Professional baseballers urge ‘follow Christ’

The billboards from “God” are everywhere these days. “Let’s meet at my house Sunday before the game.”
   
“Have you read my book? There will be a test.”
   
“Let’s talk.”
   
While the billboards offer a lighthearted approach to a serious message, two athletes and a team chaplain agree with the sign that a test will be given.
   
Jeff Totten, chaplain for the Detroit Tigers baseball team, said the test is whether a person has asked Jesus Christ to be his or her Savior. To pass the test, the person must accept Christ, Totten noted.
   
Totten spoke Jan. 23 at Eden Westside Baptist Church, Pell City (St. Clair Association). Joining him were Todd Jones, closing pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, and Travis Fryman, third baseman for the Cleveland Indians.
   
Jones, who chose education over playing for the New York Mets right out of high school, said he was a student at Jacksonville State University when he dealt with eternity.
   
Jones met his future wife, Michelle, at Jacksonville State and felt a closeness in her family that was foreign to him. Growing up with divorced parents, Jones wanted what he saw his future in-laws had.
   
Jones began attending Eden Westside with Michelle and her family and eventually accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior in 1991.
   
Fryman received Christ when he was seven years old during a backyard Bible club he attended. But his obedience to God wavered after he was drafted out of high school to play for Detroit, he said.
   
In 1994, seven years after being drafted, he was “making millions of dollars, had a beautiful wife and a personal record of home runs and runs batted in.” “It couldn’t get any better,” he remembered thinking.
   
But he was miserable. “I did not enjoy the life I was living,” Fryman said.
   
While his wife received Christ in 1992, it was not until 1994 that Fryman realized he needed to give everything to God and rededicated his life. They were both baptized after that.
   
Fryman said he enjoys his career now more than he ever has.
   
“I love baseball now,” he said. “But I don’t love it like I did before. It’s not the lord of my life. Jesus is.”
   
Both Totten and Jones emphasized the same thing.
   
Sports figures are popular, and people often look at them as role models, Totten said, but the only person who should be copied is the original — Jesus Christ.
   
When people take their eyes off Jesus to choose a different role model, what results may not bear any resemblance to Jesus, Totten cautioned.
   
Christians are not called to copy others, he said. They’re called to follow Christ.
   
“Jesus is not bodily here,” he explained. “So people will look at you and me,” and, hopefully, they’ll see Jesus.