I come from a religious tradition that has generally eschewed miracles. While we can't put an exact Scripture on it (never a good start), we have had this mindset that, ok, God gave 'extra' power to the apostles, who could give it to somebody else, who then couldn't give it to anybody else, and so miracle power died out in the first century. I know, it's a rather lame piece of reasoning, but many of the frauds and charlatans of our world have driven us to a point that we think that God won't (can't?) do miracles today.
Even as this was how I was raised, I was never fully comfortable with this line of thinking. Why do we pray? And even if God chooses not to act in a certain way, does that really mean that this is always and forever the case? And why do we even bother preaching from the gospels when Jesus (or elsewhere when somebody else) does something miraculous, if those stories have absolutely nothing to say to us today? Miracles may not happen as we imagine that they will, but surely God can do whatever he chooses, right?
I say all these very serious things to lead up to something that, in the grand scheme of things, really isn't that important. Last night, the Kansas City Royals won the World Series. The Royals had endured almost a quarter century of mismanagement, bad luck, lack of money, and simply bad ballplayers to come back and win it all. Since they had won 30 years ago I had come to believe that likely they would never do this again in my lifetime. I wanted to believe, but so many years of watching some really bad baseball teams had sapped most of my belief. Decent prospects like Angel Berroa and Carlos Febles turning to stone overnight. Better-than-average players like Johnny Damon and Zack Grienke fleeing to greener pastures. And lots and lots of Jimmy Gobble, Mark Redman, and Runelvys Hernandez blowing leads and causing us to hide between our fingers.
Even as the team got better in recent years I never fully could buy into it, never truly believe that this was actually happening. Surely, I thought, they'd find a way to blow apart. This season in September they were something like 12 games ahead in the division and I kept thinking, yeah, we might find a way to totally collapse and miss the playoffs. A near-lifetime of horrors had convinced me that something bad was going to happen. The team played poorly throughout most of September, though luckily the rest of the division was horrible. We made the playoffs, then almost gagged it away against the Astros.
It's here that I need to stop and say that miracles (of a sort) made this team win a championship. They won 11 games in the postseason, 8 of them in comebacks. Several of those comebacks came against really good pitchers and involved really bad errors by the other team. You can say all you want about how 'they kept pressing and pressing' or how 'they would never, ever give in', but seriously, watch these games. A ball sneaks under the glove of the NLCS hero. A lazy fly ball falls between Goins and Bautista. Multiple huge-run innings late in games in which not a single ball was hit hard. How else can you explain this but to think that the natural order of things has somehow been fiddled with?
The skeptic in me is already thinking about how this won't last. People still died and were suffering in the 'age of miracles', and I'm guessing it will be sooner rather than later that the Royals will stink again. Players will leave, new players won't be as good, and the natural order of things will make it where balls don't slide under gloves or fall between three fielders.
I get it. But for one month miracles were real again.
