God and baseball

I'm hoping that everyone who reads this post is familiar with one of the great baseball movies "For The Love Of The Game". One of my all time favorite parts of the movie, is when Billy Chapel is on the mound, pitching the game of his life. All goes quiet, and he begins to talk to God, saying something to the effects of "God, I did promise that I would never be one of those guys that involves you in this game......but if you could please take away this pain in my arm for the next few innings I would be eternally grateful..." That probably mis-quoted quote springboards what I have to discuss next: Is it OK, or not OK to "involve God" in your game? Do God and baseball mix.....mix and match....or are they two very seperate things?
My first clash between the two came when a team we were invited to play on practised when we wanted to be at church......so the choice had to be made: church or baseball.....we were on the fence for a while, then rec ball schedule took over, and the "other team" took a back-seat to both church and rec-ball......so I suppose that was a victory for God and church.
The next time it came up, was during tense times watching my nine year old play. As one who advocates praying about EVERYTHING, I of course found myself wanting to turn to prayer when things weren't going well in a game......but then began questioning my own ethics!!!! Was it really OK to pray that my son's team would play better.....because wouldn't that be also praying AGAINST another child's sucess...which would be really mean?
At this point I found myself developing my own little list of what I felt was acceptable or NOT when I was saying these game-time prayers......Praying for positive experiences was OK, praying for the boys to win OR LOOSE gracefully was OK, praying that the boys would use the skills they had learned or put into practise a past lesson was OK.......definately NOT OK to pray for anyone to drop the ball....or miss a hit.....or strike out........MOST DEFINATELY NOT OK to curse the umprire, even in the case of a bad call........Not to sure when it came to praying for the opposing team....or the opposing team's Moms.....(ONLY JOKING FOLKS).
Before I sign off here, I feel the need to make a footnote - I definately, absolutely, whole heartedly, completely and utterly believe that God forgives you for missing church when you are playing baseball - the first paragraph might make it sound like that's not my belief, but in a nutshell here it is: I think that if you are a church-goer, and a regular baseball practise clashes with your time of worship, either you need to find a new time to worship or a new time to practise......however if you are in a tournament one weekend that means missing church, I really think that God will forgive you.....some hard-core hell-fire-and-brimstone-types may disagree here, and may point out that there's no scriptural refference that says "play ball!", but seriously guys, there are plenty of proverbs that talk about smiles on faces being good medicine and other such wisdom, and for this reason I stand behind my belief that God will not be mad at you for missing church once or twice due to baseball related matters.

P.S.
 Staying home to watch the yankee game however, I thinnk crosses the line.....DVR was created in order for you to never have this excuse for missing church!