a child, I both cried and laughed at the serendipitous
communication I was having with God. Not someone who
believes in luck or chance, I rushed out of my bedroom to share
the verse in Luke with my mother and siblings. We determined
to prominently place this very verse on the pamphlet that we
would give to all those who attended the memorial service for
my dad a few days later.
Later that evening, the Cleveland Indians televised a second
baseball game in their series with the Blue Jays, again from
Toronto’s home stadium, which at the time was called the
SkyDome. Just as the game began, I was reminded of the sweet
and final experience I had with my father the previous night
while watching the game. Immediately—and at the time I didn’t
know why—another thought came to mind. Find the Sports
section.
So I did. I located the newspaper that had been delivered to
the front door of our family home every day for decades. I
thumbed through each section of the Cleveland Plain Dealer
until I found the front page of the Sports section.
In the mid-1990s, the Cleveland Indians’ home games were
played in a newly built and newly named stadium, Jacob’s
Field. At the time, their games were always sold out, and die-
hard Indians fans who couldn’t get seats for Cleveland home
games had loaded dozens of buses for the Toronto series. Fans
by the hundreds were willing to travel for hours and cross the
Canadian border to see their beloved Indians play in the
SkyDome. The reporters were so impressed by the number of
fans who had made the trek to Toronto, that they made it the
lead story on the front page of the Sports section on April 27,
- Across the page in big, bold letters was the question