There's no crying in baseball, we're told.  Not even if your team loses (or when, in the case of recent Texas Rangers' teams).  Not even if your favorite player gets injured.  Not even if the gorilla sitting behind you steals a foul ball from your first-grader, a tragedy which happened to us years ago.  Not even if a shattered bat torpedoes through the air and impales you.  Well, maybe then.

Today's New York Times tells us that baseball's safety and health advisory committee is discussing the future of maple bats.  Since they were first introduced on the major league level in 1997, they have become the favorite of 60% of players (40% still use ash).  But they seem to break more frequently, endangering players and fans (they would be a threat to umpires as well, but no one seems to care).

Officials are discussing other options for protecting fans, such as extending nets to the first and third base dugouts.  People who sacrifice their first-born children to pay for these seats may not want their view obstructed, however.  They may also tighten the mesh in existing nets behind home plate to keep out bat fragments, but that would obscure the view of people who sacrifice both their children to pay for those seats.  I would have thought that a baseball game would be the safest place on earth, so long as you don't go on dollar hot dog night.  I guess I was wrong.

Where could I go to be free from all danger?  I'm typing this essay at 7:30 a.m. sitting in the study of my house, completely safe from flying bat fragments.  But a brown recluse spider could crawl out from my desk and bite me, leading to months of treatment and therapy.  That happened to a friend recently, and was not pretty.  I could sit in the back yard to finish the essay, but I saw a wasp out there this morning and he didn't look happy.  Wherever you are reading these words, you're not immune from danger.  Flying bats fragments come in the form of lightning strikes, car wrecks, heart attacks, and so on.  Now aren't you glad you opened today's email?

There's only one safe place in the universe.  Jesus identified it when he said of his followers, "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:28).  To get to you, flying bats have to get through him.  So long as you dwell in the shelter of the Most High, you will rest in the shadow of the Almighty (Psalm 91:1).  When hard times come, you'll have the help of God himself.

When bats fly at you today, you can duck or you can pray.  Choose wisely.

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