Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 140 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.
Today’s excerpt is from Chosen to Live by Jerry Schemmel with Kevin Simpson. Schemmel was a survivor of the crash of United Flight 232 on July 19, 1989. At the time of the crash, he was the deputy commissioner of the Continental Basketball Association. Schemmel is now the play-by-play voice of the Denver Nuggets and the Billings Mustangs.
This passage takes place after the crash. Schemmel is dealing with survivor guilt and how it is affecting his marriage. His wife has just said six words to him. Those six words have knocked the breath out of him and he is trying to figure out how to respond.
Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.It was as if she had thrown me some kind of lifeline, tossed it into the water as a last resort, the last thing she could think of that might help me. And I hesitated to grab it.
Anchored to the Midwestern ideal of stubborn self-sufficiency, I could not immediately bring myself to accept her words. She had always displayed strength of a quiet and confident kind, and it was never any secret that her spiritual faith was its foundation. But, I don’t think I’d ever heard her say it so directly, and with a tone that sounded more like a challenge than a simple statement of fact.
Over the previous months I had gradually backed her against a wall, draining her of compassion, and then she’d arrived home from work one night to find me almost despondent in the rocking chair, demanding more. She responded with perhaps all she had left.
“I get my strength from God.”
The pure truth was undeniable, but I wanted to fight off her challenge. It seemed to demand an acknowledgement of defeat. Still, I listened to what Diane said, again and again in my head, until the voice became less and less hers and more and more my own. I had nothing left to throw at the problem and Diane had just flung me her own last, best hope. I closed my eyes and bowed my head.
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