A Foul Ball and Profiles in Character

May be you missed it if you have no interest in baseball, but the story of a baseball-loving father who loved his daughter more is a classic, perhaps one of its kind in all sports history.

At a baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Washington Nationals, Steve Monforto viewed the game from an upper deck with his three-year old daughter, Emily. As every attendee knows, snaring a foul ball at a big league game is an experience few sports enthusiasts ever enjoy. In the fifth inning, a towering foul came to Monforto as nearby watchers cheered. He handed the captured prize ball to young Emily who, following some instinctive urge, tossed it away toward the field. For a brief second, Dad looked surprised, even stunned, and then swept up his little girl and hugged her. TV cameras caught the drama and aired it repeatedly making it a top news story.

Both the father’s and daughter’s reactions are profiles in character. Dad could have scolded his daughter but, realizing what she didn’t realize as a three-year old, he hugged her. Later he said, "I didn’t want her to think she had done something wrong." When given the ball, the little girl seemed instantly focused on returning the errant ball to its rightful owners.

Whatever the details, the incident is etched in both the dad’s and daughter’s minds, and their quick reactions provide entertaining but abiding lessons for us all. Monforto overcame unexpected disappointment with a hug, and his love overcame an unknown mistake. (As a sweetener, the Phillies came by his upstairs seat and gave him a replacement ball.) When Emily grows to womanhood, she will remember her father’s love and pass it on to succeeding generations.

And the dad is assured his daughter is a returner of whatever she concludes belongs to someone else—in this case, players on the field who lost their ball. That too, my have been an instant reflection of her dad’s character training. As Mike Huckabee repeatedly says, "It is never right to do wrong nor wrong to do right."

God’s Word covers such parental influence in numerous verses. Solomon said in Proverbs 22:6, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." New Testament fatherly advice includes Ephesians 6:4, "And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." Hebrews 12:8-11 adds, "Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."

Thanks Steve and Emily for giving us a delightful snapshot of love and honesty in a hateful and crippled world.

Dave Virkler