Friday, June 25, 2010

Manute Bol's Radical Christianity

What does an authentic Christian athlete look like?

Read Jon Shield's, WSJ article and you'll know one: Manute Bol.

An excerpt:
Bol, a Christian Sudanese immigrant, believed his life was a gift from God to be used in the service of others. As he put it to Sports Illustrated in 2004: "God guided me to America and gave me a good job. But he also gave me a heart so I would look back."

He was not blessed, however, with great athletic gifts. As a center for the Washington Bullets, Bol was more spectacle than superstar. At 7 feet, 7 inches tall and 225 pounds, he was both the tallest and thinnest player in the league. He averaged a mere 2.6 points per game over the course of his career, though he was a successful shot blocker given that he towered over most NBA players.

Bol reportedly gave most of his fortune, estimated at $6 million, to aid Sudanese refugees. As one twitter feed aptly put it: "Most NBA cats go broke on cars, jewelry & groupies. Manute Bol went broke building hospitals."
Read the whole article here.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Help Plant an Orchard!

From the Episcopal Cafe:

Holly Heine and the folks at Jericho Road, a neighborhood-based nonprofit homebuilder that provides families with healthy and energy-efficient affordable housing opportunities in Central City, New Orleans needs our help. Just by voting in an online initiative sponsored by Edy's Fruit Bars, we can help them win a free fruit orchard for their neighborhood.

Here is what you need to do--every day:

1. Go here: http://www.communitiestakeroot.com/Plant/Index

2. Click on the rightmost of the two dots in the state of Louisiana.

3. When the words Jericho Road Episcopal House Initiative appear, click on More.

4. Follow the directions on the new page. Make sure to type in the two security words, and click on Plant my Vote.

You can vote one time each day—and every day—until the voting ends on August 31 at 11:59 PST. Edy's will award 5 winners the first of each month, May 1 through Sept 1. The winners will be announced on our site at the beginning of each month.

Benefits of an orchard:

A project that spans generations
A free food source
A learning experience for youth and adults alike
Provides cleaner air and soil conditions
Improves property values
Brings positive energy and attention to the neighborhood
Healthy staple in residents’ diet that may not have been there otherwise.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Strengthening Families, Preventing Abuse

Just heard a wonderful presentation this morning at Town Hall regarding the work of The Center for Women and Families of Eastern Fairfield County.

This is their mission:

The Center for Women and Families of Eastern Fairfield County, Inc. (CWF) is dedicated to strengthening women and families and to eliminating violence and abuse through education, intervention, advocacy, and community collaboration.

Each year, the Center...

* Teaches more than 7,000 children and teens about preventing bullying, building healthy relationships, and preventing dating violence.
* Trains more than 3,000 adults to prevent abuse and help victims.
* Answers over 2,000 crisis calls on 24-hour crisis hotlines.
* Assists with the civil and criminal court processes for more than 3,000 survivors of domestic violence.
* Responds to over 300 survivors of sexual assault and their families.
* Provides a safe home for more than 100 women and their children fleeing domestic violence.
* Coordinates the investigations of over 100 cases of child sexual and severe physical abuse and develops service plans for the young survivors and their families.

Today, CWF serves residents of Bridgeport, Easton, Fairfield, Monroe, Stratford, and Trumbull.

Learn how you can help or receive their services by visiting their website here.

Prayers said on Father's Day

These are the prayers we used on Father's Day:

Father’s Day Prayer

Heavenly Father, you entrusted your Son Jesus, the child of Mary, to the care of Joseph, an earthly father. Bless all fathers as they care for their families. Give them strength and wisdom, tenderness and patience; support them in the work they have to do, protecting those who look to them, as we look to you for love and salvation, through Jesus Christ our rock and defender. Amen. [from the Church of England]

A Prayer for the Gulf of Mexico

We pray today for the preservation of our natural environment, especially the Gulf of Mexico and the lands and waters it touches: Guide those who labor to contain the oil that endangers the creatures of sea and land; Strengthen those who work to protect them; Have mercy on those whose livelihoods will suffer; Forgive us for our carelessness in using the resources of nature, and give us wisdom and reverence so to manage them in the future, that no one may suffer from our abuse of them, and that generations yet to come may continue to praise you for your bounty; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. [Written by the Rev. Canon Beverly Gibson, Sub-Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Mobile, AL]

Are you an organ donor?

Great story from NPR on being an organ donor.

Listen or read the whole story: From Fear To Elation: Prepping To Be An Organ Donor



June 20 (Proper 7) Sermon

How can I love my neighbor as myself
When I need him as my enemy –
When I see in him the self I fear to own
And cannot love?

How can there be peace on earth
While our hostilities are our most
Cherished possessions –
Defining our identity,
Confirming our innocence?
-Eric Symes Abbott
These lines written in 1989, remind us that the command to love others by Jesus is difficult, especially as we consider those we fear, the enemy all around us and even inside of us, for fear drives out love. And yet, that is what Jesus calls us to do, to love one another and to live in peace. There is that old song that says
“they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they will know we are Christians by our love.”
And yet, too often they know we are Christians not by our love, but by our fear. Fear that controls us that makes us judgmental, critical, that sees enemies all around us. Instead of the liberating, freeing Gospel, we live in fear with an oppressive religiosity, and we forget that God given love that is always with us and we need to share.

In our first reading, after Elijah confronted the prophets of Jezebel and Ahab, he fled fearing for his life. Along his journey, he is constantly ministered to by angels of God, but he is not comforted. His life is threatened, he lives in fear, and he travels a long way to reach an isolated cave on the mount of God (Horeb). Now he will be safe. But in the sheer silence of that cave, Elijah recognizes the power of God and leaves when God tells him to return to Damascus. It is as if all that fear that consumed Elijah, making him flee, is transformed in that silence, for God was there and Elijah understood in the deepest part of his self that he needed to have faith in what God was asking of him.

It is also true of us, just when we want to flee to the hills, run away from what we fear, God asks us to be faithful. For it is God who stands with us in all things, even in our fear, ready to embrace us. And like Elijah we must be ready to follow what God asks of us, as our hymn put it,
“I have decided to follow Jesus – no turning back!”
In our Gospel reading, Jesus entered the area of the Gerasenes outside the Decapolis, a gentile region, he is confronted with a man filled with demons. He lived alone among the tombs, naked, separated from his home & community. In a symbolic way, this man whose demons are known as “Legion” – a Latin term for a unit of the Roman army comprising of 3000 to 6000 soldiers, is not only possessed personally, but the whole region with the Roman occupation is possessed. The demons know who Jesus is, and Jesus having compassion for the man, casts out the demons into swine, who plunge into the lake, and the man comes to his right mind.

But the people are very afraid. Jesus heals the possessed, casts out the demons. The people are not ready for such an act, and they ask Jesus to leave. Jesus sends the man home and tells him to proclaim all that God has done for him. He becomes the evangelist to the people living in fear in that community. Again God acts in the midst of fear, reminding us that God is in charge, no demon, no legion, will stop that. But we have to believe that or our own fears will take charge.

I think of a poem:
“Enemies” by Wendell Berry

If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come---love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgive, they go

free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.
Love & forgiveness, compassion for others – all marks of a Christian. We need to resist the fear in ourselves and in our society or else we become the enemy we abhor and fear lives on in us. Today, may we trust in God to guide us so that we can overcome our fears with faith, and be the Christians that God needs us to be in our world today. As Thomas Merton put it
“I will not fear, for You [O Lord] are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
Amen.

Fear knocked at the door and faith answered. No one was there. - Old English Proverb

Don't let the fear of striking out hold you back. - Babe Ruth

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Prayer in the midst of Stress

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

by John Greenleaf Whittier

June 13 (Proper 6) Sermon Notes

The Gospel for Today: Support & Forgiveness

Support

We all need it. Jesus had the 12 but we are told in Luke…

The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.
For Jesus & the disciples it was the women & others, who often go unnoticed, unmentioned and yet the disciples and Jesus could not do what they do without such support. On Friday Night, at The Relay for Life event, I saw support:

· It was all those tents representing 59 teams, different organizations, St. Peter’s Rockers, who stood in solidarity with those battling cancer.

· I think of all those walking, the survivors who battled through, the caregivers that supported them, others who walk in unity with all those battling cancer.

· All those luminaries lit to remember.

· It was a night of celebration of survivors, to remember those who died and to continue to fight back against cancer.
“The American Cancer Society Relay For Life represents the hope that those lost to cancer will never be forgotten, that those who face cancer will be supported, and that one day cancer will be eliminated.”
We played a role in that support. Our Gospel talks about that support and it also tells us about…

Forgiveness

Simon the Pharisee invited Jesus to his home for a meal, he is curious about this man from Nazareth… But a woman in the city having heard where Jesus was, also entered Simon’s home, bathing the feet of Jesus with her tears and anointing his feet with ointment… Simon is upset that such a woman has entered his home, such a sinner, and he questions how prophetic Jesus is because he is letting this woman touch him.

Jesus knows what is in Simon’s heart, and asks him, a certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?" Simon answered, "I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt."

And Jesus goes on to tell Simon that he is right BUT as Jesus entered his house; Simon had no water for his feet, he was not greeted with a kiss (a sign of peace) and there was no oil for his head, but the woman has bathed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, she has not stopped kissing his feet and she anointed the feet of Jesus with ointment.
Jesus says, “I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little." Then he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven and Your faith has saved you; go in peace."
The woman’s sins were forgiven by her loving acts. Simon, on the other hand, did not love much and in turn is not praised like that woman, forgiveness and love. Just last week, a big event happened for the Detroit Tigers. As one reporter put it
“Armando Galarraga's soft-smiling grace in the grips of the denial of perfection. Donald's humility. Joyce's apologetic confession. Detroit fans' remarkable capacity to forgive and to even embrace. They were all acts in a 20-hour passion play.”
The beauty of Baseball: After watching the reply after the game, Joyce asked for Galarraga to see him the umpire’s locker room. Galarraga said:
"He understands. I give him a lot of credit for coming in and saying, 'Hey, I need to talk to you to say I'm sorry.' That doesn't happen. You don't see an umpire after the game come out and say, 'Hey, let me tell you I'm sorry.' He apologized to me and he felt really bad. He didn't even shower. He was in the same clothes. He gave me a couple hugs. I know nobody's perfect. What are you going to do?”
The next day, manager Jim Leyland had pitcher Armando Galarraga -- instead of Leyland or a coach -- bring the lineup card to the home-plate umpire. That umpire was Jim Joyce, whose clearly blown call at first base the night before, with two outs in the ninth inning, cost Galarraga a perfect game. And as angry as fans, especially Tigers fans, were at the call, it was clear no one was more shaken than Joyce.

Even as he stepped on the field -- he apparently turned down Major League Baseball's offer to take the day off -- Joyce had tears in his eyes. Joyce was still emotional as Galarraga came to the plate, and after a brief exchange of lineup cards, Joyce patted Galarraga on the shoulder. Galarraga and Leyland have forgiven Joyce. [as reported]
That is grace and class and that is what Jesus expects of us.
Forgiveness is the final form of love. --Reinhold Niebuhr
Support and forgiveness in Scripture & in our lives – its all love and grace. Amen.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Refugee World Cup

From the IRC:
“Wherever you are in the world, no matter how poor or troubled you are, there is always soccer. You can play it anywhere and we love it,” says Ali Kareem, 32. “Soccer gives us something in common. We all want to win, but mostly we just want to play.”
A refugee from Iraq who resettled in Northern California with help from the International Rescue Committee, Ali has been doing more than just counting down to this week’s kickoff of the FIFA World Cup. He’s also been sharing his passion for soccer by coaching a team of Iraqi players who competed last weekend in the Bay Area Refugee World Cup in Oakland.

As we enjoy the World Cup, let us remember and reach out to the refugees in our midst.



Modern Day Slavery

The story as seen from Yahoo...
A sobering new report from the State Department finds that more than 12 million people worldwide are victims of "trafficking in persons" — trapped in forced labor, bonded labor or forced prostitution. But  just 4,166 people were convicted of trafficking last year, the report says.

Even so, awareness of the reach of modern slavery has made such crimes easier to report and police, the study  says. Ambassador-at-Large Luis
CdeBaca, who heads the State Department's anti-slavery efforts, noted that 116 countries have adopted anti-trafficking laws since the United Nations enacted a law against  modern slavery 10 years ago. Last year marked a high-water mark, both in identifying trafficking victims and in mounting successful
prosecutions.

"Countries that once denied the existence of human trafficking now work to identify victims and help them overcome the trauma of modern slavery, as well as hold responsible those who enslave others," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a letter accompanying the report.

But there's still much work ahead, the report says. The State Department estimates that only 0.4 percent of all modern slavery victims were identified last year. Human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar business — and will probably grow so long as global governments fail to crack down on it more forcefully.
Read the whole story here.

How can you help?  Here are a couple of organizations: Not For Sale Campaign and International Rescue Committee.


There are no spectators, we are all Players

To kick-off the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Goodwill Ambassadors, Didier Drogba and Zinedine Zidane, launched an anti-poverty TV spot appealing for the world to live up to the challenge and join the team that will kick out poverty.

The multilingual public service announcement will be broadcast during the tournament in South Africa and aims to bolster efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight internationally-agreed targets which aim to reduce poverty, hunger, maternal and child deaths, disease, inadequate shelter and gender inequality by 2015.

Find out more about the campaign here: http://www.kickoutpoverty.org/

Friday, June 11, 2010

World Cup

It has begun, the beautiful game and the world championship.

Who better in Africa to kick it off then Desmond Tutu!
Tutu also used the occasion to speak of Africa as "the cradle of
humanity."

"Every single one of you... from South Africa, or from Germany, or
from France, or anywhere... you are African now!" he declared, to whoops
and cheers from the large multicultural audience.

"We want to say to the world — Thank you for helping this worm to
become a beautiful butterfly,” Archbishop Tutu concluded.





Read the article here.

A prayer for the world cup:

God bless the 2010 World Cup: bless those who compete, and those who
watch, bless those who host, and those who visit, and help all who love
the 'the beautiful game' grow in the love you have given us to share.
Amen


Relay for Life Monroe/Trumbull

American Cancer Society's Relay for Life begins tonight at 6 PM at Masuk HS.

Prayer:

Strengthen your servants, O God, to go where they have to go and bear what they have to bear in their fight against cancer; that, accepting your healing gifts at the hands of surgeons, nurses, and technicians, they may be restored to wholeness with a thankful heart; strengthen all survivors and caregivers that they may feel your presence upholding them; guide us who walk in solidarity with them and all who have cancer; and give us all the courage to fight back against cancer and have hope for a future free of cancer. We ask all this through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

(adapted from Enriching our Worship 2)

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Song of the Body of Christ by David Haas (1989)

These are the wonderful lyrics from David Haas' hymn!

Refrain: We come to share our story.
We come to break the bread.
We come to know our rising from the dead.

1. We come as your people. We come as your own. United with each other, love finds a home.

2. We are called to heal the broken, to be hope for the poor. We are called to feed the hungry at our door.

3. Bread of life and cup of promise, In this meal we all are one. In our dying and our rising, may your kingdom come.

4. You will lead and we shall follow. ou will be the breath of life; living water, we are thirsting for your light.

5. We will live and sing Aloha. "Alleluia" is our song. May we live in love and peace our whole life long.

June 6 (Proper 5) Sermon

We come to share our story.
We come to break the bread.
We come to know our rising from the dead.
The words from David Haas, a contemporary hymn writer, speak to our coming together every week as the Body of Christ in this beautiful place.

We come to share our story.

We each have a story. In fact, we each have lots of stories. About family, about play, about work. Our loves and hates. Lots of things…

It is here, in this place, where we can share our story with one another. Stories of struggle, stories of despair, stories of hope, stories of you and me.

After my father died suddenly of a heart attack 13 years ago, I remember going back to church that first Sunday.

I wasn’t ready to worship God. I was much too tender for that, but I was ready to be in the faithful community, upheld by their love and prayers.

They knew my story, seminarian from MI, a father who died a month to the day after my wedding, and the community held me up.

It is here we gather at the best of moments, at the baptism of a child, at a wedding, and the saddest when we say good bye to a loved one at a funeral. We gather to ask for healing, for guidance, for celebration too.

We celebrated with Ruth Cyr on her 61st wedding anniversary on Friday, and we supported her after she fell and broke her hip that same morning.

We felt sadness at the news of death of Bea Mott, a parishioner from long ago.

All these are pieces of our story. We share them here.

We come to break the bread.

Each week we gather for a meal, a ritual done since the time of Jesus when he broke bread and shared wine, asking the disciples to do this in remembrance of him. We now remember as we gather around the altar, inviting young and old, newcomer and old timer, rich and poor, welcoming everyone to the Lord’s table.

Bread and wine, gifts of the earth, the work of human hands.
Bread and wine, the body and blood of our God, lovingly given to us in the Eucharist.

But the bread and wine is more than the gifts of God to God’s people; they are parables of what it means to become God's people.

Like seed, we are transformed from grain to flour through the creative love of God. Farmers and vintners - in the form of parents, spouses, teachers, pastors, friends - have nurtured us and formed us. We struggle to finally grow up; we stumble along the way. Like grain that is baked into bread, like grapes that ferment into wine, we change and become complete not in spite of what we suffer but because of what we suffer. We are kneaded in the water of baptism; we are re-created in the fire of the Spirit.

And like the many grapes that are pressed together into the unity of the sweet liquid that fills the chalice, our prayers and sacrifices, our acts of generosity, our work of reconciliation and forgiveness, our sacrifices for one another in imitation of Christ (who is both the vine and winemaker), makes us "church" - the wine of the sacrament of unity.

What we see on this table is ourselves. We are bread; we are wine. We are called to be the sacrament we receive in the breaking of the bread. [Adapted from a sermon by St. Augustine of Hippo.]
We come to know our rising from the grave.

We hear from our scriptures, our tradition, of how God has entered into lives. As the biblical scholar, Walter Brueggemann puts it,
“Biblical faith attests that God, creator of the world, is the giver of life, even in a world of deathliness. While that claim is pervasive in faith, it is rooted in specific, nameable moments when God’s power for life was particularly concentrated and effective in contexts of death.”
Two of our readings today, are such moments. Today’s Gospel reading, of Jesus’ compassion for the widow of Nain and bringing her son back to life, is echoed by our first reading, of Elijah’s resurrecting the widow of Zarephath’s son in 1 Kings..

In both cases, we have widows who are on the margins of society, and God has compassion on their plight at the death of their only sons. The stories don’t speculate but bear witness to the fact that God intercedes into our lives, bringing life when there is death.

These stories are not just old stories from long ago, they are our stories today. For in death, new life can begin…

Patricia Quigley and Susan Retik lost their husbands in the horror of 9/11. As they struggled to rebuild their families' shattered lives, the United States launched its first military campaign to remove the Taliban and terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Decades of conflict had ravaged the country, leaving tens of thousands of women and children without husbands and fathers.

Patti and Susan felt a growing kinship with these women and families. So Patti and Susan took the money they received in the 9/11 settlements and began Beyond the 11th, a nonprofit organization to aid widows affected by war and terrorism. Working with CARE and other international relief organizations, Beyond the 11th provides widows and their families with food assistance, health education and opportunities for vocational training and employment. Their foundation has helped one group of widows start a small community farm; they also gave seed money to a co-op formed by Afghan widows to weave rugs.

In Afghan society, widows are the poorest of the poor, the most powerless and marginalized. Patti Quigley and Susan Retik, widows who received an outpouring of financial and emotional support following the deaths of their husbands, seek to bring that same hope and support to women who have been victimized by the same terror. The major obstacle they face is not only to get society to value these women more but getting women to value themselves more.

Patti Quigley notes that the challenges of widowhood are universal: "Dealing with kids alone, dealing with the extended family alone, finding a way to support the family - no matter where you are in the world, you understand exactly the feeling, the frustration that comes with dealing with things alone."

Susan Retik says, "The terrorists may have killed our husbands on September 11, but we can create our own future and destiny. The cycle of poverty and lack of education and all those things we take for granted here in the United States, if we can end that whole cycle, or help in some small way, this isn't going to happen again.”

[From The Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Oprah.com.]
We come to share our story.
We come to break the bread.
We come to know our rising from the dead.
Amen.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Prayers for the Gulf Coast

A Prayer for the Gulf of Mexico

We pray today for the preservation of our natural environment, especially the Gulf of Mexico and the lands and waters it touches:

Guide those who labor to contain the oil that endangers the creatures of sea and land; Strengthen those who work to protect them; Have mercy on those whose livelihoods will suffer; Forgive us for our carelessness in using the resources of nature, and give us wisdom and reverence so

to manage them in the future, that no one may suffer from our abuse of them, and that generations yet to come may continue to praise you for your bounty; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Written by the Rev. Canon Beverly Gibson, Sub-Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Mobile

As the catastrophic oil accident in the Gulf continues, O God, for the wonders of technology, we give you thanks. For the limits of technology we pray for awareness. For the arrogance of technology, when it harms your Creation, we pray for humility. For the victims of this technology, we pray for forgiveness. For the recklessness which prevents careful preparation for accident, we pray with repentance and for enlightenment. And for our capacity to learn from this huge mistake and to minister compassionately as a society to those harmed by it, we give you thanks. Amen.

Written by The Rev. John Widdows, Episcopal Diocese of Maine

Thursday, June 3, 2010

World Environment Day (June 5)

From EPPN:

The theme of World Environment Day this year is Many Species. One Planet. One Future. This theme highlights the urgency of the catastrophic impact of our economic and commercial choices on the world's diverse ecosystem. The world's biodiversity is under sustained assault from greenhouse gas emissions and unchecked and unplanned commercial development throughout the world. There is an urgent need to dedicate our action, attention, and advocacy on protecting and restoring the world biodiversity. Learn more about World Environment Day.

What can you do?
The premise of World Environment Day is that each individual citizen of the world is an agent of change, empowered to call attention to the need to act responsibly in our consumption of fossil fuels while also making individual choices that conserve energy and encourage disciplined use of resources. On World Environment Day, you have an opportunity to Green Your Routine by reducing your consumption of energy.

Simple actions on this day of observance that can help you Green Your Routine:

  • Organizing a neighborhood clean up
  • Walking or riding your bike to work
  • Using a reusable cloth bag for shopping rather than plastic bags
  • Planting a tree
  • Letting your Member of Congress know about your interest in the energy and environmental concerns that you have.

  • O merciful Creator, thy hand is open wide to satisfy the needs of every living creature: Make us, we beseech thee, ever thankful for thy loving providence; and grant that we, remembering the account that we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of thy good gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

    Its a shame...

    The blown call at first base was awful.

    Armando Galarraga should have had a perfect game, the 21st in MLB history.

    After meeting Joyce (who blew the call), Galarraga said, "He understands. I give him a lot of credit for coming in and saying, 'Hey, I need to talk to you to say I'm sorry.' That doesn't happen. You don't see an umpire after the game come out and say, 'Hey, let me tell you I'm sorry.' He apologized to me and he felt really bad. He didn't even shower. He was in the same clothes. He gave me a couple hugs.

    "I know nobody's perfect. What are you going to do? I was mad in the moment because I was nervous. I didn't know what to do. I was like celebrating. Then I looked at him."

    Well handled by Galarraga! What's MLB going to do? Time for replay, I say.