So, how was your 38th birthday?

Saturday night I had occasion to try to remember my 38th birthday, and found that I could. On that birthday almost thirteen years ago, I went directly to the temple after work and realized as I drove that it marked 19 years since I received the temple endowment on my 19th birthday, a precise bisection of my life.

As for why I was calling up memory of that day, well, when I rose this morning I was still thinking of pitcher Jeremy Guthrie’s start for the Washington Nationals baseball team. Guthrie played a year for BYU in 1998 and transferred to Stanford for the 2001 season. Between the two, he was an LDS missionary in Spain, and a casual glance at his Twitter page turns up invitations to watch General Conference talks.. As Marlow said of Jim, he's one of us.

His baseball career has had some strong years and more that weren't. All of 2016, he was in the minors. This year the Nationals gave him a minor league contract and invited him to major league spring training. He looked good, and there was the possibility that he would be kept as a long reliever, a possible second act of his career, but he was not on the opening day roster. However, for complicated reasons, the Nationals decided to put their fifth starting pitcher on their AAA team for the first couple weeks, and instead for the fifth game of the year called up Guthrie to start against Philadelphia in his 38th birthday. Win or lose, this would be his last major league start. If he did well, a future place on the roster as a reliever was possible. Even if it went bad and he was pulled in the fourth inning, or the third, he would have had one last start, still a good birthday.

Going back to that Lord Jim reference above, the first inning Saturday was historically disastrous. After nine runs and two outs, Guthrie was pulled from the game leaving a runner on first, who would also score with a 10th run credited to Guthrie’s two-thirds of an inning. His major league career ended Saturday night, a spring hope killed early. It was a long, painful hour to observe. He’s one of us, and it’s on to the next part of his life for “OR Chess Champ 1990//Eagle Scout 95//All-State Punter 96//Missionary 98//Husband 01//Dad 04//Rookie 07//World Champion 2015//Stanford Grad 2016.”