The
Batting Cage
DARRYL STRAWBERRY
Seasons of suffering , heartache , and despair serve as God ’ s batting cage for teaching you how to persevere , endure , and wait for his healing and deliverance . Let me explain . Baseball batting cages are typically a minimum of seventy feet long by fourteen feet wide by twelve feet high . A batting cage can seem like an extremely confining space when you compare it with a typical Major League Baseball park . Most open-air stadiums have at least 400 feet from home plate to the center field wall and 325 feet to 350 feet to the right field and left field walls . In the batting cage , a batter can ’ t hit a 450-foot bomb to center field no matter how perfectly he times his swing and drives the bat through the baseball . The twelve-foot-high net ceiling in the cage will quickly limit the baseball ’ s ascent off the bat . Yet execute that swing in a baseball stadium and prepare for fireworks . You see , the batting cage is where the batter perfects his swing , albeit in relative obscurity . And while the dimensions of the cage might seem limiting , the environment actually forces the batter to break down his swing and focus on the angles of his swinging motion and the placement of his head , shoulders , hips , and feet . A casual observer might think this type of exercise would be at best a waste of time based on the experience of a professional baseball player and at worst an insult
51