Ode to AT&T Park

I have attended major league baseball games in 21 ballparks, including two facilities that have since been demolished (Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and the old Busch Stadium in St. Louis) and one that is no longer used for baseball (Houston Astrodome). Therefore, I believe I have the breadth of personal experience necessary to proclaim that AT&T Park in San Francisco is the best ballpark in Major League Baseball. Here are ten reasons why I became so enamored with this ballpark when I visited it for the first time on July 30, 2009:

1. Location, location, location - The view of San Francisco Bay is memorable. Coors Field in Denver comes close with its beautiful vistas, but I think AT&T Park has it beat.

2. Female PA Announcer - I had never thought about the fact that every other PA announcer at every other sporting event I have ever attended was a man. What a pleasant surprise to hear a woman's voice for a change!

3. Weather - I realize that the majority of folks think that San Francisco's weather is a drawback rather than an attraction, but I loved the chilly night air and the ever-shifting mist.

4. Giant Coca-Cola bottle - I have a Coca-Cola kitchen, so I obviously loved the giant Coke bottle that loomed over the left field wall. (Of course, I love the giant Coke bottle at Turner Field in Atlanta, too.)

5. Concessions - I always take note of the unusual culinary fare sold at various ballparks. AT&T Park offers garlic fries at the concession sessions plus roving vendors selling churros and hot chocolate. Yum!

6. Willie McCovey - Nicknamed "Stretch," this Hall of Famer made his debut for the San Francisco Giants exactly 50 years ago on July 30, 1959. When the PA announcer noted his presence at tonight's game and he waved to the crowd from his box seat, the Giants fans gave him a standing ovation. Over the course of 22 years, McCovey hit 521 home runs, and he is one of only three players to hit home runs in four different decades (along with Ted Williams and Rickey Henderson).

7. McCovey Cove - No other ballpark provides kayakers with the opportunity to catch a home run ball. Lacking the steroid-induced firepower of Barry Bonds, there are no longer hoards of kayakers circling just outside of the right field wall in hopes of snagging a souvenir, but there were two kayaks present tonight, and one lucky lady did fish a home run ball out of the water.

8. Ferry service - I loved watching people arrive at the game via ferry. It reminded me of the Vol Navy - the folks who arrive at Neyland Stadium via boat and "sailgate" prior to UT football games.

9. Evacuation Announcement - I had never been in a ballpark before where instructions were given about how to evacuate. Clearly, this is a necessary precaution in San Francisco because of the ever-present threat of earthquakes, and I found the instructions reassuring rather than frightening.

10. Seagulls - As soon as the game was over and the crowd began to disperse, a flock of seagulls descended upon the park to scavenge for scraps of concessions. Hitchcock would have loved it!

For the record, the Giants defeated the Phillies 7-2. Go Giants!

a salute to Galen Clark

Often when I walk on the trails around Radnor Lake, I silently give thanks to God for the people who worked diligently to preserve this gem of a park from development. On Tuesday afternoon when I got my first glimpse of Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point, I wanted to shout with joy to thank God for Galen Clark, the man who is not only responsible for preserving the Yosemite area – including Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias – but also for launching the nationwide preservation movement that resulted in the establishment of America's National Park System. I learned about Galen Clark from Ranger Phaedra Stefankas, who enlightened the crowd that had gathered at Glacier Point for sunset about Yosemite’s history. Thanks to Clark’s efforts, the breathtaking Yosemite Valley and the awe-inspiring Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias initially became the heart of a state park, an action that became official when President Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, signed the papers to approve the grant. A San Francisco newspaper began spreading the word about the wonders of Yosemite, and soon other visionaries, like John Muir, joined the effort to preserve areas of unique natural beauty across America.

This fall Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan will release their latest documentary project – a film about America’s national parks. It is fitting that footage of Yosemite Falls will be featured in the opening sequence of the film. In the latest issue of National Geographic’s Adventure magazine, Burns observes that our national parks aren’t simply places that our nation has preserved; they are “also something we’ve accomplished: one of America’s best ideas.” I wholeheartedly agree. And gauged by the number of international visitors who joined my family at Glacier Point last night to watch the sun set on Half Dome, I would say the world agrees that the establishment of America’s National Park System was indeed a grand idea.

“I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders.” Psalm 9:1

The Nixon-vacation connection

I have long associated Richard Nixon with summer vacations, so it was fitting that we visited the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum on the first full day of our California vacation. Let me explain.

On August 9, 1974, as my family pulled out of the parking lot at the Absaroka Mountain Lodge just east of Yellowstone National Park, my father flipped on the radio and we heard the news that Richard Nixon was resigning as the 37th president of the United States. Although I hadn't yet celebrated my tenth birthday, I was already fascinated with politics, due in part to the fact that my father had just run an unsuccessful campaign for Congress. But my particular interest in Nixon's fate had been stoked the previous summer when I spent countless hours at my maternal grandmother's house watching the Watergate hearings. Let me add that I did not initially watch these hearings because I was a young political junkie - rather, their broadcast preempted the game shows I usually watched while I tooled around in my grandparents' den.

So it was with great interest this morning that I paid a visit to President Nixon's library in Yorba Linda, California. Before we began exploring the library, we watched a 28-minute movie about Nixon's career titled "Never Give Up: Richard Nixon in the Arena." The movie was produced before Nixon's death, and it featured his personal commentary about various events. My favorite quotation came near the end of the movie when Nixon, reflecting on his life, quoted Sophocles: "One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been."

The library is well worth a visit if you're in the area. The special exhibit "Man on the Moon: The 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11" brought back a lot of other childhood memories. The "World Leaders" and "Structures of Peace" exhibits reminded me of Nixon's significant achievements in foreign affairs. Because my grandmother was a florist, I was particularly taken with the First Lady's Garden, which was filled with aromatic roses. I was also fascinated with the display of Time Magazine covers featuring Nixon. Did you know he appeared on the cover 54 times - more than anyone else in history? I grinned when I saw the "Keep it Green" t-shirts for sale in the bookstore, a nod to Nixon's creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.

I have now had the privilege of visiting four of our nation's twelve presidential libraries - including the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri; the Jimmy Carter Library in Atlanta; and the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston - and I hope to cross the other eight off my bucket list eventually. In the meantime, tonight I will get to check something else off my bucket list as we attend the Anaheim Angels-Cleveland Indians game at Angel Stadium. (Out of principal, I refuse to call them the Los Angeles Angels at Anaheim. Ridiculous name.) The Swiney family has been on a quest to visit all of the major league baseball parks, and this will be the first of five games that we will attend during our California vacation. Play ball!

how many states

One of the latest chain notes that is winding its way through the pages of Facebook is titled "How many states have you been to?" If you follow the instructions, you are supposed to place an "X" beside the states that you have visited and an "O" beside those where you have lived. You are then supposed to tag the same number of friends as the number of states you've been to so that they can join in the fun.

I'll admit that I was a party-pooper the first time I got tagged in one of these notes. Instead of following the instructions, I commented on the note and simply said, "I've been to all 50 states." (Sorry, Bill.) At least I spared 50 of my friends from being tagged.

My parents believed that travel was an integral part of their children's education. The Brown family took our first cross-country vacation in the summer of 1973, when the six of us loaded up our station wagon and drove from Jackson, Tennessee, to San Francisco. In the years that followed, almost every summer we took a 2-week driving vacation, usually built around the location of State Higher Education Executive Officers annual meeting. By the time I left home for college, I had been to 46 states, missing only Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and Alaska. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville picked up the tab for me to travel to Oregon and Washington when I served as a student representative on the National Orientation Directors Association's Board of Directors. In 1988, my father took my entire family - including my husband and my grandmother - to Hawaii, so then I only lacked Alaska.

With Chaney's birth in 1990, I began the state count again. The three of us took our first cross-country vacation in 1996, a dinosaur-themed vacation that included stops at 19 dinosaur-related sites in 13 states in 16 days. Five summers later, all three of us were able to mark state #50 off our individual lists when we made a July visit to Alaska.

On Sunday we leave on yet another family vacation. California is our destination, but this year there will be no cross-country drive (although I would have loved it). We will visit San Francisco, among other places, and I will relive fond vacation memories. My education continues.

faith begat faith

One of the most memorable moments of our recent mission trip to Wales occurred one afternoon at a neighborhood park in Pwllheli. I had been taking photographs of our students as they interacted with the neighborhood children on the field and the playground, when suddenly I heard a cheer erupt from a group of children standing behind me at the skatepark. When I turned around, I realized I had missed a stunt - a teenage daredevil on bicycle had just jumped over a child lying on the top of the ramp. With the crowd egging him on, the teenager prepared to make a second approach, and several other children joined the brave soul on the ramp. Once again, the teen easily cleared the ramp, and the children hopped up and applauded.

Soon the neighborhood children began urging the American onlookers to join the fun and lie down on the ramp with them. "We trust him!" insisted one child. "He once jumped fourteen kids!" (Did he try to jump fifteen kids once and fail, I wondered?) Several brave souls from our mission team decided to trust this complete stranger, and soon they were lying on top of the ramp as the daredevil sped toward them. I simultaneously held my breath, snapped photos, and wondered what my students' parents would think if we brought a member of our group home wounded. Fortunately, the daredevil once again cleared the pile, and our students rose to their feet unscathed.

Why did some of our students take a risk and allow a complete stranger to jump over them on a bicycle? Why did I stand by watching and resist the urge to intervene? Because the neighborhood children trusted the teenage stunt biker, and the biker himself exuded supreme confidence. The children who chose to lie down on the ramp had faith that biker would easily clear them, and the biker clearly had faith that his stunt would succeed. Our students were willing to exercise faith because they saw others exercising faith. Faith begat faith.

from Mission Friends to the mission field

When my family joined First Baptist Nashville in the summer of 1994, one of the first leadership roles I assumed was that of a Mission Friends teacher. (Mission Friends is the WMU* missions education organization for preschoolers.) I have taught preschoolers, children, teenagers, and adults in various settings in churches through the years, but being a Mission Friends teacher for five years was one of my all-time favorite church experiences. I loved introducing the preschoolers to different cultures, telling them stories about how missionaries were sharing the love of Christ with people around the world, and helping them to see how they could likewise help others in Jesus' name.

While I was in Wales last week on a mission trip with thirteen students from the Class of 2009 at First Baptist Nashville, I thought back to my Mission Friends days, since that was when I first got to know some of these recent high school graduates. When they were kindergartners, Paul managed to secure a bunch of boxes with handles, so each week in Mission Friends the kids put the new artwork they had created into their respective "suitcases." Each child also had "passport" that year - a little booklet full of blank pages - and every week after we learned about the place where our featured missionaries lived, each child would glue a sticker that I had created to commemorate our "visit" into his/her personal passport.

With those memories in mind, it was moving to watch these same students rolling their bulging suitcases through airports and showing their passports to customs officials. As I observed these teenagers sitting attentively in the presence of missionaries, asking them astute questions about their sense of God's call and probing them for stories about the joys and challenges of serving on the mission field, I recalled the days when they were squirming preschoolers sitting in a semicircle in front of me, listening to missionary stories. I watched with pride as these recent high school graduates made connections with Welsh children in a chapel, in four primary schools and a secondary school, at a castle, and on a neighborhood playground. My Mission Friends had become missionaries themselves. Thanks be to God.

*Woman's Missionary Union

Camp 09

As I was driving home last Friday from Ridgecrest and reflecting on how God's had been at work in the lives of our students (and sponsors) at Camp 09, a passage from one of Paul's letters to the church at Corinth kept coming to mind: "What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building." (1 Corinthians 3:5-9)

This morning at First Baptist Nashville, five students came forward during the invitation to let the congregation know how God had been working in their lives. Three students made public professions of faith, one rededicated her life to Christ, and another announced he felt called to full-time Christian service in missions. I am grateful to God for this spiritual fruit, but I am aware that the seeds for these decisions were planted long ago. Parents, siblings, Sunday School teachers, missions leaders, discipleship teachers, choir leaders, and countless others have invested in these students' spiritual journeys through the years. Some have planted the seeds, others have watered them, and now those of us who were at Camp 09 were privileged to see the seeds bear fruit. God made the seeds grow - we didn't.

As a mom, I extend my deepest thanks to all the people who have planted seeds in my son's life and watered them during the 15 years that my family has been a part of the First Baptist Nashville family. As a student ministry volunteer, I am grateful for all the people who I have had the privilege of serving alongside in God's field. God has been gracious, and I am grateful beyond measure.