Read
Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man,
but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel.
Proverbs 20:17
Reflect
By now you can probably tell that I love sports. This week is great for me because almost every day there will be a great contest on TV of some sort. College basketball, college football, pro football. Heck, sometimes I’ll even watch a little curling or cornhole if I’m really bored. The competition is what interests me the most.
Along with that interest in sports comes a fascination with numbers related to sports. Batting averages. Points per game. Yards gained per play. Predicting who will have the most wins or losses. I really like statistics, so I also really like studying records. Along those lines, I love baseball in part because baseball is so much about numbers. And the king of all baseball records is home runs.
In American baseball, the king of home runs for years was Babe Ruth. The Bambino hit 714 of them in his career, and that was considered an untouchable number … until Hank Aaron came along. Hank hit number 715 for the Atlanta Braves, and he added 40 more before he retired. Then came Barry Bonds. He was a great hitter for a number of years, but then he suddenly became a home run monster. In 2001, he broke Roger Maris’s single record of 61 home runs and later retired in 2007 after hitting 762 homers. The only problem? Barry is known for having used steroids, so his home run records are completely under suspicion. Yes, he’s the single-season and all-time home run champion, but he seems to have gotten those titles by breaking the rules.
There are many people who regard Josh Gibson, who played in the Negro Leagues, as the home run king. He reportedly hit 800 homers in his career, and there’s no doubt he could crush the ball. But the record-keeping in those games wasn’t consistent, so it’s impossible to verify his true total. So it seems that the worldwide home run king is Sadaharu Oh from Japan, who hit 868 home runs during his career. He never got to play against American competition, so we’ll never know how he could have done here, but he was dominant in his sphere of influence. And he held the Japanese single-season record of 55 home runs for almost 50 years until it was broken by Wladamir Balentien in 2013.
And both of those records are very dubious, too.
Sadaharu Oh became a manager in the years after he retired, and several times American players threatened to break that record of 55. Whenever a player had 54 home runs and faced an Oh-coached team, the pitcher wouldn’t put the ball anywhere near him. For example, Randy Bass had 54 home runs in 1984, and he faced Oh’s Hanshin Tigers. In four straight at-bats, the pitcher wildly missed the plate and walked Bass. On his fifth time at bat, Bass swung at a pitch outside of the zone and grounded out. The record stayed intact.
Oh’s record of 55 home runs was protected carefully by Japanese pitchers, theoretically because they only wanted it to be broken by another Japanese player and not by an “outsider.” But over the years, that single-season home run record has become a joke. It’s almost as if when you would mention the record, you would have to add a “wink-wink, nudge nudge.” (Oh, and Balentien’s record of 61, set in 2013? The Japanese league secretly introduced a “livelier ball” that season, so home runs were flying out of ballparks at a record pace. He hit those honestly, but the league wasn’t so honest in its dealings.)
God isn’t much impressed with records – or with anything – that is gained dishonestly. Look throughout scripture and you’ll see that he despises dishonesty, and he even wrote those principles into the Ten Commandments. Lying and stealing are at the core of dishonesty, and even if you’re not saying things that are false, your actions can be just as big of a lie as anything you can say. If you’re supposed to be giving your best effort and you do anything less than that, it’s a lie.
As Christians, we need to ensure that both our words and actions represent the absolute truth. People need to know they can trust us in word and deed. If they can’t, then how will anything we say about Jesus make a difference? Absolutely strive for the best, and try to set new standards of excellence every day. Just make sure when you’re admiring the plaque (or trophy, or certificate, or record) that the way you got reflects well upon both you and the Lord.
Reflection copyright © 2025 Doug DeBolt.
