Prodigal Magazine

At the end of the 1997 season, Scott Brosius wondered where his career was going.  He had just completed his worst season in Oakland and now, he was hearing the trade rumors and contemplating where he would be next.  God opened a door, one that Scott could not have imagined being opened before that time, reviving his career and providing Scott with a new platform and a new audience.  His faith would grow as the Lord moved in so many ways.

Scott Brosius is now the head baseball coach at his alma mater.  He is in our Men of God spotlight this week and we recently caught up with Scott over the phone to talk about faith and baseball.

His Life

Scott grew up in Oregon and would attend college at Linfield College.   His roots were not in the church, but Scott had attended various churches while growing up.  After being drafted and playing in the minor leagues, Scott would meet someone who helped him to learn about Jesus.

Q – Can you share your testimony with us?

“Growing up, I had gone to church at a lot of different places, but as a family, we weren’t really a church attending family.  I would hop on the church buses and go wherever they took me and went with my friends as a kid but I never really understood what it meant to have a personal relationship with Christ or knowing God in a personal way.  As a kid, it was that eye in the sky and you just wanted to mind your business.  Growing up through high school and even in college, I didn’t have one of those wild lifestyles.  I lived a pretty normal, focused life, stayed away from all the trouble, but as far as the church goes, I never really attended in high school or in college much.  When people would talk to me about who Jesus was and was wanting me to become a Christian, I just sat on the fence, trying to figure this whole thing out.  I tried to figure out what that meant and was kind of afraid to jump off.  Like it is for a lot of people, sometimes it takes something in your life to kind of push you and for me, it was dealing with the death of my mom.  She was battling cancer and I was in the minor leagues playing Double A baseball, and to that point in my life, everything had kind of gone exactly as planned.  I had a goal of playing baseball from the time I was four or five years old and I got the opportunity to play in high school and play in college, a chance to get drafted and play professionally and I was just working my way through the minor leagues and everything was going as planned.  Then all of the sudden, something happened that was out of my control, the first real negative thing that I had to deal with.  I think it was really kind of through that process that I ultimately ended up making that decision.  I had a former player in Huntsville, Alabama named Rocky Coyle, who I was working out with in the offseason.  He was very active.  He was the youth pastor for years and years but as I knew him, he was just a few years out of baseball.  He was talking to me quite a bit about what it meant to be a Christian and what that meant in your life.  At that point, I was still really hesitant to make that commitment.  I just didn’t get it and I was a little fearful of what that meant and how it could change my life.  My mom was in the middle of a bone marrow transplant.  I was in Alabama and she was in California.  She worsened quickly so I had flown back to California to see her.  My stepdad called and said, “I think you need to get out here. It doesn’t look real good for her.”  So I got out there, I guess on a Wednesday.  I got to the hospital and stayed that the hospital for the first day, overnight, and it was apparent that she was getting worse.  On Thursday morning, the doctors came in and talked to us about her situation and said that at this point, it didn’t look like they were going to be able to save her; they were just going to try to make her as comfortable as possible.  It was pretty devastating news to deal with the reality that my mom was going to die in the near future.  I left the hospital that morning and went back to the house and cleaned up, showered, just trying to gather myself a little bit.  A few hours later, I went back to the hospital.  I got to the hospital and my sister met me at the front door.  She was crying and said, “Mom died while you were gone.”  The thing that I remember about that moment was just this overwhelming kind of panic feeling.  I started taking off and just running through the hospital, just kind of blowing through the doors, just banging through all the doors.  The cancer unit was kind of in the back of the hospital.  I was just running, feeling like I had to get there to see her and just feeling this panic.  When I got to those glass doors, this sliding door that went into the unit where she was at, this mom was walking out with this brand-new, newborn baby.  To this day, I still don’t know why they would have been in that part of the hospital.  But she came walking out with this little, tiny baby and just made me stop dead in my tracks and I just looked at this baby.   I heard this voice inside me that said, “It’s ok.  With her death, she has new life.”  It was just as clear as a bell, the words.  I hung there for a second and the thing that hit me at that moment was all the panic was gone.  The pain, of course, and everything else that I was feeling was still there, but that overwhelming panic was gone.  It was replaced with some kind of peace.  After the funeral, I came back and was talking to Rocky about what happened and about what I heard and what I felt.  He looked at me and said, “Scott, you’ve got to know, don’t you?  You have to know that God is real and God is personal and He just spoke to you in a way that nobody else could have spoken to you.  No human could have said anything at that point that could have taken away those feelings that you had, but they were taken away.”  As I was sitting with them, it was a real rainy day; we weren’t working and were just sitting in his Bronco and talking about all of this.  He was like, “You can’t deny this anymore.  You’ve got to understand that God is real.  Don’t you want that?”  I was like, “You know, you’re right.  I can’t deny this and if that’s who God is and can be that personal and help me through something like that, then I want that.”  It was in the car that afternoon that I prayed with Rocky.”

His Career

Scott made it up through the minors and took over at third base for the Oakland A’s.    He hit a home run in his first game and held the position until the end of 1997, a season of struggles for Scott.  The A’s traded Scott for Kenny Rogers and Scott would find his new home in New York would propel him to the top of the baseball world.

Q – What was the highlight of your career?

“It would be hard to pick one out.  I think getting called up to the big leagues for the first time was certainly a highlight.  It happened on my dad’s birthday.  Being able to call him and say, “Hey!  Happy Birthday!  By the way, do you want to come to Oakland and watch me play?” that was a pretty special time.  Your first game in the big leagues is something that you will never forget.  Of course, going to New York and having the chance to play in four World Series and winning three of them.  Each World Series was special in its’ own way.  I think that there’s something about the first time you that you do it.  So, 1998 and that season, winning the World Series.  My dad, at that point, was diagnosed with cancer as well and had gone through surgery earlier in that year, but I made the All-Star team and was able to fly him out and share the weekend with him at the All-Star game.  There are a lot of things in that 1998 season that stood out as special.

Q- Who was the toughest pitcher you faced in your career?

“I wish that I could say there was only one but there were a whole bunch of guys that seemed pretty tough on me.  I think the guy that stands out to me quite a bit is Randy Johnson.  I thought he was tough and I think the thing that was interesting about Randy was that overall, I was a pretty good fastball hitter and he’s a fastball pitcher.  I still had trouble with him.  He was probably the toughest lefty that I remember facing.  There are a couple of guys that stand out.  A couple of guys I didn’t have to face too much.  Rivera, obviously, I got to be on the right side of him, playing defense instead of facing him quite a bit.  Jack Morris was a guy that when I first came up, I got to face him and he was pretty nasty.  There are a lot of them that were tough.”

Q – How did faith influence your career?

“For all of us, there’s a lot of growth that happens.  A huge part for me was dealing with adversity.  In baseball, just like any time in life, it’s not if the adversity is going to happen, it’s when it is going to happen.  There was a season going through them.  My 1997 season in Oakland, I had an absolutely horrible year, injury-filled, didn’t play well.  The team didn’t play well.  I was away from my wife and kids more as they were getting older.  It was really a kind of miserable year.  I remember coming home after that season and talking to my wife, just saying, “I can’t do this again.  I can’t play like this.  If this is what baseball’s going to be, I’m going to walk away from it.”  As we talked and prayed about it, I think god kind of hit me over the head a little bit that offseason and said, “You know. To this point, you’ve turned over everything in your life but baseball.”  For me, baseball’s like, “Yeah, I’m the guy facing the ninety-five mile per hour fastball and I’m the guy that has to catch it.  I’m the guy who’s got to do this kind of stuff.”  I think I was holding on pretty tight.  I think God was saying, “Look, you need to let go.  Can you trust Me with baseball as well?”  Growing after that 97 season, just making the commitment that from here on out, this is no longer my thing.  I’ll play it under God’s terms and not mine.  I got traded to New York, which was probably the last place I would have ever chosen for myself to get traded to, but it ended up being the time of my life.  Going through the adversity that I did and coming to a point where I said, “Man, I’ve really got to let go of this, play hard, and do all of those things, but don’t worry about the things you don’t control.”

His Advice

Scott retired after the 2001 season, walking away with three World Series rings, a Gold Glove, an All-Star game appearance, and the MVP trophy of the 1998 World Series.  He has stayed in baseball, teaching young men about the things that he learned along the way.

Q – How is faith influential in your career now as a coach?

“I think that’s part of the real fun of coaching kids at this age.   They’re coming to a point in their lives now where they’re making decisions that will impact the rest of their lives.  (It’s fun) Being able to speak into that a little bit, you know.  “Let’s talk about the things that really have true importance.”  Everybody talks about getting a job and making money and all these types of things that college-aged kids talk about but being able to talk to them about the bigger picture things and things that do have more importance than just the things that we do.  We talk quite a bit about how people are going to remember who you are as a person and what you believe a lot more than they’re going to remember what kind of average you had or what you did and things like that.  My faith is the foundation of everything that I talk to these guys about when we talk about these big picture things.”

Q – In your opinion, what does it mean to be a man of God?

“It’s a journey that never ends, that we never get figured (out completely).  Even last night, in our small groups and in our Bible studies, as we’re talking about things, it’s just learning to understand and learning to recognize God in everything that we do.  I think that sometimes for me, I get focused on the do’s and the don’ts and the trying to do this and sometimes, I think it’s just being able to slow down and live a life that’s in recognition of the joy that God brings to our life.  As we talk to our kids, friends, and people around me, maybe help people to see that they might be missing as well.”

With every new door that God has opened in Scott’s life, with every adversity he has had to face, with every change in scenery and with every opportunity, Scott has been able to see that God stand by His Word and has never left him.  Each day brings those opportunities for each of us to see what Scott has seen in his life.  God is there and God is waiting for us to turn everything over, understanding that this life is not our own.  It is a chance for us to praise God, glorify God, and to spread God’s Word and love to a world that is desperately in need.