“Brother, teach us about prayer.” asked a young man who was sitting in a small group with the monk.

“First, I must tell you a story,” said Brother Po.

“Once, here in America, where baseball is the pastime, there was a high school coach who loved to teach his team the art of batting. Every day at practice, after they had stretched, warmed up, played catch, fielded ground balls, and chased pop flies, he would ask them to sit down on the bleachers and he would teach them the intricate details of hitting a baseball. He always taught them with a bat in his hands.

He talked to them about how to choose the right bat. He told them the best bats with the best wood were the ones with the tightest grain on the barrel of the bat. He told them how the label of the bat should always face up. He taught the advantages and disadvantages of choking up on the bat and the advantages and disadvantages of swinging from the bottom of the handle. He told them about how to hold their hands, where their knuckles should be, how tightly to squeeze the bat, whether the bat should be still or moving when waiting for the pitch, whether the top of the bat should be pointing skyward or over their shoulder. He talked about whether the back elbow should lay quietly against their side or out parallel to the ground like a chicken wing.

He talked about the feel of the bat in the flesh of the hand versus when wearing batting gloves. He talked about the pluses and minuses of using pine tar. He talked about the importance of doing the same thing every time they came to the plate, developing their own routine, their ritual he called it. He talked about wearing their pants long for freedom of movement or up high just below the knee to shrink the strike zone. He taught about how much to bend the knees, how to position their feet, and how far to stride toward the pitcher when it came time to swing. He told them about the advantages and disadvantages of standing toward the back of the box and toward the front of the box, close to the plate or away from the plate. He taught them how to shift their weight as the ball approached to maximize power, the importance of opening their hips when swinging. He taught them about quick hands, about how to generate bat speed, about different angles of their swing depending on the count, the inning, and the score. He told them how to position their head, where to focus their eyes, how to pick up the spin of the ball and determine in a split second if the pitch was a fast ball, curve, change up, or slider.”

And as Brother Po talked those gathered around him hung on his every word like eager ballplayers on a bleacher.

“He taught with great precision,” said Brother Po. “There was no detail too small to address. He always taught with great enthusiasm and didn’t tolerate his players not paying attention. He gave them homework to read some of the classics on batting. Occasionally, he would give them a pop quiz as they sat in the bleachers. Often he would begin talking when the sun was low in the sky, lose track of time, and finish when it was dark and time to go home.

At the end of every season, he had the most knowledgeable players. Each one could talk on and on about the finer points of hitting a baseball. Tony Gwynn would have been impressed. Ted Williams would have been proud. But when it came time to hit a baseball in an actual game, sadly, not many of his ballplayers could. Every year his teams finished dead last. Every year they had the lowest team batting average in the league. But, man, they knew a lot about batting.

And that is what I know about prayer,” said Brother Po.”

~ Dan Miller, © 1994, revised 2017.

ARTWORK: (Top) Batting Third Playing Second Base, by Lou Grant; (Next) Henry “Pop” Lloyd by Kadir Nelson