“Never underestimate the power of a small group of people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”
~Margaret Mead

On Friday night I participated in a truly American phenomenon. That is North American phenomenon. My husband and I drove just short distance to a small town in southern Minnesota to attend an outdoor baseball game played by the Miesville Mudhens. We has done this a couple of years ago and had found it to be such an uplifting experience that we vowed to do it every summer. Somehow last summer passed by and we did not make it. But we agreed that this summer would be different.

Heading south on Highway 61 we drove through the corn which bookended the pavement on both sides. Though the corn was of varying heights, something we puzzled over, mostly it was five feet or more and tasseling. The farms that housed these crops rose like beacons across a landscape of green. Riding with the top down on our convertible, we gazed with admiration at the hard work of others on the behalf of all of us, human and animal alike.

Arriving in this sweet little town that consists mostly of two restaurants, one church, a cemetery, a few houses and one beautiful ball diamond, it feels as if you are driving into a movie set of every tear-jerking baseball movie ever made. The fact that, if a player is skilled enough to hit a home run, they do so into the tall stands of acre after acre of corn, is the whipped cream on top of an already fabulous sundae. People from all around come to these entertaining and well played games. The players play for the love of the game and it is a joy to watch young men doing something they love simply for the admiration of a crowd gathered to cheer them on. Children of all ages chase foul balls to return them to the concession stand for a treat. There is no endless supply of baseballs the way there might be in the major leagues where players are paid enormous sums of money to extend their childhood love into adulthood. No, for a candy bar or can of soda, a returned baseball hit foul,makes its way back onto the field for another go.

As is the tradition, this game began like all others. The announcement came that Krista would sing the National Anthem from the field. We stood, as we have been trained to do, and faced the flag that rose out of the corn on the third base line. As the young woman began to sing this impossibly difficult song, she held a cordless microphone and stood just behind home plate. No accompaniment of organ or recorded music gave her the pitch. She began low so as to, I imagine, be able to hit that high note at the end of the anthem.

That’s when it happened. The microphone began to cut out. About every third or fourth word was missing because the sound system was not doing its work. Being the caretaker and nervous person I am when people perform, I felt my anxiety begin to build. “Stop!”, I wanted to say. “Fix her microphone and let her have a do-over.” I had imagined, you see, this young woman practicing over and over in the confines of her own home, ready for her big moment.

But instead of the snickering of the crowd one might imagine at such a time, or even the announcer providing a do-over, something amazing happened. Slowly one voice began to join her. And then another, and another until the whole gathered body of people in the stands took up the song. Any evidence of the failing sound system was rendered moot by the grace and compassion of a group of people come together on a hot summer evening, in the middle of corn field, to watch America’s pass-time. We all reached that dreaded high note together and sounded wonderful!

My heart swelled with joy at this act of helping one person save face and shine in this spotlight moment. The experience once again renewed my confidence in the power of a few individuals to work together for the common good. In light of the news that had shaken us all on that same Friday, of one individual’s senseless violence in a Colorado movie theater, it was a welcome reminder that goodness still prevails.

May it always be so.