almost every Saturday there was a boxing match on, featuring a commentator with a mechanically mesmerizing voice named Howard Cosell.

But in retrospect, I think my father loved baseball best. My Dad spent his summers in Brooklyn, New York and would watch Jackie Robinson (the first African American to play for Major League Baseball) play for the Dodgers (The Los Angeles Dodgers used to be the Brooklyn Dodgers). We grew up in New York and eventually became fans of the New York Yankees. I’m not sure if my father loved the Yankees as a team as much as he loved a particular Yankee. The particular Yankee that he loved was Reggie Jackson. Reggie Jackson was the African-American star of the team who was constantly feuding with Yankee owner George Steinbrenner. I think my Father not only enjoyed Jacksons’ skills on the field, but his outspokeness off of it.

Watching a baseball game with my Dad was always an education.  He would point out the history behind a play, a player, or an obscure call. One evening as we were watching a game, he posed a question. He asked “do you know who the most important player on a baseball field is?” I don’t remember my answer. But I do remember that my answer was incorrect. He then answered his own question. He said “the most important position on the baseball field is the catcher.” When I asked why, I will never forget his response. He said that the most important player on a baseball team is the catcher because he is the only one who sees the whole field.  

All these years later, I have realized that my father was doing more than just sharing his knowledge of sports arcana. He was using sports to instill lessons on leadership and life. “Seeing the whole field” is one of the best lessons of life and leadership that he ever taught me. Cultivating the ability to “see the whole field” is incredibly helpful in all areas of life.

Unfortunately, most people suffer from tunnel vision. They are only focused on and concerned about their role, their issues, their concerns, or their responsibilities. If an issue does not directly impact them, most people do exactly what the two men did in one of the most powerful stories that Jesus ever told: they pass by on the other side.

The story is found in Luke 10:30-35. Here it is:

….A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road.. By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. The Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side. Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.”

The two “religious men” in the story didn’t see the whole field.  Helping the man wasn’t on their job description—so they assumed it wasn’t their responsibility. Their “position” did not require it. They were so narrowly focused on what they were supposed to do that they didn’t realize that there are larger issues and greater concerns that we should allow to interrupt our regular routines. It didn’t seem to occur to them that a badly bruised and bleeding man was a part of their “field.”  They couldn’t see past their position.

The hero of the story saw past his comfort, past his nationality, and past his prejudice. He saw another human being in trouble, so he stopped to help him. God is always trying to enlarge our perspective. To paraphrase the poet George Eliot, God’s great desire is that our “miserable aims that end with self” die in the “large and charitable air” of noble impulses, and that our better, larger and truer selves are birthed.

So here’s my question for you today: Do you see the “whole field” of the environments that you move in? Are you concerned as much about the company you work for as you are the job that you perform? How about the people that you deal with? Or the relationships that you are in? Consider this: I once heard a preacher say that if a plane crashes, it doesn’t matter if you sat in first class or in coach.