Holy remembers how much he paid for the black piece of plastic with the glowing red LED numbers. Fifty two dollars. That hunk of polymer produced by Texas Instruments in the early 70's was a tool that captured something deep within Holy's soul. It was a hand held calculator.
For eight years the field of study had been what one wag called, "...like trying to nail Jello to a tree." God wasn't going to be penned down. Just when one thought he had mastered an immutable principle, he would read exactly the opposite from a reputable source. Nothing was tied down for sure.
But here in his hands, Holyagnostic held a wizard that had precision and certitude.
True, there was SOME inexactitude. If Holy divided two by three, the resultant value would not be exact, but on his TI magic box the imprecision was carried to nine decimal places.
"Close enough for a theology student," he said.
Holyagnostic had discovered the magic of numbers the summer of his 15th year of life at a baseball camp in Meridian, Texas. Football, the favored game of Texas had become for Holy a spectator sport. Too much like war to play. No face masks for heaven sakes!
But the summer before, Mickey Mantle had put up some astonishing numbers. Batting average: .353. Home runs: 52. RBI: 130. Holy found the game that is most like life. And there were ways to tell EXACTLY how well he and his hero Mickey were doing. In the central Texas June heat Holy was one of the boys of summer.
A whole month away from home playing baseball three time a day with weekend All Star games against teams as far away as Ft. Worth. It was paradise played out at the facilities of a closed college. When the campers were not on the field they were watching old baseball highlight movies at night. Has been major league players would tell us of their exploits. Monty Stratton, pitched batting practice one day.
There were scoreboards everywhere that told how a game was going. But there was also a scoreboard posted in the dining hall every Friday evening that was personal. Each player at camp had their personal numbers listed for all of the rest of the camp to see.
The first Friday, even before getting into line to eat, Holy walked to the bulletin board to look at the numbers.
Separated out from all of the other numbers on the page was a column titled: CAMP LEADERS. The announcement looked almost exactly like the column in Holy's hometown newspaper that listed the major league leaders by categories. He had read them all summer while Mickey chased the triple crown.
Now in bold letters at the top of each category was Holyagnostic. Astonishingly satisfying. The last Friday night is buried in the days of history now. But Holy, in his memory, can still stand with pride in front of that bulletin board. Only numbers were written there. Meaningless numbers to almost all of the rest of the world, but to Holy those numbers pointed him to a lifetime of measuring his and others competence.
The experience was another mountain top.
In his journals, Holy carefully kept the baseball records of his sons. They probably thought it was a little strange of him. They were both accomplished at the game most like life. They will someday find those numbers hidden there in his writings and remember, too.
Years after the baseball camp, Holy held in his hand that little piece of plastic and transistors. He was prepared as never before to do some measuring and to look at some scoreboards.
