My Baseball Addiction

For many months now I have been enjoying Breslev Israel's VOD lectures and especially Rabbi Lazer Brody's emuna broadcasts and his mini-lessions on the weekly Torah Portion. There's something uncanny about them. In particular, during one recent lecture, The Charm of the Ibex, Rabbi Lazer gave advice to a young man who loved basketball. I felt that this was a message from Heaven intended for me, personally.
 
You see, that very morning (Friday), I had faced a huge emuna challenge: Do I listen to the live audio broadcast of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game from the very beginning (2am)? Or do I wake up as planned at 3:30am (The night before I went to bed at 8:30pm, as usual) and listen to the 2nd half only?
 
I’m sure you noticed what I didn’t ask – i.e. whether I should just skip the game altogether. That’s because I have an arrangement with Hashem, going back over a decade from when my husband was sick with cancer and watching the Dodgers, or more specifically, listening to Vin Scully. You see, Vinny is like an old friend whose familiar voice of calm comfort is something that I so desperately needed as a widow on my own. After my husband died and the care of our four children (then all teenagers) fell onto my shoulders, Vinny’s G-d-fearing storytelling encouraged and supported me while I helped my children regain their footing. As we moved forward, my children with their lives, and me with my life’s mission, my arrangement with Hashem changed as I climbed the ladder of holiness: First, to do Hashem’s work first and watch the games later on VOD during my down-time. This year, and in order to guard my eyes, the arrangement became one of listening to Vinny on the audio version, only.
 
Right image courtesy of PhotoWorks/Shutterstock.com
 
I know our arrangement may end after this year: Scully is 87 years old. How much longer can he keep it up? I know, too, that Hashem has already brought the “cure to the disease” (of going without Vinny): Rabbi Lazer, his calming voice and his wonderful, Scully-like storytelling ability.
 
Anyway, back to my story: I found myself waking up at 2:00am, an hour-and-a-half before the alarm. I got out of bed, rationalizing that since it was Friday, I could take a nap in the afternoon before Shabbat and that I could make productive use of the extra time by doing housework while listening to the game, which is what I did.
 
In a happenstance that I think now was just for me, Hashem caused those Dodgers to play one of their most forgettably worst games ever: 3 errors on defense, mental errors on the base-paths, hitting into double-plays.
 
The pain of the lousy game carried over into my morning prayers: tefilot hashahar, psukei dzmirah, the shemah, shemonah eshreh. I'm trying to pray, but all I'm thinking about is baseball! I arrived at Hashiveni Avinu and remembered ruefully our Sages’ teaching that Hashem takes a person in whatever direction he or she desires to go. Then at S’lach na Avinu I silently apologized for expanding my special arrangement beyond its true borders: the game I listened to was an ‘away’ game on the East Coast…Vin Scully wasn’t even broadcasting; he only calls games on the West Coast! At re'eh be’anyenu v’revah revanu I silently pleaded for an explanation of why defeating the baseball-loving Yitzhar Hara – the evil inclination – had become so difficult.
 
Then later that morning as I resumed the Shabbat cooking while listening to Rabbi Lazer's lecture, he told that young man he has to stop straddling two worlds, Torah and basketball. I felt in my soul that Hashem, through Rabbi Lazer, had provided me the answer to my prayer.
 
So thank you, Breslev Israel, Rabbi Shalom Arush and Rabbi Lazer Brody for being Hashem’s mouthpiece to help me understand where I was going off the path. The lesson is an important one, and applicable to many aspects of my life right now.