Blogging my thoughts:

Did you notice the gift that the Phillies gave the Giants with Hunter Pence? He gave all the Giants incredible spirit with his inspirational speeches. He told them to forget themselves, sacrifice their egos, and play just for the team and each other.

The Tigers manager, Jim Leyland, told his team to “forget the Detroit Tigers, represent yourself first and how you want to be perceived.” With that he pointed to individualism.

Now think of Sandoval, the Panda; Buster Posey, the comeback kid; Pagan, the Pagan angel; Brutus, the Blackbeard, Brian Wilson; his mean protégé, the whirling dervish, Romo; the clutch hitter Scutaro, who stands at the plate wondering what his bat is for, like Tim Lyncecum; the golden gloved Crawford and Blanco; with Hunter Pence, swinging his crazy choked-up bat at anything.

The Giants are all a bunch of characters, because true unity differentiates, while individualism produces uniform mediocrity and even failure.

I’ve always loved Teilhard de Chardin’s “True unity differentiates; it does not confound.” He thought that it was a false alternative to play the individual off against the group. True unity produces real and unique individuals as well as wonderful community. This unity has to be internal. Uniformity is external, forcing everybody to be the same and who knows where their hearts are.

There’s a little baseball theology!