Pitcher

6 feet, 3 inches

195 pounds

1988 Cy Young Award

When I first became a Christian, I became a Chapel Leader right away; not because I was spiritually mature, but because I wanted the accountability of saying "I'm a Christian," now I need to change my life. I need to watch certain things because I'm accountable to myself, my teammates and to the Lord ultimately. So as a leader people respect your life. We're with our teammates more than we are with our families during the season and they inspect your life more than your words. So a leadership role is one of example more than it is verbal, and it is not a dissertation; it's more of an osmosis and then when people are in trouble, they can come to you and you can point them in the right direction. For me as a Christian, that's to the Lord.

A lot of Non-Christians are thinking, "I will try Christianity when I clean up my life" and they will never have enough power to get their life right by themselves. They first need to turn their life over to the Lord so that the Lord can give them power to straighten things out. A lot of us as non-Christians, as I was until I was 21 years old, thought that Christianity was something that you would do later in life when you get older.

But the thing about Christianity is it frees you up to be all of your potential right now in life. God comes into your life and gives you the power of salvation first of all, then the power to go through life's daily struggles on a moment basis. He gives you wisdom on a moment-by-moment basis on problems and situations in your life. And so it's not that I don't fail anymore, it's that I have a friend, and someone who loves me, and someone who's taking care of me and giving me wisdom on a daily basis and in the midst of those failures because I'm human. I truly have someone to turn to.