02.01.2010    Michael Fox CPCC, founder of m�agine!, is a professional coach and trainer, author and creative artist, whose work has been featured throughout the world. Michael is a Certified Practitioner of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.� Do you know someone who might benefit from our weekly email?    sac 9...    Before we can discuss "sac 9," a little context might be helpful... Yes, it's about baseball--and, ultimately, about life. First, baseball is--as is the Divine Narrative of scripture--an unfolding and unanticipated, sometimes chaotic, drama of reconciliation and redemption--a Homeresque story of leaving and returning home. The individual and the team. Law and grace. Hits and misses. Runs and errors. Players enter and leave a game's narrative, never to return. Second, baseball is timeless; there's no clock in baseball. In fact, as if in spite of the clock and time itself, the game of baseball moves around the bases counterclockwise. A baseball game could, in theory, extend without end into extra innings. James Penrice, author of Crossing Home, has observed: "Just outside the stadium walls buses are operating on schedules, workers are punching clocks, kitchen timers are running, alarm clocks are being set. Yet inside these walls players and fans have crossed into a dimension where time disappears, where our finite world and world of the infinite cross" (p. 28). And, third, only baseball chronicles each game so methodically that a game's narrative can be relived, unedited, from the scorecard. A scorecard employs an elegant shorthand--simple enough for a child to grasp, comprehensive enough for a statistician to employ--to record every detail of a game... Which brings us to the significance of "sac 9"... This simple notation from a baseball scorecard--though isolated from its context--yields remarkable detail. The game's score is close, perhaps in the late innings. At least one runner's on base, most likely at third. There are less than two out in the inning. The batter lifts a fly ball deep to right field. The ball's swallowed up by the fielder's glove; the runner at third sprints home and slides into the plate midst a cloud of dust, just before the ball, hurled from right field, finds its mark in the catcher's glove. All under the wary eye of the pitcher, who's standing between the catcher and the backstop, just in case. But, oddly enough, this post isn't about scoring. It's about sacrifice... Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone...Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity." (John 12:24-25, NLT). Paul testified of Jesus, "...have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant..." (Philippians 2:5-8, NIV). In baseball--as in the Divine Narrative--the sacrifice of the one for the many is honored as virtue; indeed, among all sports, only baseball statistically recognizes the value of sacrifice--in the form of either a fly ball to the outfield or a bunt to the infield. To paraphrase an anonymous scribe, if the home run is the heroic body of baseball, the sacrifice is it's self-effacing soul. As one has said, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down a bunt for his friends." That's a paraphrase, but you get the message. How much might you rely upon personality and power, rather than character and presence? Why is a reliance upon personality and power a difficult place from which to live? What does sacrifice look like to you? How does it show up in your life? Or not? Where's the place to forward and deepen the learning? Michael Fox m�agine! 530/613.2774 407 Myrtle Drive Farmerville, LA, USA 71241   In addition to personal and professional coaching, m�agine! specializes in spiritual transformation coaching, employing its proprietary models --Values, Vision, Voice and Heart, Soul, Mind & Strength-- as well as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator� curriculum published by CPP, the People Development People. Michael's books include  Complete in Christ, Complete in Christ Spiritual Transformation Workbook, and Biblio�files. Coaching fees are based upon a sliding scale. Contact us for details. For additional information, visit our website at maginethepossibilities.net. Limited scholarships are available for spiritual transformation coaching. On the flip side, if you are able, please inquire about opportunities to fund scholarships for those who cannot afford coaching fees. View our archives!