What baseball’s long road teaches us about following Christ

The American League defeated the National League in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game. This should not surprise us: the AL has won twenty-three of the last twenty-nine All-Star games. However, the news from the game was forced to compete with a player who may not compete in it for some time to come, if ever.

Roch Cholowsky (pronounced Rock Chill-OW-skee) was selected by the Chicago White Sox as the No. 1 overall pick in the recent amateur draft. Now the former UCLA Bruin shortstop has signed a contract with a $10.35 million bonus, surpassing the previous record by $1.1 million.

However, he won’t be playing in Chicago immediately. “I know that I’m not going straight to the big leagues,” Cholowsky said. “I know there’s a lot of work that needs to be put in, but seeing how well the team at the top is doing and the moves that they’re making, the way that those guys are playing, it’s definitely a lot more motivation to get up there and join those guys at some point.”

Baseball is an odd sport with regard to the way it develops players. It’s hard to imagine the NFL drafting football players who are years away from competing in the league. The NBA occasionally spends lower-round draft choices on players it develops in Europe or the G League, as does the NHL with its two-tiered system.

However, since the MLB Draft began in June 1965, only twenty-four players have gone from being selected straight to the MLB without first playing in the minors. The latest was Ryan Johnson, a pitcher selected in 2024 by the Angels from Dallas Baptist University (where I proudly serve on the board).

Another player on the list who caught my eye is Jim Abbott, who was born without a right hand but was nonetheless selected by the Angels in the first round in 1988 and pitched for ten seasons in the majors, throwing a no-hitter along the way.

How discipleship is like baseball

Here’s why a cultural apologist is writing on a subject typically left to sports journalists: a relationship with Jesus is like baseball, but our culture thinks it’s like football.

After Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, “immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God’” (Acts 9:20). But he was the exception to the rule. Jesus called his disciples to follow him with the promise that he would “make” them “fishers of men,” a process that took years (Matthew 4:19). Along the way, there were times of success (cf. Luke 10:17) and times of failure (cf. Matthew 26:69–75). After the resurrection, the disciples were meeting behind locked doors “for fear of the Jews” (John 20:19), but after Pentecost, they preached the gospel fearlessly to the same people (cf. Acts 4:1–22).

Salvation is in three tenses: we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. Sanctification is a process that will not be completed until “the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). In this sense, discipleship is like baseball: we are “drafted” onto the team when we trust in Christ, then we develop over the coming “seasons” into the best version of ourselves.

However, skeptics sometimes treat Christianity like football, expecting all Christians to emulate Christ fully and discounting or rejecting our faith when we fail. Of course, this is often because they don’t want to make anyone their Lord but themselves and use our sins to excuse their own. But we must also strive not to justify their skepticism.

Using our struggles to help fellow strugglers

The key, it seems to me, is to be so submitted to the Spirit that he can manifest the holiness of Christ in us (Ephesians 5:18), while remaining so transparent about our shortcomings that we can use them as an inducement rather than a hindrance to faith. When we are honest about our humanity and tell others how Jesus forgives and transforms us, we show them that they can be forgiven and transformed. We become wounded healers, beggars helping other beggars find bread.

In this way, we redeem our struggles by trusting them to the Spirit and using them to help our fellow strugglers along the way.

John Claypool told about a medieval village situated at the foot of a mountain, with a monastery high above it. The villagers wondered every day what the monks did up there among the clouds.

One day, a monk came down into the village for supplies, and someone asked him, “What do you do up there so close to God?” The monk replied, “We fall down, and we get up. We fall down, and we get up. We fall down, and we get up.”

So can we.