"Perfection at the Plate"

At this time in our lives, the values of kindness, generosity, “heart awakening,” of love, present themselves in bold, beautiful, entrancing colors to use as we paint the canvasses with Life.

We have always had a choice of living between two worlds. One is a “you or me” world, which is dangerous and filled with fear, competition, divisiveness, and scarcity, win/lose, me, me, me. The other world, the “you and me” world, is a world of collaboration, gratefulness, sufficiency, partnership, and honor for, and celebration of Life…a world of “both/and.”

May this story—yes, another baseball story -- move you as deeply as it recently touched me. It offers a visual story of young men choosing to create a “you and me world.” While the story has been around a long time, it only recently crossed my reading path through someone I respect, and I think the time is appropriate to share it with you now. Any time we can inspire (“breathe the breath of life”) into one another, let us do so.

This story is called “Perfection at the Plate”

At a fund-raising dinner for a Jewish Center for Special Education, a school that serves children with learning disabilities, a father delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all those who attended. After acknowledging the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out,

“Where is the perfection in my son Shaya? Everything God does is done with perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children do. My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do. Where is God’s perfection?”

The audience sat silent and pained.

Then the father continued, answering his own question with something like -- “When God brings a child like Shaya into the world – a child who is mentally and physically disabled, the perfection that he seeks lives in the way other people treat that child.”

He then told the following story about his son Shaya:

One afternoon, Shaya and his father walked past a park where some boys, whom Shaya knew, were playing baseball. Shaya asked, "Do you think they will let me play?"

Shaya's father knew that his son was not at all athletic and that most boys would not want him on their team. But Shaya's father also understood that if his son was chosen to play it would give him a comfortable sense of belonging. Shaya's father approached one of the boys in the field and asked if Shaya could play. The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates. Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said, "We are losing by six runs, and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning."

Shaya's father was ecstatic as Shaya smiled broadly. Shaya was told to put on a glove and go out to play short center field. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shaya's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shaya's team scored again, and now, with two outs and the bases loaded with the potential winning run on base, Shaya was scheduled to be up. Would the team actually let Shaya bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shaya was given the bat. Everyone knew that it was all but impossible because Shaya didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, let alone hit with it.

However, as Shaya stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shaya should at least be able to make contact. The first pitch came, and Shaya swung clumsily and missed. One of Shaya's teammates came up to Shaya, and together, they held the bat and faced the pitcher, waiting for the next pitch.

The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly toward Shaya. As the pitch came in, Shaya and his teammate swung at the ball, and together, they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shaya would have been out, and that would have ended the game.

Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to right field, far beyond the reach of the first baseman. Everyone started yelling, "Shaya, run to first. Run to first." Never in his life had Shaya run to first. He scampered down the baseline wide wide-eyed and startled. By the time he reached first base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman who would tag out the still-running Shaya.

But the right fielder understood what the pitcher's intentions were so he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman's head. Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second." Shaya ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled the bases toward home. As Shaya reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran to him, turned him in the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third." As Shaya rounded third, the boys from both teams ran behind him, screaming, "Shaya! Run home." Shaya ran home, stepped on home plate, and all 18 boys lifted him on their shoulders and made him the hero as he had just hit a "grand slam" and won the game for his team.

"That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, "those 18 boys reached their level of God's perfection."

---

Shaya’s father said that Shaya didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten that day.

In these turbulent and ever changing times, this is our work. May we keep each other’s torches burning “as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations,” as the great playwright George Bernard Shaw says, as each of us strides into the world, being a stand for creating a “you and me” world.

What is the work that is yours to do?

---

The story quoted above is “Perfection at the Plate,” a work written by Rabbi Paysach Krohn, and appeared in his 1999 book, Echoes of the Maggid, a “Chicken Soup for the Soul” type book. Rabbi Krohn says that the story is true and that he was told it by Shaya’s father, a friend of his.

---

If you are inspired by and/ or contributed to this post, I invite you to share it with others that you care about through email or social media.