This post is a tad long, "but the one who endures to the end" will discover a valuable spiritual insight.

Only baseball, among all of team sports, offers an opportunity for perfection. A perfect game is awarded a pitcher when he faces and retires twenty-seven opponents. Three up, three down, every inning for a minimum of nine innings. A pitcher is less than perfect if he allows a runner to safely get on base--by a hit, a base on balls, or a fielding error.

In the modern era of Major League Baseball, reckoned from 1903, some quarter of a million games have been played; as of 2013, there have been a scarce twenty-three perfect games. Two dozen per half-million. Perfection is rare.

One of the more remarkable gems was thrown by Dodgers legend Sandy Koufax in Los Angeles on September 9th, 1965 against the Chicago Cubs. As Koufax walked to the mound for his final inning of work, legendary broadcaster Vin Scully made a quick call to the studios of KFI with an unusual request.  

In those days, games were not routinely recorded. But Scully wanted Koufax to have the opportunity to share this moment with his unborn grandchildren. As a result, the audio and transcription of Scully's historic call of the ninth inning are readily available. 

That summer night in Los Angeles, perfection was achieved both by Koufax down on the mound and by Scully up in the booth. Here's a taste of perfection--Scully's description, with a spiritual lesson to follow:

* * * 

Three times in his sensational career has Sandy Koufax walked out to the mound to pitch a fateful ninth where he turned in a no-hitter. But tonight, September the 9th, nineteen hundred and sixty-five, he made the toughest walk of his career, I'm sure, because through eight innings he has pitched a perfect game...

Sandy back of the rubber, now toes it. All the boys in the bullpen straining to get a better look as they look through the wire fence in left field...A lot of people in the ballpark now are starting to see the pitches with their hearts...The time on the scoreboard is 9:44. The date, September the 9th, 1965, and Koufax working on veteran Harvey Kuenn...

You can't blame a man for pushing just a little bit now. Sandy backs off, mops his forehead, runs his left index finger along his forehead, dries it off on his left pants leg. All the while Kuenn just waiting...It is 9:46 PM. Two and two to Harvey Kuenn, one strike away. Sandy into his windup, here's the pitch: Swung on and missed, a perfect game!

[38 seconds of cheering; Scully is--characteristic of him in moments like these--silent.]

On the scoreboard in right field it is 9:46 PM in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of 29,139 just sitting in to see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit, no-run games. He has done it four straight years, and now he caps it: On his fourth no-hitter he made it a perfect game. And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flurry. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that "K" stands out even more than the O-U-F-A-X.

* * * 

One other performance on the field, somewhat forgotten in the shadow of Koufax's gig that night, contributed to what a 1995 poll of the Society for American Baseball Research concluded was the greatest game ever pitched. On the other side of the diamond, Bob Hendley, on the mound for the Cubs, himself took a no-hitter into the seventh inning. In the end, Hendley allowed just one hit--only two batters reached first base--and he lost by one unearned run.

Bummer of a night for a one-hitter.

The Apostle Paul, in Galatians 5:19-23, contrasted the deeds of the flesh (plural) with the fruit of the spirit (singular). Largely lost to our culture of rugged individualism--"faster, higher, stronger"--is that the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit reflect the nature of our relationships. The deeds of the flesh reflect a community plagued by "competitive striving," or self-referenced lives; the fruit of the spirit is indicative of a community blessed by "collaborative serving," or other-referenced lives.

Paul himself, though likely competitive by nature, devoted himself instead to collaboration in community. He declared to the Corinthians church, "For we dare not...compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise..." (2 Corinthians 10:12-13). 

How do you imagine you might have felt about your pitching performance if you were Cub pitcher Bob Hendley that night in September of '65?  

What measure do you tend to use when evaluating who you are and what you do?

What do your relationships suggest as to your focus in life: are you competitive or collaborative?

Where's the real victory?          

Postscript. Five days later Koufax and Hendley squared off in a rematch at Chicago's Wrigley Field. Hendley held the Dodgers to four hits and defeated Koufax and the Dodgers, 2-1. What's the learning?