Do Pickleball Prayers Get Answered?

We here at Murmurs from the Losers’ Bracket are always looking for ways to improve our game. 

Maybe we’ve overlooked something. Maybe there’s a magic new paddle out there we haven’t demo-ed yet. Maybe we’re just one set of overlooked tips away from going from a 3.39 to a 3.43 DUPR rating.

So, naturally, our ears perked up with the news from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in the Little League World Series, the annual baseball tournament for 10-to-12-year-old kids.

In the championship game between a team from Florida and another one from Chinese Taipei on August 25th, the ESPN broadcast from the game captured an unusual pep talk from the coach of the Florida team to his players during the game.  

The coach, Jonathan Anderson, told his team that the outcome of the ongoing game was already decided because God had ordained in advance that the Florida team would win the tournament.

“One of the first days that we got here, I came down here, a man prayed over me. OK, he saw my dad later, he said, ‘It’s already been written.’ We are already the champs,” Anderson said. “The Lord put it in his book. We are just going to finish the story right here, right now.”

And then his team went on to come from behind and win 2-1 in extra innings.

Anderson explained to ESPN after the game that the recipe for victory was simple after God foreshadowed the outcome.

“All we had to do is just believe,” Anderson said. “Do everything we were created to do, what we built ourselves to do, what we practiced to do, and here we are.”

Divine intervention! Why didn’t I think of that? 

This could be bigger for my pickleball game than trying to master topspin.

Even though I am built to hit a lot of balls out of bounds, there could be hope for me yet. With a supreme being keeping a “book” and deciding outcomes on Little League tournaments among children, maybe there’s hope for my pickleball ladder success among retirees.

Hint: My wife and I would like to book a few more wins against the Fettermans once you have a free moment from overseeing the famines, border wars, and natural disasters.

It doesn’t have to be dramatic.  

I mean, I don’t necessarily want somebody who is beating me 10-4 to be felled by a blue-sky lightning bolt. But maybe a well-timed gust of wind during his serve would be helpful, or a Moses-like parting of the net to allow one of my low-ball returns to make it safely across the court.

Judging from all the end-zone acknowledgments of divine help in the National Football League, I figured that God was already manipulating the scores of pro-football games. And all those Major League Baseball players who look to the heavens after getting a key strikeout or homerun clearly imagine that a divine helper has guided their ball or bat.

But until this Little League story, I never allowed myself to imagine that a supreme being might be willing to get involved in pickleball games.

After all, it’s a relatively new sport. And if I were a supreme being looking to expand my sports meddling, I’d probably just fool around with manipulating cornhole games – just for laughs. 

The way I see it, in the hierarchy of divine intervention, pickleball ought to rank higher than Little League baseball. 

After all, it’s best for kids to learn how to be good losers. We here at Murmurs from the Losers’ Bracket don’t need any more instruction in that regard.

We need divine help to win some games. 

Also, it would be nice to know in advance if my upcoming pickleball game made it into “the book”, so I could do some full-throated trash-talking before the game. 

In the meantime, I’ll be looking for a sign.

Zero-zero-amen.

MURMURS FROM THE LOSERS’ BRACKET

Read past editions of Murmurs from the Losers’ Bracket, including:

• Ten Tips for Being “Nice” at Pickleball
• Surviving Outdoor Summer Pickleball: Five Tips and One Solution
• Stuck in the OH, FUDGE Zone: Learning to Shake Off Pickleball Dysfunction
• Presidential Politics on the Pickleball Court a Foot-in-Mouth Fault
• Attention Pickleballers: Be On The Lookout For “Ball Blowers”
• Pre-school Pickleball? Finding a Place for Grandkids on the Court
• A Disgrunted Response to the Latest Pickleball Noise Complaint
• Pickleball Mania Hits Target Stores. What’s Next?
• Getting to the Bottom of the Pickleball Metamucil Ad
• The Etiquette Crisis with “Open Play”
• Pickleball Dreams: The Final Frontier of Pickleball Addiction
• Lob into the Sun? Maybe, Maybe Not
• Gathering Intel on your Pickleball Opponents
• Injured? No, I’m Not Injured
• Mastering the Diplomacy of Round-Robin Scheduling 
• Confessions of a Paddle Addict
• The Pilgrims and Pickleball – The Untold Story
• A Baby Boomer Lament
• The Golden Bachelor Courts Pickleball
• Is a Pickleball Escort a thing?!
• Losing with Style
• We Beat Go Fish!
• Taking the First Serve… or Not
• “Sorry” Seems to be the Easiest Word
• Top 10 Signs it’s too Hot to Play Pickleball Outside
• Coming In from the Heat
• The Ozempic Ad
• Ball On Court? Maybe Not
• The PPA, the APP and Monty Python
• Time to Get Help at Bangers Anonymous
• “It’s an Injury Sport”
• A Pickleball Translation Guide
• What’s Your Pickleball Nickname?
• Tennis the Menace
• Is There Such a Thing as “Pickleball Torture”?
• How to Be an Effective Pickleball Snob
• All You Need Is Glove
• The Lesson McDonald’s French Fries Have for Pickleball
• Tunes on the Court
• The Poetry of Empty Courts
• “Head Targeting” Rule Change Not a Brainy Idea
• Getting Beyond “Good Game”
• Why Are Pickleball Trophies Such a Big Deal?
• Stop Messing with the ATP
• When Discussions of Rules Turn Unruly
• A Former Pickleball Addict Speaks Out
• Separating the Drinkers from the Dinkers
• Turning Every Magazine into a Pickleball Magazine
• Zen and the Art of Pickleball Maintenance
• Spirited Pickleball Poetry
• Making Pickleball Less “Devastating” to Amateurs
• Finding Romance on the Pickleball Court: Top 10 Pickup Lines
• Sign of the Times: Pickleball License Plates
• Red Light, Green Light: Playing Traffic Cop on the Court
• The Pickler Limerick Challenge
• The Pickler Limerick Challenge Heats Up
• The Pickler Limerick Challenge Wraps Up
• Pickleball & the $100 Hamburger
• Before We Play, Partner, Please Sign This…
• Pickleball’s Most Powerful Spoken Word
• It’s Been a Hard Day’s Night for Pickleball Skeptics
• Be Kind to Your Local “Paddle Sheriff”
• Is There Such a Thing as Too Many Paddles?
• Silence Is… Not My Style
• “Going Ham” Over Pickleball’s Generational Divide
  

Frank Cerabino is a long-time columnist for the Palm Beach Post in Florida, a pickleball addict like the rest of us, and a newly published author. Check out Frank’s newly released book, I Dink, Therefore I Am: Coming to Grips with My Pickleball Addiction (available on Amazon and a great read (or gift!) for any pickleball player), for pickleball tips and laughs!