Bread of Life baseball

Last updated on: November 8, 2007 at 5:15 pm by Fred Clark

Bread of Life baseball 2007-11-08T17:15:53-05:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I’ve been reading David Kuo’s Tempting Faith, which brought the following to mind. I’ve also been a bit hard on my evangelical brethren lately, so this story might help to round out the portrait. …

– – – – – – – – – – – –

The first time I went to Mrs. Washington’s house I didn’t know it was Mrs. Washington’s house. I thought of it as Darren’s house.

Darren was a classmate of mine in third grade, a quiet kid from Plainfield who spoke so little at school that it wasn’t until we got to his house that day in the spring that we learned nobody called him Darren. His brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, neighbors and friends all called him “Wheatie.” So from then on that’s what we called him too.

I spent a good bit of the next seven summers in and around that house on West Seventh Street, but in all that time I was never fully able to sort who was who in the huge supporting cast of family and adopted family. All I knew for sure was what I learned within five minutes of arriving there: This was Mrs. Washington’s house and she was in charge. She was in charge of the whole block, it seemed.

The houses in that part of Plainfield were all big old mansions that dated back to a time when Plainfield was where you’d move to get up and out of Newark, after Newark was no longer where you’d move to get up and out of New York. The mansions had all become multi-family homes, each with anywhere from four to eight mailboxes. The one exception was Mrs. Washington’s house, which was home to a single family, but an extended family with more people living there than anywhere else on the block — anywhere else I’d ever seen.

Mrs. Washington was also in charge of Bread of Life Ministries, Inc., a storefront church that did a little of everything. Their latest project was a baseball team for the kids on the block. Bread of Life only had a half-dozen or so kids lined up though, so Wheatie had invited us, his classmates from Timothy Christian School, to help fill out the roster.

The Bread of Life Bulldogs were an odd mix that first year. Half of us were white kids from Piscataway, shuttled to and from games in station wagons by our parents who sat in the stands and cheered us on. The other half of the team were kids from the block. Their parents didn’t have station wagons, so they all piled into Buck’s Impala for the long drive out to Warinaco Park where the county rec league games were played. I don’t think we won a single game that first year, but we had a lot of fun.

By the following summer, word had gotten out all over Seventh Street and Bread of Life had enough kids signed up to field two teams. Most of my classmates from Timothy had joined leagues closer to home, with nicer practice fields. Or they were playing soccer.

I stayed on because I liked my coaches and my teammates, and because I loved baseball. Probably more important, I stayed on because my dad loved baseball. Buck and the rest of my coaches were baseball smart. They taught us to turn two, to hit the cut-off man, to back up on every play, to never make the third out at third base — all things my dad also felt it was necessary for me to know.

What really sealed it, though, was that our pitching coach Chuck (who was, I think, married to one of Wheatie’s older sisters) was Joe Black’s nephew. That meant nothing to me — as far as I knew at that point, the Dodgers had always played in Los Angeles. I had no memory of the unhittable rookie who led Brooklyn to the National League pennant and beat the Yankees in Game 1 of the 1952 World Series. But my dad did, so as far as he was concerned, this was the team for me.

That worked out well for Bread of Life, since my dad also drove a van and came to play an invaluable role in the Bread of Life League as its semi-official chauffeur. In recognition of that he was given a plaque that read “MVP.” That plaque hung on the wall of his office, next to his law degree, until the day he retired.

I said Bread of Life League because by the third summer, that’s what it was. With enough kids for four teams, we no longer played in the county rec league.

By my final year in BOL baseball, there were more than 70 kids from the neighborhood involved. We couldn’t all fit in Buck’s Impala and my dad’s van anymore, so they had raised the money to buy an old school bus, which they let us kids paint. (Yeah, it was pink — you got a problem with that?)

By that point the league also included a handful of prep-school kids, serious ballplayers who left the manicured stadiums they had been playing on to join us at Roosevelt Park, with its curfew and weeds and broken glass, because Bread of Life had a reputation for serious baseball. (“Don’t feel bad,” Hector would say whenever I returned to the bench after making an out. “You’re still the fifth-best white guy in the league.” There were four.)

The last time I went to Mrs. Washington’s house, I didn’t recognize it. It was almost 10 years later, after I had graduated college and moved to Pennsylvania. I was back in Jersey visiting my folks, and while I was there I’d signed up for a Habitat for Humanity cleanup day in Plainfield. I was teamed up with a couple of older men and they dropped us off somewhere on West Sixth Street with work gloves and trash bags. We were supposed to work our way down the block, up the alley and back around. They’d pick us up in an hour, they said.

I didn’t realize where we were until we made the turn onto Seventh and there it was. Mrs. Washington’s house looked run-down. The front yard — where we had played pickle waiting for the caravan to leave for practice — was overgrown and strewn with litter. There were six mailboxes by the front door.

This wasn’t Mrs. Washington’s house anymore. This wasn’t Mrs. Washington’s block anymore.

An old man sat on the front porch next door, so I asked him what happened to Mrs. Washington and her family, what happened to Bread of Life Ministries, Inc.? “They all moved south a few years ago,” he said. Did he know where?

“No, but I sure miss them.”

evangelicals

Previous Post

November 7, 2007

Best practices

Next Post

November 9, 2007 Looking to Louie

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does the Hebrew word 'Ruach' mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Strength Spirit/Breath Fire Water