A forfeit is hard to take

It was a tough loss to take. Our church, Christ the King, is still new to the world of local church league softball athletics. While we have fielded a few teams, we have never had a winning season. In fact, while we have consistently improved, we have been pretty much in the cellar at the end of every season.

Until this year. This year, for the most part, it has been coming together and, of the eight games played prior to last Tuesday, we had won five. But the loss recorded last Tuesday, dropping the Warriors to 5-4 with one game left to play, was especially distasteful. We forfeited.

A softball team on the field consists of 10 players, but a team is allowed to play with nine. We had eight men suited up and ready to play. We were one man short and, at the end of what is our best season ever, we dropped the game to a team we defeated 16-9 a month ago.

Normally, 15 or so men show up ready to play, so no one even thought a forfeit was possible. We always have some men to have to work or be out of town on business, and I suppose that it wasn’t possible that night to get the number needed to play. But I suspect that there were a few that could have come and didn’t, thinking they weren’t needed — thinking that one player wouldn’t make a difference. But it did.

Being well past my prime, while I am almost always present at the game, I usually — as in practically never — don’t play. But most of the time I toss a jersey in the car along with athletic shoes just in case the team is desperate.

They were desperate this past Tuesday but I left my jersey and shoes in the closet. I didn’t think one player would make a difference — but it did. We forfeited a game we could have — should have — won because we were one player short.

One person makes a difference. We really don’t think it’s the truth, but it is. I read a story recently about a police officer that made a traffic stop on an interstate highway. The offender began to fight the officer and, suddenly, the simple stop was a matter of life and death.

Hundreds of motorists whizzed by, seeing the conflict, but continuing on their way.

One man, however, and only one man, saw the battle, stopped his car and gave assistance to the officer. The bad guy was taken into custody, the officer was spared injury, and life was preserved — all because of one man.

A pioneer pastor planted a church in a difficult area of the country. Sometimes, only one person would show up for the service in those early days. Yet, later the pastor credited that lone soul with the success of the church.

“Had he not been there when no one else was, I would have become despondent and probably would have closed the church,” the pastor related. Now there are many more in that church and a number of people are thriving spiritually. All because of one man who came to church when no one else did.

One man has the ability to turn the tide of a battle, one woman can be that voice of encouragement that causes a child to have hope in the midst of despair, one church member in the pew on a Sunday might be the one person who will change another’s life or who will give a gesture or a word that will keep a minister from resigning, one person can spell the difference between victory and defeat.

One teenager who might have befriended a boy that was seen as an outcast might have prevented the massacre at Columbine from ever happening.

One person can make a difference, whether in athletics, in war, or simply in life. In the broader scheme of things, a win or a loss in the church softball league is irrelevant.

But a larger lesson can be learned because there are larger issues at stake. We matter, we count, and we make a difference, both the collective “we” and the individual “one.” And the lesson is this: when the “one” is absent, the “we” suffer.