Scott Brosius is now the head baseball coach at his alma mater.  He is in our Men of God spotlight this week and we recently caught up with Scott over the phone to talk about faith and baseball.

His Life

Scott grew up in Oregon and would attend college at Linfield College.   His roots were not in the church, but Scott had attended various churches while growing up.  After being drafted and playing in the minor leagues, Scott would meet someone who helped him to learn about Jesus.

Q – Can you share your testimony with us?

“Growing up, I had gone to church at a lot of different places, but as a family, we weren’t really a church attending family.  I would hop on the church buses and go wherever they took me and went with my friends as a kid but I never really understood what it meant to have a personal relationship with Christ or knowing God in a personal way.  As a kid, it was that eye in the sky and you just wanted to mind your business.  Growing up through high school and even in college, I didn’t have one of those wild lifestyles.  I lived a pretty normal, focused life, stayed away from all the trouble, but as far as the church goes, I never really attended in high school or in college much.  When people would talk to me about who Jesus was and was wanting me to become a Christian, I just sat on the fence, trying to figure this whole thing out.  I tried to figure out what that meant and was kind of afraid to jump off.  Like it is for a lot of people, sometimes it takes something in your life to kind of push you and for me, it was dealing with the death of my mom.  She was battling cancer and I was in the minor leagues playing Double A baseball, and to that point in my life, everything had kind of gone exactly as planned.  I had a goal of playing baseball from the time I was four or five years old and I got the opportunity to play in high school and play in college, a chance to get drafted and play professionally and I was just working my way through the minor leagues and everything was going as planned.  Then all of the sudden, something happened that was out of my control, the first real negative thing that I had to deal with.  I think it was really kind of through that process that I ultimately ended up making that decision.  I had a former player in Huntsville, Alabama named Rocky Coyle, who I was working out with in the offseason.  He was very active.  He was the youth pastor for years and years but as I knew him, he was just a few years out of baseball.  He was talking to me quite a bit about what it meant to be a Christian and what that meant in your life.  At that point, I was still really hesitant to make that commitment.  I just didn’t get it and I was a little fearful of what that meant and how it could change my life.  My mom was in the middle of a bone marrow transplant.  I was in Alabama and she was in California.  She worsened quickly so I had flown back to California to see her.  My stepdad called and said, “I think you need to get out here. It doesn’t look real good for her.”  So I got out there, I guess on a Wednesday.  I got to the hospital and stayed that the hospital for the first day, overnight, and it was apparent that she was getting worse.  On Thursday morning, the doctors came in and talked to us about her situation and said that at this point, it didn’t look like they were going to be able to save her; they were just going to try to make her as comfortable as possible.  It was pretty devastating news to deal with the reality that my mom was going to die in the near future.  I left the hospital that morning and went back to the house and cleaned up, showered, just trying to gather myself a little bit.  A few hours later, I went back to the hospital.  I got to the hospital and my sister met me at the front door.  She was crying and said, “Mom died while you were gone.”  The thing that I remember about that moment was just this overwhelming kind of panic feeling.  I started taking off and just running through the hospital, just kind of blowing through the doors, just banging through all the doors.  The cancer unit was kind of in the back of the hospital.  I was just running, feeling like I had to get there to see her and just feeling this panic.  When I got to those glass doors, this sliding door that went into the unit where she was at, this mom was walking out with this brand-new, newborn baby.  To this day, I still don’t know why they would have been in that part of the hospital.  But she came walking out with this little, tiny baby and just made me stop dead in my tracks and I just looked at this baby.   I heard this voice inside me that said, “It’s ok.  With her death, she has new life.”  It was just as clear as a bell, the words.  I hung there for a second and the thing that hit me at that moment was all the panic was gone.  The pain, of course, and everything else that I was feeling was still there, but that overwhelming panic was gone.  It was replaced with some kind of peace.  After the funeral, I came back and was talking to Rocky about what happened and about what I heard and what I felt.  He looked at me and said, “Scott, you’ve got to know, don’t you?  You have to know that God is real and God is personal and He just spoke to you in a way that nobody else could have spoken to you.  No human could have said anything at that point that could have taken away those feelings that you had, but they were taken away.”  As I was sitting with them, it was a real rainy day; we weren’t working and were just sitting in his Bronco and talking about all of this.  He was like, “You can’t deny this anymore.  You’ve got to understand that God is real.  Don’t you want that?”  I was like, “You know, you’re right.  I can’t deny this and if that’s who God is and can be that personal and help me through something like that, then I want that.”  It was in the car that afternoon that I prayed with Rocky.”

His Career

Scott made it up through the minors and took over at third base for the Oakland A’s.    He hit a home run in his first game and held the position until the end of 1997, a season of struggles for Scott.  The A’s traded Scott for Kenny Rogers and Scott would find his new home in New York would propel him to the top of the baseball world.

Q – What was the highlight of your career?

“It would be hard to pick one out.  I think getting called up to the big leagues for the first time was certainly a highlight.  It happened on my dad’s birthday.  Being able to call him and say, “Hey!  Happy Birthday!  By the way, do you want to come to Oakland and watch me play?” that was a pretty special time.  Your first game in the big leagues is something that you will never forget.  Of course, going to New York and having the chance to play in four World Series and winning three of them.  Each World Series was special in its’ own way.  I think that there’s something about the first time you that you do it.  So, 1998 and that season, winning the World Series.  My dad, at that point, was diagnosed with cancer as well and had gone through surgery earlier in that year, but I made the All-Star team and was able to fly him out and share the weekend with him at the All-Star game.  There are a lot of things in that 1998 season that stood out as special.

Q- Who was the toughest pitcher you faced in your career?

“I wish that I could say there was only one but there were a whole bunch of guys that seemed pretty tough on me.  I think the guy that stands out to me quite a bit is Randy Johnson.  I thought he was tough and I think the thing that was interesting about Randy was that overall, I was a pretty good fastball hitter and he’s a fastball pitcher.  I still had trouble with him.  He was probably the toughest lefty that I remember facing.  There are a couple of guys that stand out.  A couple of guys I didn’t have to face too much.  Rivera, obviously, I got to be on the right side of him, playing defense instead of facing him quite a bit.  Jack Morris was a guy that when I first came up, I got to face him and he was pretty nasty.  There are a lot of them that were tough.”

Q – How did faith influence your career?

“For all of us, there’s a lot of growth that happens.  A huge part for me was dealing with adversity.  In baseball, just like any time in life, it’s not if the adversity is going to happen, it’s when it is going to happen.  There was a season going through them.  My 1997 season in Oakland, I had an absolutely horrible year, injury-filled, didn’t play well.  The team didn’t play well.  I was away from my wife and kids more as they were getting older.  It was really a kind of miserable year.  I remember coming home after that season and talking to my wife, just saying, “I can’t do this again.  I can’t play like this.  If this is what baseball’s going to be, I’m going to walk away from it.”  As we talked and prayed about it, I think god kind of hit me over the head a little bit that offseason and said, “You know. To this point, you’ve turned over everything in your life but baseball.”  For me, baseball’s like, “Yeah, I’m the guy facing the ninety-five mile per hour fastball and I’m the guy that has to catch it.  I’m the guy who’s got to do this kind of stuff.”  I think I was holding on pretty tight.  I think God was saying, “Look, you need to let go.  Can you trust Me with baseball as well?”  Growing after that 97 season, just making the commitment that from here on out, this is no longer my thing.  I’ll play it under God’s terms and not mine.  I got traded to New York, which was probably the last place I would have ever chosen for myself to get traded to, but it ended up being the time of my life.  Going through the adversity that I did and coming to a point where I said, “Man, I’ve really got to let go of this, play hard, and do all of those things, but don’t worry about the things you don’t control.”

His Advice

Scott retired after the 2001 season, walking away with three World Series rings, a Gold Glove, an All-Star game appearance, and the MVP trophy of the 1998 World Series.  He has stayed in baseball, teaching young men about the things that he learned along the way.

Q – How is faith influential in your career now as a coach?

“I think that’s part of the real fun of coaching kids at this age.   They’re coming to a point in their lives now where they’re making decisions that will impact the rest of their lives.  (It’s fun) Being able to speak into that a little bit, you know.  “Let’s talk about the things that really have true importance.”  Everybody talks about getting a job and making money and all these types of things that college-aged kids talk about but being able to talk to them about the bigger picture things and things that do have more importance than just the things that we do.  We talk quite a bit about how people are going to remember who you are as a person and what you believe a lot more than they’re going to remember what kind of average you had or what you did and things like that.  My faith is the foundation of everything that I talk to these guys about when we talk about these big picture things.”

Q – In your opinion, what does it mean to be a man of God?

“It’s a journey that never ends, that we never get figured (out completely).  Even last night, in our small groups and in our Bible studies, as we’re talking about things, it’s just learning to understand and learning to recognize God in everything that we do.  I think that sometimes for me, I get focused on the do’s and the don’ts and the trying to do this and sometimes, I think it’s just being able to slow down and live a life that’s in recognition of the joy that God brings to our life.  As we talk to our kids, friends, and people around me, maybe help people to see that they might be missing as well.”

With every new door that God has opened in Scott’s life, with every adversity he has had to face, with every change in scenery and with every opportunity, Scott has been able to see that God stand by His Word and has never left him.  Each day brings those opportunities for each of us to see what Scott has seen in his life.  God is there and God is waiting for us to turn everything over, understanding that this life is not our own.  It is a chance for us to praise God, glorify God, and to spread God’s Word and love to a world that is desperately in need.

Travis Fryman would have a stellar career and now, finds himself still in the game of baseball but looking at the game from a different perspective, as he is in the managerial role.  I spoke with Travis on the phone to talk about baseball, life, and the Giver of all good things.

His Life

Travis grew up with a love of baseball and was raised in a Christian environment.  It would take years for him to begin to grasp what it meant to be a follower of Christ, as he told me in his testimony.

Q – Travis, when did you give your life to Christ?

“It was the offseason of 1994-1995.  I grew up in a Christian home.  I even invited Christ into my life as a child, but I really didn’t understand what it meant to surrender my life to Christ until February 25^th, 1995, at my home church.  I had just gotten to that place in my life where I began to understand what that really meant.”

His life would be changed from that point.  For years, he had experienced success on multiple levels, but his viewpoint of what matters the most in life changed.

His Career

Travis came up with the Detroit Tigers in 1990 and would play for the Tigers until 1997 and then finished his career with the Cleveland Indians.  Multiple times, Travis was selected to the All-Star game and won a Gold Glove award during his career.

Q – How did your faith influence your career?

“In dramatic ways.  Had you known me before Christ and after Christ, certainly there were some significant differences.  The greatest difference in my life before Christ and after Christ was that before Christ, I really didn’t care that much about the men that I played with.  If they played hard and worked as hard as I did and they wanted to win as much as I did, I liked them.  If they didn’t, I really didn’t want anything to do with them.  I didn’t know if they were married or had kids or anything about their personal life and again, I didn’t really care.  After I gave my life to Christ, God really gave me a great love for my teammates and I began to look for ways to love them and serve them, and for the opportunity to share the gospel.  I am not a person who believes you check your faith at the door to the locker room.  I believe that if you are a follower of Christ, that Christ is central in your life, and that relationship with Him permeates every relationship in your life and everything that you do in your life.  There is really no area in my life that my relationship is not impacted by.”

Q – What was the highlight of your career?

“Certainly, the opportunity to play for Sparky Anderson was an incredible thrill for me.  He was the perfect manager for me to come under.  Being able to play with Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker, which was a big thrill for me.  Playing in Cleveland at a time when they were sold out every night and we were in the postseason three of the five years that I was there, that was very exciting.  Participating in All-Star games, those things were fun.  Certainly those are some high points in my career, but if I look back on my career, the things that mean the most to me are not anything that really happened between the chalk lines.  The things that mean the most to me in my career were the relationships that I formed with the men that I played with, the Bible studies that I participated in, how God worked through you in the lives of other people and just those opportunities that come really on a daily basis in the locker room as you’re building those relationships.  Having God working through you in their lives is an exciting thing and I don’t believe there is anything more exciting or more fulfilling in your life than being part of when God calls someone to Himself and they give their lives to Christ and you’ve been a part of that process.  I think that’s the most rewarding thing to participate in.”

Q – Who was the toughest pitcher you faced in your career?

“No question in my mind, statistically speaking, Pedro Martinez pretty much owned me.  I just had tremendous struggles against him.  I didn’t pick the ball up very well.  I don’t know what my career numbers were off him.  I think they’re somewhere in the neighborhood of two for fifty-something, which isn’t very good.  I did not have a great deal of success off of Pedro.  Aside from Pedro, no one really jumps out at me.  But I can say, with great assurance, that Pedro pretty much owned me.”

His life today and his insight

Travis has now become a manager and I wanted to see how God had shifted his viewpoint in this new career.  Travis helped me to understand purpose and to understand what our lives are to be about, something that God has taught him over the years.

Q – How do you see God using you now in the managerial role?

“In purpose, it’s no different than my purpose in any other area of life.  I really believe that there is a difference between God’s purpose for your life and God’s plans for your life.  I believe that God’s purpose for your life and for mine are exactly the same.  God’s purpose for our lives is for us to enter into a relationship with Him and to enjoy that relationship for all of eternity.  His purpose for us also is to glorify Him within the world.  His plans for Andy and His plans for Travis are unique to each of us.  Where the Scripture says in Jeremiah 29:11, “I know” God’s saying, “I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord “plans to prosper you, not to harm you and to give you a hope and a future.”  It says that He knows those plans and those plans are unique to you and to me.  It’s not God’s purpose that’s a mystery to me; it’s God’s plans that are a mystery to us.  I’ll never know all of God’s plans for my life but I have decided that I want to embrace God’s purpose for my life wherever I am, whether that’s at home with my family, whether that’s serving at my local church, whether that was as a Major League Baseball player or now as a minor league manager.  I’m going to pursue my relationship with God; that’s an intimate love relationship with Him and I’m going to bring glory to Him right where I’m at and I do that in a variety of ways.  (I do that) Through my relationships with men who are entrusted to my care, through my interaction with my peers, other coaches and managers, through the platform that I’m given, an opportunity to share or speak and communicate what God’s done in my life and just through conversations that I have with people.  Everybody has to decide, I believe, to embrace God’s purpose for your life and if you want to embrace God’s purposes for your life right where you are, I believe God’s plans for your life begin to be unrolled or unveiled in your life.  I don’t get too caught up worrying about what tomorrow holds.  I’ve just decided I’m going to embrace God’s purpose for my life today where I’m at.”

Q – Do you have a favorite passage?

“At this point in my life, I really do.  It’s 1 Corinthians 9:19.  It’s a great passage of Scripture.  God put that on my heart about three years ago.  It says, “For though I am free from all men, I’ve made myself a servant to all, in order that I might win the more.”  It really defines my life.  The first part says, “Though I am free from all men” and God’s given me great freedom.  Anything I’m involved in now, I’m involved with it because I choose to be there, not because I have to be and that says a lot about what the desires of my heart are.  “Though I am free from all men, I’ve made myself a servant to all” and it’s a reminder to me why I am here.  I am here to serve those who are around me, to be the aroma of Christ where I am and to put others before myself, but I do that, according to the last part of that verse, “in order that I might win the more”.  The goal of my life is to share Christ with those who are around me in the hopes that they would come to know Him.  That verse really guides my life.”

Travis Fryman lives his life in a manner that he wants others to come to know the peace and the joy that he has found in Jesus Christ.  He once loved victories in baseball but now, he is obsessed with the victory that we find in Jesus Christ.  It isn’t the love of the game that drives him today.  It is the love of the team, the team of believers that he is a part of that God is using daily.

It is not an easy job.  On the field, he makes a hundred or more decisions throughout one game, trying to baffle the hitter so the Houston Astros can win the game.  JR Towles has learned how to game plan for Major League hitters and he calls the shots for the pitcher during the game.  In his life, though, he has learned that it is God who is calling the shots and he walks humbly down the trail that God has cut for him.

I caught up with JR in Kissimmee, FL this season during Spring Training.  He stood there intent on talking about a faith that has changed his life in more than one way.

Faith

JR Towles grew up loving the game of baseball and at an early age in life, he heard the gospel and gave his life to Jesus Christ.  His two great passions began to develop and to grow deeper as his life progressed and before long, JR would see how God would use his passion for baseball to give JR an audience to share the gospel with others who were looking for answers for their lives.

Career

Q – How has your faith influenced your career?

“It (faith) has everything to do with it.  If it wasn’t for Him, I wouldn’t have anything.  Like my favorite verse says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” He’s where all your strength comes from and without Him, nothing’s possible.”

Q – How hard is it to stand strong in your faith in the world of Major League Baseball?

“I don’t think it’s too hard for me.  He’s given you everything and everything comes from Him.  As long as you give Him credit and try to do everything you can to glorify Him, it’s going to be alright.”

Q – How do you stay focused?

“We have Bible Studies some times.  I wake up early in the mornings and read the Bible.  (You) just try to hang around people who believe in Christ and talk about it.  It’s really hard to get going in a church because you’re playing games all the time but you have chapel and that helps you.”

Q – What is the highlight of your career so far?

“Getting to the Big Leagues was the highlight.”

Q – How do you stay positive when you know that failure can come?

“You can’t let your highs get too high or your lows get too low; you have to keep it on an even level.  Last year was real tough for me.  Just try to stay mentally positive and know that everything happens for a reason.  (You have to) Believe that He wouldn’t put you through it if He’s not going to get you through it.”

Q – In life, how have you handled setbacks?

“I’ve always been an underdog in my life.  I’ve always had to work the hardest.  You just have to overcome them.  Like I said before, everything happens for a reason and you just have to keep a positive attitude about it.”

Advice

Knowing that JR had always been an underdog, I felt like most of us could resonate with the drive it has taken him to get to where he is in life.  We all have had to push hard to get to the places where God has us and if we learn anything from the Bible, God loves to use underdogs for His purpose and to further His kingdom.

Q – What is your advice for those who have made mistakes in life?

“God’s a forgiving God.  He sent His Son to die on the cross for you so if you believe in Him, everything’s going to be alright.”

Q – How can men do a better job living their faith in day to day life?

“Always put Him first.  If you always put Him first, then everything else is going to get taken care of.  Just try to live the life that He has for you and try to please Him in any way you can and try to touch someone in a Christian way.  Try to be a good example to others, which is going to please Him.”

JR Towles’ story teaches us that anything is possible when it comes to a loving God who only wants what is best for His creation.  Regardless of the odds we face, we have God with us who is even bigger.  Regardless of what we have done in the past, we have God who forgives us and loves us unconditionally.  We may seem like underdogs but underdogs just happen to be what God loves to use.

* – Special thanks to Sally Gunter of the Houston Astros for helping us line up this interview.