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Safe at Home
A Memoir of God, Baseball, and Family
by Marc A. Jolley
Mercer University Press, 2005. 139 pages.
“I know I was alive before I was introduced to baseball, but I never really breathed until I started playing.” So begins Marc A. Jolley’s memoir of his life as a son, father, player, fan, theologian, and minister.
Growing up in East Tennessee, Jolley’s life revolved around baseball and church. He writes of his first exposure to the game, playing catch with his very tired dad after his dad’s sixty-mile trip home from a shift at the DuPont factory, learning to love the Yankees (there were no Atlanta Braves in the neighborhood yet, and the Yankees were the closest thing to “America’s team”), becoming a player himself, and attending church missions.
Though a decent Little League player, Jolley’s dreams of a baseball career were dashed by the time he entered high school. The ensuing story of his journey toward vocation is marked by the significant baseball events of his life: public events like Hank Aaron’s chase of Babe Ruth, and the Yankees of Mr. October, Reggie Jackson, and personal events like his own marriage, starting a family, and teaching youngsters how to swing a bat.
Jolley’s story is not particularly dramatic; he is an Everyman of the latter half of the twentieth century, dreaming big league dreams while trying to serve God in the best way he can. One of the gifts of this book is to recall to us the greats of the game that Jolley either witnessed growing up (Aaron, Jackson, Koufax, Murcer) or learned about as a fan (Gehrig, Mathewson, Robinson). Shortly after reading this book I found myself running to the bookstore to pick up and read, finally, a copy of Henry Aaron’s I Had a Hammer because Jolley reminded me just how important Aaron’s story is. While Safe at Home falls short of being a great memoir, it is a strong reminder of the power of our communal institutions — baseball, church — to be forces of good in our lives together, if only we will be true to them.
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