Your Identity Is Bigger Than Baseball

For most of my life, if you asked me who I was, baseball would have been somewhere near the top of the answer.

I was a baseball player.

The game had become part of how I saw myself. I had spent years practicing, training, competing, and dreaming about where baseball could take me. Like so many players, I had unknowingly attached my identity to what I could accomplish on the field.

Then I got to college.

I spent four years playing NCAA Division II baseball.

In those four years, I had six at-bats.

Six.

When you've dedicated so much of your life to a game, it's difficult to explain what that can do to you. I wanted to compete. I wanted an opportunity. More than anything, I wanted to feel like I belonged.

Instead, I spent most of my college career watching.

And it almost broke me.

There is one memory from those years that has stayed with me.

Before certain games, my head coach or infield coach would address the team and say something along the lines of, “Guys who know they aren't going to play tonight, leave your turfs on in case we need to pull the tarp.”

I knew exactly who they were talking about.

I can still remember looking across the dugout and making eye contact with those coaches, carrying so much anger and resentment in my heart.

What made it hurt even more was knowing how much I had already poured into that day before the game even started.

My day often began earlier than everyone else's. My roommates and I would make sure we were among the first players at the field. If rain had come through, we would sponge standing water and help get the field ready.

I would rake the third-base cutout as close to perfection as I possibly could.

Part of that was simply taking pride in doing my job well. But there was another reason that mattered deeply to me.

If there was even the slightest chance that I might get an opportunity to play third base that day, there was no way I was going to let a bad hop take away one of the few opportunities I had been given.

Then came batting practice.

I took pride in every round. Every swing mattered because I wanted someone to notice. I wanted the coaching staff to see something that might change their mind about me.

But the hardest moment came near the end of pregame infield/outfield.

I knew what was coming.

I would take my final ground ball.

“On the run!”

The coach would hit a slow roller. I would charge it, often barehand it, and make the throw.

And somewhere inside of me was always the same hope:

Maybe today is the day.

Maybe that play would be enough.

Maybe today one of my coaches would finally see value in me.

Looking back, that sentence hurts more than anything else.

Because I wasn't simply trying to earn playing time anymore.

I was trying to earn value.

That's what happens when baseball becomes your identity.

If a coach plays you, you feel valuable. If he doesn't, you feel worthless. If you go 4-4, you feel like you're somebody. If you go 0-4, you question everything.

I had allowed people holding a lineup card to have authority over something they were never supposed to control: my worth.

Eventually, I had to be reminded of a truth much bigger than baseball.

I was God's creation before I was ever a baseball player.

Genesis 1:27 tells us that God created mankind in His own image. Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.”

My value wasn't created when someone handed me a baseball uniform.

And it couldn't be taken away when a coach didn't put my name in the lineup.

I wish I understood that more deeply when I was standing in that dugout.

I wish the younger version of me understood that I didn't need a coach to value me because God already did.

That doesn't mean we stop caring about baseball. It doesn't mean we shouldn't want to start, succeed, or reach the next level.

Colossians 3:23 tells us, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.”

So work.

Train.

Compete.

Take pride in your batting practice. Rake the field perfectly. Take that last ground ball like it's the bottom of the ninth in the College World Series. Chase the starting position. Become the best baseball player you possibly can.

But understand why you're doing it.

Don't work desperately hoping your performance will convince someone that you have value.

Work because God has already given you value, and you have an opportunity to honor Him with the abilities He's given you.

I spent four years playing college baseball and only stepped into the box six times.

Back then, those six at-bats felt like a measurement of what I was worth.

Today, I understand something I desperately needed to know then:

I am God's creation before I am a baseball player.

One day the jersey comes off. The games stop. The statistics become memories. Even the greatest players eventually take their last ground ball.

But your identity in Christ remains.

Baseball is what you play. Jesus tells you who you are.