Is baseball like life?

My answer to the question that is the title of this column is a resounding, confident, “I don’t know!” But let’s talk a little baseball anyway.

As the years go by, I’ve learned that the answer to many questions that come my way is, “I don’t know.” And I’m feeling less and less sensitive about not knowing the answers to many aspects of life.

Last Thursday was “Opening Day” for Major League Baseball. (Play ball!) Last Sunday, I sat in a Sunday school class taught by a well known, in my circles, New York Yankees fan. In the course of the lesson, he posed the question: “When you move on to the next life, who would you like to meet?”

He named off a few names of friends and family who would be on his list. He then showed off a hardcover book titled, “Luckiest Man — The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig.” The teacher then announced that he would really like to meet the legendary Yankee first baseman if he could get the opportunity “on the other side.”

Nicknamed “The Iron Horse,” Gehrig played in 2,130 consecutive games. That was a record for 56 years until it was broken by Cal Ripkin Jr. in 1995. Gehrig died in 1941 at the age of 37 of what is now often known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, or ALS.

Lou got to a point where he removed himself from the team’s lineup as his illness wore him down. Two weeks later, in what some have called “The Gettysburg Address of Baseball,” Gehrig said this, knowing he was dying, in front of 60,000 fans on July 4, 1939:

“For the past two weeks, you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”

Most of his speech was about thanking people. He thanked his wife, parents, and other family members. He said, “When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that’s something.”

He thanked the Yankees’ rival team, “When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift — that’s something.” He thanked teammates, managers and everyone down to the groundskeepers.

When I think about it now, some of the attributes of Gehrig make me want to say that some of the world of baseball is how life ought to be. After “making his pitch” for meeting Gehrig, the teacher of the class on Sunday looked at me and wondered out loud, “What are you thinking, Merrill?”

My answer was, “Well, if you’re talking about Yankee players, I’d like to spend some time with Yogi Berra. He’s one of the most entertaining sources of quotes ever.”

How can anyone not love these “Yogisms?”

“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.”

“He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious.”

“Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.”

“Never answer an anonymous letter.”

In reality, Yogi was not the dumb dope that some have seemed to paint him as. Consider this:

He was one of the first in baseball to accept and welcome black players. He said “Whatever background or whatever you are, it doesn’t matter. Treat everybody the same, that’s how it should be.”

Many don’t know that Yogi put baseball on hold and served in World War II. As a Navy gunner’s mate he was involved in the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach in France. He was wounded in the hand by enemy fire and received the Purple Heart medal.

I guess many sports are like life. But baseball, I’m thinking now, may have more similarities than some sports. Like life, there are many ups and downs, successes and failures. Errors are made that are costly and embarrassing. Perfect games are very rare.

And, the baseball season is long. There are lots of games. I mean a lot of games — 162 for Major League Baseball. Compare that to 82 games for hockey (NHL) and basketball (NBA).

Here’s another thing. There’s no time limit on games. Here’s the example of the third game in the World Series of 2018. A home run was hit in the 18th inning, after seven hours and twenty minutes. This gave the win to the Dodgers over the Red Sox. The two teams used 18 pitchers and 46 players in that game. (The Red Sox eventually won the series in five games.)

I’ll leave it up to you, for now, to find your own metaphors of life in baseball. What I’ve offered here is a “spit in the ocean” of what could be said. And that’s why there’s an “ocean” of books and articles that put forth facts, opinions, and pontifications on the subject.

As for me, last Sunday, I left the church with the borrowed Gehrig book under my arm that the teacher generously wanted me to take. I read 20 pages before I went to bed. Now I have, I think, six books that I’m reading at the same time, back and forth.

This baseball book may get the inside track for my attention. Even though, a real life spy book, on an inter-library loan, “The Bureau and the Mole” has a time limit on it, unlike a baseball game.

Enjoy the baseball season Sanpete. With how the Jazz’ season has gone and with BYU’s exit from the NCAA Tournament, I’m just about ready to turn the page on basketball.

Even though I still have the Houston Cougars as the champs on my NCAA bracket. Cooper Flagg and Duke aren’t invincible — or are they?

— Merrill