Early years Miracle off the Mound
Marty got into baseball at a young age. “My parents did the good parental thing, sign your kids up for sports. They signed me up for baseball and my sister up for dance. I just took an immediate liking to it. I really just loved it, to enjoying baseball cards I couldn’t get enough of it on the TV. This is the miracle off the mound.
I really just loved the game. It was ironic because my dad didn’t follow sports in any way whatsoever. My parents went to all my games and they loved watching me play. They just weren’t into it themselves or my dad wasn’t into it himself. I’ve loved it up till now and I coach now, I just love it.
Pro ball Miracle off the Mound
As a former pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays Minor league team, Single A (Independant League) Saskatoon Riot (‘94&’95), now high school coach for baseball (American Heritage), Marty most appreciates the strategic elements of the game. Another aspect Marty enjoyed was setting up hitters, “I enjoyed watching that part of the game. Pitchers are always setting up hitters and those two things are always part of the game.”
As much as Marty loves the game of baseball, he explains that most of it is failure, “If you’re a really good hitter, you bat .300 you actually fail 70% of the time. In a game where there is more failure than success my identity can’t be how well I do in baseball. My identity has to be in the Lord. If I have that perspective I can succeed in the game.”
Failure can lead to success Miracle off the Mound
Marty went onto explain how failure can often lead to success. “Even in failure, we get feedback from that. We can use failure to train better, move better, and to move more efficiently and to become more mentally tough really.” God can work in a miracle off the mound.
Most of the time people have mentors in their life. Marty’s was no different. “One guy in particular I felt was my coach in a pivotal part of my life was my pitching coach at Palm Beach State College and that was Daryl Boyd. What really made him different was he pushed the whole staff but me in particular.
He just had a really good way he was really quiet and soft-spoken, but he really pushed us and did a really good job of finding what we were good at. Pushing us to get better in areas we needed to get better at. Not just on the mound but conditioning-wise.”
Favorite verse
While his favorite verse does not apply to baseball it’s a good reminder of who we are and where our identity belongs. Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord your God in your midst, the mighty one will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with His love and He will rejoice over you with singing.”
Marty explained why the verse was so powerful, “That’s what gets me up in the morning the fact that the Lord is singing and dancing over me and that’s my starting point for identity. So, no matter what happens on the baseball field I know that my God sings and dances over me every morning.”
A still voice
When asked how the verse came to mind, he simply said, “It came in my quiet time. I had never really read it before, and I saw I don’t want to say a vision but just a thought getting quiet before the Lord. Sometimes he speaks to you and it’s just a thought that appears to be random though it’s the Lord.”
The voice of God and whether or not we really hear God or if it’s our own thoughts can be understandably controversial. “My sheep hear my voice. As a believer, I should know what’s familiar. So it’s the consistency of being in His word every morning and then praying.
Pray intentionally
Not just praying in the sense I’m going through prayer requests. I actually make space for my prayer life to just be quiet. Because it should be a dialogue. So, I should listen for that still small voice. I find that I don’t always hear His voice like in a prayer setting. Sometimes I hear Him when I’m driving around and not even thinking. I might have been praying about something earlier and His voice pops up.
Or through other people. Like a buddy of yours comes up and you say, “Wow I was praying about that this morning. A lot of times it’s a confirmation. I led a discipleship group at the last church I was at for three years.
Curiosity is the best Philosophy
One of the ladies that came in one night. We were talking about this very same thing about hearing the voice of the Lord and she was older. She said, ‘I’ve been a believer for 15 years I don’t know if I’ve ever heard the voice of God. I definitely didn’t hear it the way you’re describing it.’ And said ask the Lord simply to reveal himself to you.
She goes home and she came back the next week. ‘I went home, and I didn’t pray exactly the way you prayed. I prayed, Lord how do you feel about me? She said tears just started pouring down and then she kept journaling she couldn’t stop journaling. She ripped off like three pages and the pen wouldn’t stop. And He just kept telling me how He felt about me.’ It should become a common practice that we hear the voice of God.”
Baseball and life
Not only does Marty use his platform in church but the one he has as a baseball coach, “I coach on the high school level right now, outside of high school I do private lessons. Some of them are high school some of them are younger, some of them are believers and some of them aren’t. What I try to do is use situations in a game. I’m coaching at a public school so I can’t be completely all out as a witness.
So, we had a lot of players who made a lot of excuses. They might say, ‘Oh I did this because I slipped. I’d say listen if that thing rises up in your heart to want to make an excuse that something you got to tamp down and that’s part of coaching taking the correction. It’s not anything personal it just means we see a lot of value in you. We’re trying to mold that, so you need to become moldable.
Learning lessons
What I’ve found is when I could get a little life lesson in like that. I had kids come up to me during the baseball season and have more of a spiritual conversation. See what’s going behind the scenes, why are they acting this way what’s going on at home? Do you ever think about God?
During one of the games, the head coach had a raging fever, so we prayed for him the fever went away immediately. He said, ‘You know you prayed for me and that fever went away immediately. I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life.
I went home that night opened the Bible and couldn’t stop reading. His wife came in and said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m 58 years old I feel like I need to get a hold of this part of my life. I should know what the Bible says. I just had this weird experience with a couple of the guys on staff.”
What about you? Have you ever heard the voice of God? Do you desire to? Maybe this article showed you a way to communicate to God God maybe you have learned something about the ways of God and how He plans to be a part of your life.
