Author Archives: Jake Mailhot

Picturing Scripture: From Inspiration to Reality

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A few months ago, I was asked to contribute to a new project at work called Picturing Scripture. The idea was to create a coffee table book out of the incredible Bible Verse of the Day art pieces our design group had been creating. To accompany each image, a short devotional would be written. The art was inspired by the Word, and in turn, inspired new words.

I was asked to contribute five pieces of writing to the project. We had a list of one hundred verses and their accompanying images to choose from. Because this project was all about inspiration—word to art, art to word—I wanted to give some behind-the-scenes insight into each of my pieces.

Psalm 8:1

When at our most vulnerable, we might look at the stars and think about how small the Earth really is. We’re just a tiny speck of dust amid billions of stars. Unrelenting, powerful forces of nature speed us along in a chaotic dance through the cosmos…


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I wrote these pieces right after seeing Interstellar and writing this blog post. The imagery evoked in this piece of art struck the same emotional chords that the film had stirred up. The complex systems that govern the physical world are unfathomable and their creation can only be attributed to a higher power. In the grand scheme of things, we’re but a tiny speck amid a sea of black. I wanted to evoke those same feelings of smallness while still ending on an encouraging note. What is more encouraging than knowing the creator of this vast and chaotic sea desired a personal relationship with his creation.

John 21:12

There’s something deeply intimate about sharing a meal together, but coming together around a table to eat is so common that we often overlook its significance…

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With Thanksgiving right around the corner, this devotional seems very apt. This is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. I love that Jesus simply wants to share a meal with his friends upon seeing them for the first time after his resurrection. Breakfast no less. One of the things I miss most about college is the shared meals I enjoyed. No matter what time of day, I could count on finding at least two or three people to eat with. I think that’s one of the reasons why those friendships are strongest, and will last the longest.

James 3:7–8

…Yes, sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can break our hearts…

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The imagery in this piece was very striking—a razor edge to a speech bubble. I loved playing off that familiar school yard rhyme. My wife was actually the one who inspired this image of the heart, mind, and mouth all connected. I remembered a sermon she gave a few years ago and that circular connection between these three parts stuck with me ever since. I wasn’t very happy with the end of this one. After some fun wordplay and an image that drew you deeper into the idea, I felt like it ended with a whimper. If only I had a few hundred more words.

1 Peter 5:8

Every day we’re bombarded by things vying for our attention. Even our best attempts to focus on the things that matter are drowned out by the cacophony surrounding us, a roar as loud as a lion…

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Entirely by coincidence, I happened to choose the only two verses with references to lions in them. As a symbol, lions have a wealth of concepts associated with them. For this verse, the lion was a hunter, dangerous and relentless. There are no natural predators we have to worry about today so I chose to focus on the man-made dangers that prowl our society. In the end, I allude to the encouragement Peter gives just a few verses later to combat these ills.

Revelation 5:5

…The kingdom is here and the kingdom is coming! Aslan is on the move.

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The second of my two lion verses, this one takes the opposite approach to the lion as a symbol—the regal, majestic creature at the head of the animal kingdom. Too often, Revelation is portrayed as a wild, prophetic end to the biblical story. Yes, it can be weird at times, but it’s also an incredible vision of victory and celebration. I wanted to shout those feelings of victory to drown out everything else. And I couldn’t help but slip in a reference to the most famous messianic lion in literature.

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The first print run of Picturing Scripture is currently being funded on Kickstarter. See how art and word paired together can inspire your devotional life.

Vanished Into Thin Air: The Loss of Skywalker 

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With the release of the final trailer yesterday, the hype machine for the newest entry into the Star Wars saga is at full power. I’ve been guarding my anticipation, making sure to keep my expectations at a healthy level. I’ve tried my hardest to avoid spoiling the movie and have steered clear of the rumor mills. The reactions to The Force Awakens have stretched from unrestrained excitement to tentative curiosity to indifference. And I think the continuum of these responses is tied to your opinion of the prequel trilogy.

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Overthinking It

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I love to play shortstop. It’s the key position in the infield and it usually sees a ton of action during the game. I feel like I’m a pretty decent fielder too; I’ve got decent range to my left and a good enough throwing arm to make most of the plays that come my way. Every so often, I’ll make an error; maybe the ball will catch the heel of my mitt or I’ll misjudge a hop. In the last softball game I played in, I ended up making four errors in one inning and a total of six during the course of the game. After each error, I would start thinking more and more about how to avoid making a mistake on the next play.

I was overthinking it. I was so focused on avoiding an error that I was pushing all the fundamentals I had spent years practicing right out of my mind. The mistakes snowballed as I stubbornly tried to force myself to “slow things down”—as if being more methodical could help me react to a ball speeding towards me. The fear of failure had paralyzed me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the number 30. I turned 29 today so that special milestone is looming on the horizon. And I’ll admit, I’ve been scared to reach cross that threshold. It’s just a change in one digit, but dammit, I’ve gotten used to seeing a ‘2’ in front of my age. If I really dig deep, I’m afraid of the change that comes with aging. I’m afraid I won’t be able to play shortstop much longer.

Leading up to today, I had been working on a 30 before 30 list; 30 things I want to accomplish or experience before I turn 30. It’s a fun idea but I think this goal was born from a desire to make sure I accomplished a laundry list of things before I wasn’t able to do them at all. As I added ideas to this list, it became clear that I was letting fear control me. I was overthinking it.

The fear of the unknown can be paralyzing. It causes to you to do everything you can to maintain the status quo. Sometimes that’s okay. More often, it prevents you from moving forward, from actually growing. So when I’m looking at houses to buy or talking to Megan about starting a family, I start thinking about excuses to keep things the way they are. I like my life the way it is but that doesn’t mean it’s the best version possible, particularly when a selfish and fearful attitude ends up hurting others.

Of course things are going to change as I get older. But those changes aren’t all for the worse. Sure I might lose a step on the ball field but I’ll also get to enjoy watching my future children grow up into ballplayers themselves. I needed to put things into perspective and tell myself, “It’s going to be scary as I grow older and things change, but I’m going to push that aside and enjoy it.”

Interstellar: An Ode to Sci-Fi

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I saw Interstellar a few weeks ago. I walked out of the theater stunned into silence. I said one word to my friends as we walked out to our cars. I lay awake in bed for hours. It was a visceral experience. It was the best use of the medium I’ve seen since last year’s Gravity. It certainly wasn’t the perfect movie but it did raise some interesting questions and explored some deep themes. Most of all, it was a call back to a different kind of film—an ode to science-fiction.

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The Cure for Cynicism

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When Ken Griffey Jr. reached 500 career home runs, Joe Ponanksi wrote this in a commemorative piece for Sports Illustrated:

“There’s an old baseball man I knew who saw Babe Ruth, Josh Gibson and Albert Pujols all hit home runs. He loved baseball with an intensity that never stopped surprising people around him. Wherever he went, people would ask him to name his favorite, and he never could do that. He loved too many of them. He would talk about Ted Williams’ swing, and he would talk about the way Roberto Clemente threw, and the way Willie Mays’ cap flew off, and the way Cool Papa Bell ran around the bases.

‘But your favorite,’ the people would say, coaxing him, and he would smile, and he would say, ‘Well, I sure like that Ken Griffey Jr.’

‘Why’s that?’ people asked.

‘Because,’ Buck O’Neil said. ‘He’s having so much fun.’”

Baseball is many things to many people. It’s the greatest metaphor for life and the preferred sport for the aspiring philosopher. It’s simultaneously a marathon and a sprint; excruciatingly boring and intensely exciting. It’s a sign of hope after a long winter and can bring heartbreak in the fall. It’s both loved and hated. Above all else, baseball is fun. It’s fun to play, fun to watch, fun to talk about. It’s ten guys on an open field, trying to hit a tiny ball with a long stick, running around making fools of themselves. It’s pure, unadulterated fun.

The Seattle Mariners reminded us of this fact this year. It has been so easy to be cynical about the Mariners—they haven’t been a good team since 2002. They’ve been so frustrating that “Mariners” has become an adjective to describe long-expected disappointment (as in, “Taijuan Walker pitches his best professional game of his career but a gork double that falls in no-man’s land is his undoing, because Mariners.”). It’s been downright frustrating to be a fan of the Mariners. And frustration breeds cynicism.

Sometimes it’s easier to be a cynic. You don’t have to give a shit. You can go about your life without any emotional attachment, removed from the best parts of life like a robot. I see cynicism everywhere in our culture. Just look at the state of our political discourse. The most important conversation we could have as a society has devolved into petty bickering. The defining characteristic of an entire generation is cynicism. Sometimes it feels like no one cares about anything.

Because caring about things can hurt, especially if you throw your whole heart into the endeavor. Getting hurt sucks. It’s not fun. It has hurt to be a fan of the Mariners for the past decade; so many promises gone unfulfilled, so many wasted hours trying to care about a team going nowhere, so many meaningless games in June and July.

Until this year. This year was different. I’m not sure when it happened. Maybe it was that three-game series against the A’s right before the All-Star Break. It could have been the homestand at the beginning of August where they went 8-1. Whenever that moment was, the Mariners became fun again this year. They played 162 meaningful games where each emotion, whether it was joy or anguish, was magnified exponentially. The fact that we were actually feeling anything with regards to this team was an accomplishment.

You see, the cure for cynicism is hope. Hope for a better future. Hope for something, anything different than the dreariness of the past decade. We allowed ourselves to hope for an end to the playoff drought and even though we came up short, the optimism that hope produced is not easily thrown away.

The 2014 Seattle Mariners made it easy to hope again. King Felix is ours and you can’t have him and now he has a partner in crime in Robinson Cano. Kyle Seager continues to be a boss and we can now call him one of the best third basemen in the league. Dustin Ackley had his best season yet. Tom Wilhelmsen did this.

So here we are, eagerly anticipating the next season and all the disappointment, joy, agony, and delight it may bring. Who knows what will happen and, for once, that’s an exciting prospect. The Seattle Mariners are fun again!

Mariners Attempt to Squeeze Every Drop Out of Offense

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Yesterday, the Mariners acquired Kendrys Morales from the Minnesota Twins and, in exchange, sent Stephen Pryor packing. It seemed like the writing was on the wall since this offseason, the Mariners wanted their man and they would go ten rounds to get him.

Round 1: The Mariners extend a qualifying offer to Morales during the offseason. If he agrees to the offer, he would earn $12 million on a one year contract. If he doesn’t agree to the offer and signs elsewhere, the Mariners would receive a compensatory draft pick from the signing team.

Round 2: Morales doesn’t accept the Mariner’s offer and doesn’t sign elsewhere.

Round 3: Morales spend the first three months of the season as a free agent, the compensatory draft pick looming over him like a shadow.

Round 4: After a rough April, the Mariners continue to build momentum and find themselves in the midst of a playoff race by June.

Round 5: After the draft in June, Morales is free to sign with another team without having to worry about the compensatory draft pick.

Round 6: Just two days after the draft, Morales signs a prorated $ 7 million, one year contract with the Minnesota Twins.

Round 7: Even though the Mariners are holding a playoff spot in the Wild Card race, its clear that they will need an upgrade to their offense. They’re linked to a number of different names—Marlon Byrd, Ben Zobrist, Billy Butler—but they keep their eye on the prize.

Round 8: Without a Spring Training to get himself ready for the season, Morales sputters out of the gate, hitting just .215 in June.

Round 9: After the All-Star break, the Mariners offensive woes hit an all time high, they’re hitting just .235 as a team.

Round 10: After a long dance, the Mariners finally get their man. The Twins paid him $3 million to play for them for 2 months and get a busted relief prospect in return.

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Mariners Earn Home Field Advantage in World Series

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Week 16 Recap

Date Away Team Score Home Team Score Result
7/14 – – – – –
7/15 National League 3 American League 5 W
7/16 – – – – –
7/17 – – – – –
7/18 Mariners 2 Angels 3 L/16
7/19 Mariners 3 Angels 2 W/12
7/20 Mariners 5 Angels 6 L

A short week with the All-Star game and the surrounding break early in the week. Felix, Cano, Seager, and Rodney all helped the American League beat the National League in the Midsummer Classic and secured home field advantage for the Mariners in this year’s World Series. (If you want to take a brief look at home field advantage, check out my post on the King’s Court)

The Mariners resumed play with a three game series against the Angels. There was a ton of hype surrounding the three game series against the Athletics right before the break but this Angels series was just as important, if not even moreso. The Mariners and Angels needed ten extra innings to settle these three games and, after two walk-off wins, the Angels emerged triumphant. So this marathon of a series and the Athletics series last weekend have shown us that the Mariners can play competitively with the top two team in the division and AL. We’re not at the point where I’d be confident in a one game playoff but we’re close. The trade deadline is July 31, just a week and a half away. Let’s see if Jack Zduriencik has any more magic up his sleeve.

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The King’s Court and Home Field Advantage

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“K! K! K!”

The chant rises out of the din of the stadium. A sea of yellow cards start bobbing up and down. Men in chain mail, Elvis and Michael Jackson impersonators, and those with thick, fake mutton chops join in.

“K! K! K!”

The King looks in towards home plate, gets his sign, winds, and throws. Those clad in yellow wait with bated breath as the ball speeds towards the catchers mitt.

“Steeeerike Three!”

Pandemonium. The cheering only gets louder.

The King’s Court is unlike anything else in baseball. When you’re sitting with hundreds of your courtesans, chanting for a strikeout every time there are two strikes on an opposing batter, it’s hard not to believe there is some tangible effect you’re having on the outcome of the game. Baseball is a tough game for the crowd to affect. Each play occurs separately and the crowd is often reacting to the play that has just finished on the field. It’s not like Soccer or Basketball where the momentum of the game can swing from side to side and the crowd plays a large part in that swing. The common belief regarding home field advantage in any sport is that it does not provide a positive effect on the play of the game but, instead, favorable treatment by the officials calling the game.

Many have looked into the effect of home field advantage in baseball. The baseball blog Beyond the Box Score looked into home field advantage, specifically with the strike zone in mind, and found that there is little evidence to suggest any influence on the game. FanGraphs ran a similar post where Dave Cameron advocated for home field advantage have a more significant effect. After the Pirates won the Wild Card playoff game last year with a loud and rowdy crowd at home, Jeff Sullivan wondered if that type of crowd, so unfamiliar to a baseball stadium, could have had a larger effect than normal.

Along the same lines as Jeff Sullivan, I wonder if the Kings Court could have a larger effect on the outcome of the game than a normal crowd at a baseball game.

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Mariners Mid-Season Report Card

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Week 15 Recap

Date Away Team Score Home Team Score Result
7/7 Twins 0 Mariners 2 W
7/8 Twins 2 Mariners 0 L
7/9 Twins 8 Mariners 1 L
7/10 Twins 4 Mariners 2 L
7/11 Athletics 2 Mariners 3 W
7/12 Athletics 2 Mariners 6 W
7/13 Athletics 4 Mariners 1 L

The Mariners head into the All-Star break after taking two of three from the division leading Athletics. This week seemed like a good way to gain some momentum for the second half but a stinker of a series against the Twins put a damper on any hope of a hot streak. In the two series against the White Sox and Twins, the Mariners scored a grand total of 9 runs in 7 games. We owe our two wins to excellent pitching performances by Felix, Iwakuma, and the bullpen. The two wins over the Athletics were pretty decisive. It definitely felt good to get two strong wins against the best team in baseball right before the break..

For this week’s recap, I’m going to go through each position group and give a mid-season report. The stats included will be to-date season performances instead of the normal two-week period.

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Mariners Sweep Spacemen, Get Hosed by Sox

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Week 14 Recap

Date Away Team Score Home Team Score Result
6/30 Mariners 10 Astros 4 W
7/1 Mariners 13 Astros 2 W
7/2 Mariners 5 Astros 2 W
7/3 – – – – –
7/4 Mariners 1 White Sox 7 L
7/5 Mariners 3 White Sox 2 W/14
7/6 Mariners 0 White Sox 1 L

That road trip felt worse than it actually was. Its probably recency bias because of the terrible time the Mariners had in Chicago.

  • Did you know that the Mariners are just 5-23 when playing the White Sox in Chicago since 2008. Woof.
  • All four runs scored by the Mariners in the series were scored in the ninth inning or later. Yikes.
  • The Mariners were shutout by Hector Noesi. Yes, the same Hector Noesi who ran a 6.13 ERA as a Seattle Mariner. Ugh.

But, hey, at least the Mariners outscored the Astros by twenty runs!

You’ve probably heard about the massive trade between the Cubs and the Athletics. The A’s gained two premier pitchers to bolster their run for the World Series. Of course this is bad news for the Mariners because the A’s are a division rival and we had been in the market for starting pitching depth. But its not as bad as it seems. The Mariners just got Taijuan Walker back from injury and he’s a certain upgrade over Erasmo Ramirez. James Paxton is about a month away from rejoining the team too and that’s another upgrade. Plus the teams who were really looking for starting pitching help are all in the AL East and if the Mariners are going to make it to the playoffs this year, we’re going to have to go through the Wild Card against those teams from the AL East.

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