Opening Day!

Wow, April is here, we are into Opening Day of Major League Baseball, and Little League, too. I came across this wonderful little book, and had to pass on some of my favorite passages:

A Prayer for the Opening of the Little League Season
by Willie Morris, First Voyager Books edition, 1999

It begins:

Dear Almighty God,

This is a prayer for all the kids of all races and creeds in the boundless
earthly springtime as baseball once more commences, as it has and will eternally
in the ordinance and charter of Thy inexorable seasons.

and continues:

Defend the little ballplayers when they drop flies or boot grounders, from the wrath of their fathers, for many are the fathers who fear not the timeless
injunction "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Forever shield the erring
boys from retributive daddies who know not even the Infield Fly Rule.

and my favorite:

Reward the faithful mothers as they transport their children to practice, launder their sullied uniforms, soothe their cuts and bruises, pacify their anxious qualms, and sustain them in triumph as in adversity with cheers and
acclamations from the bleachers, for theirs is rightfully the Kingdom of
Heaven.

Amen.