As a baseball fan, my allegiance has been with the San Francisco Giants throughout most of my life (a connection that started when I was playing Little League baseball). But I have a great affection for Vin Scully, the legendary broadcaster for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He sat in the booth tonight for the very last time, ironically calling a game between the Dodgers and the Giants. At the age of 88, after a career that has spanned 67 years, Scully is retiring.
In terms of sportscasters (not just baseball, but all of sports), Scully is the last of the great storytellers. The trend of today’s sportscasters is to focus on stats and the mechanics of the game. Scully told the stories of the players—where they grew up, where they went to school, how they found their way to playing big league baseball. And he had the most amazing knack for not missing a single detail of the game as it unfolded, even as he was regaling you with historical nuggets and player profiles.
It may not be such a coincidence that another great storyteller is retiring.
As a young man, I never felt enticed to listen to the radio broadcasts of Garrison Keillor on his show A Prairie Home Companion. I just assumed his audience was more represented by my parents’ (or even my grandparents’) age demographic. But back in the late ‘90s, as I was logging thousands of miles every month as an itinerant musician and worship leader, I began to catch his show occasional on a Saturday night. Before I knew what was happening, I was sucked into the lives of his fictional characters and all of the little details that made the little town of Lake Woebegone seem like such a real place.
A favorite memory: On a Saturday evening I was traveling from middle Tennessee back to Virginia, due to begin a church conference the following morning. My companion was a young guitarist who was probably ten years younger than me. As we crossed the Virginia border, I picked up an NPR station on my truck radio just as Garrison Keillor was beginning his Tales From Lake Woebegone monologue. My young traveling partner looked at me skeptically. “Just give it a chance,” I said with a grin. Within a few minutes, we were both laughing out loud—and moments later, we were swallowing tears.
As these iconic figures—Scully and Keillor—bid farewell, I truly hope the art of storytelling isn’t riding off into the sunset with them.
One of my favorite aspects of the gospel of Matthew is when Jesus switches his teaching style from spiritual instructor (the Sermon on the Mount) to storyteller (the Parables). Although scholars disagree, most seem to believe this change had to do with Jesus’ intent to communicate clearly to those who truly believed in him. To those who believed in Jesus as the way to the Father, to the truth, and to everlasting life, these were the people who understood the meaning of the parables he told. Those who did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah found only utter nonsense in his stories. And the irony is not lost on me that this clueless group tended to be more educated and supposedly more spiritually enlightened than the crowds Jesus turned his attention to in the latter days of his earthly ministry.
It’s akin to modern baseball fans who can rattle off an amazing litany of stats—the average throwing velocity of their favorite pitcher, the number of runs a player has batted in, how many stolen bases, how many home runs. Statisticians are even measuring how hard, how fast, and how far a home run ball travels from the crack of the bat to the nether reaches of the stadium. But what does all of that mean without the story? When Kirk Gibson hit his home run in the 9th inning of the first game of the 1988 World Series, does it really matter how fast that ball traveled out of Dodger Stadium? What truly mattered was it won the game—and an aging hero who could barely hobble around the bases was immortalized in baseball history. Having a thorough knowledge of stats and numbers is actually cool, but without the story those things have no meaning.
When we share our faith with others, we need to have this same sense of balance. We can’t live our lives as a disciple of Jesus without gaining knowledge. We should study the Bible, we should learn from our teachers and prophets—yes, it is important that we do these things. But if we expect to bring others into belief in Christ, we also have to learn to tell our story. Acquiring knowledge is important, but . . . what does it all mean to you?
We need more storytellers. And in the departure of such iconic figures as Vin Scully and Garrison Keillor, we need a renewed investment in the art of a good story.