Professional baseball player keeps Christ and family first

Turner Ward’s 16 years of professional baseball, including back-to-back World Series wins, extinguish like ballpark lights after a game when compared to being a Christian husband and father.  
   
If Ward’s last at-bat was Sept. 10, 2001, then he says he is satisfied, because it’s Jesus Christ, not professional baseball, that takes him where he needs to go.
   
“If that was my last — and I’m not saying it was, but if it was — then it’s been a great run, and God has really used me in baseball,” he said. “Right now I think I’m supposed to be patient,” he said.
   
He didn’t know then what tragic events would unfold on the morning of the next day, Sept. 11, or that they would cause a suspension of professional baseball in the interest of respect for victims and safety for the living. The season was practically over and Ward and his family would soon head home to Alabama.
   
“I had major surgery at the end of the (2001) season. I really don’t know if I’m done playing or not, but whatever it is, I know that God has a plan for me. No matter what happens I know God is working.”
   
Signing with the New York Yankees out of the University of South Alabama in 1986, Ward worked his way into the pros by 1989.
   
He racked up major league play with the Cleveland Indians, Toronto Blue Jays, Milwaukee Brewers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Arizona Diamondbacks and the Philadelphia Phillies. He played on the Toronto Blue Jays team that won the World Series in 1992 and 1993. 
   
The Blue Jays’ riveting 1993 come-from-behind win over the Phillies in the final game of the 1993 Series made the Blue Jays the first team since the Yankees in 1978–79 to win back-to-back World Series, according to SportingNews.com.
   
Ward, his wife Donna, and their children — Tucker, 9, and Kendall, 2 — came home to Saraland and to their church, Satsuma First Baptist, where they celebrated Easter at home for the first time in many years.
   
Being a professional baseball player means living away from home and traveling beginning about February through September.
   
Ward and Donna, who were high school sweethearts, married in 1988; ever since, she and later their children have packed up and lived together with Ward wherever his baseball job required.
   
Donna Ward, who has an elementary education degree, home schooled their children.
“I guess first of all his being a Christian is much more important than the baseball player that he is — being the Christian leader of our home,” Donna Ward said. “It’s just been awesome to have a godly husband and for the kids to have a godly dad, and for him to lead our home, our family. That’s worth more than anything he’s ever accomplished in baseball.” 
   
Putting in long hours of rehabilitation recently from shoulder surgery started out getting him ready for more professional play, but now, Ward said it’s more to play baseball with his 9-year-old son.
   
“A lot of people ask me what was my most exciting moment in my career. It’s not hitting homers in playoffs or driving in a winning run in the ninth. It was my son being batboy when he was 6 years old. We were playing the Chicago White Sox in Kaminski Park. It was his first time to be batboy and he was all dressed out. I was on deck and he said, ‘Come on, Dad, hit me a homer right here.’ I hit a ball and just knew it was out of the park, but it was a double. Then I came home to score on another base hit, and when I came into home plate he was there to give me a high five,” he said. “That was a highlight.”
   
From the time that Ward didn’t make the baseball team at Satsuma High School his freshman year, he decided that nothing could keep him out of baseball. 
   
“Throughout my whole career I’ve used negative things to motivate me (and) … to work harder,” he said, noting he did make Satsuma’s varsity team his sophomore through senior years.
   
His acceptance of Jesus as Savior preceded his professional baseball career by many years — he was age 15 — but it wasn’t until he was a major leaguer that a turning point came that set a spiritual fire that still burns today. 
   
“I was on fire for a while, but it just kind of slowly went away. I don’t think I knew what true commitment was — I just knew I didn’t want to go to hell. I just kind of got away from it; it just wasn’t cool to live that life anymore,” he said.
   
“Baseball was my god; that was all I strived for. I put it above everything else,” he said. “Here I was making more money than I could ever imagine and winning two World Series, but everything just wasn’t fulfilling.”
   
After his team, the Toronto Blue Jays, won the 1993 World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies, Ward began to get serious with God.
   
“I prayed that winter that I would be totally committed to Christ and live my life for Him — not just use him as a good luck charm. Christianity just wasn’t personal with me,” he said.
   
“But when I made that relationship personal, there was a big change in my life,” he said.
   
“I was so self-centered, but when I started seeking God’s will in my life, well, that’s when God started changing things in my life.”