by John Smoltz
To this day, I really believe that if I had suddenly had a change of heart during the press conference and had just looked at John Schuerholz, who was now the Braves president, and Frank Wren, who had been promoted to general manager from assistant general manager, and said, “You know what, guys? I think I’m done,” they would have been relieved. They would have said some nice things about me, we all would have said our good-byes, and we would have walked away peacefully. Things would have been different.
The problem was, I wasn’t done yet. I still harbored the passion and the desire to pitch in the major leagues and I still thought I could. I wasn’t somebody who was just trying to hang on or didn’t know when it was time to quit. And this wasn’t a “trivial pursuit” to try to accumulate more numbers. This was about reaching one last time for the same dream I’d been dreaming since I was seven years old.
I wanted the opportunity to go out on my own terms and I knew full well that by doing so I was running the risk that it might not happen with the Braves. But when it came down it, my decision to come back after surgery wasn’t just about the Braves. This was something I needed to do for myself.
I went through my entire rehab without any contact with the Atlanta Braves, contractwise. I became a free agent after the World Series in October and I honestly didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t foolish enough to think that no news was good news in this case, but I still hadn’t given up hope that we might be able to work something out.
I worked harder than I had ever worked in my entire life to come back from shoulder surgery, and at five and a half months I was at a place I never thought I could be, even in my wildest dreams. Even though the Braves still hadn’t expressed any interest in signing me, I really wanted Bobby Cox to at least come see me and be aware of the progress I had made. He not only agreed to come, but he brought the Braves’ current pitching coach, Roger McDowell, along with him. I thought maybe, just maybe, if they liked what they saw, I would still have a chance with the Braves.
When Bobby came to see me throw, I felt like I was sixteen years old again, trying out for the very first time in my life. There I was, standing on the mound, nervous as all get-out, because I wanted so badly to show him that I wasn’t kidding anybody, that I wasn’t kidding myself. I really had healed and I was capable of coming back and pitching for him.
When Bobby saw me throw, he just went, “Oh my gosh.” Bobby was never was one to blow smoke, and I could tell I had really impressed him. He knew how significant this moment was. Somewhere within me I really thought that this might do it for the Braves; when I impressed Bobby, I thought to myself, Maybe there’s a chance.
But in the end, the Braves made it clear that I was no longer a part of their plans. When we did negotiate one last time, they presented me an offer that was filled with incentive clauses that were just unattainable.
It would have been easier to take if they had just told me they wanted to go in a different direction. I would have respected that. It still would have stung, but I would have appreciated their honesty.
At this point I wasn’t going to convince them one final time that I deserved another chance. My agent just said, “Okay, that’s fine,” and I never said a word. In my mind, there was little left to say. The whole time I had been hoping like a little kid that it might still work out with the Braves, and when it didn’t, it was a sad, sad day.
Almost immediately I started wondering how all of this would play out. I honestly wanted this new direction to work for everybody, and I really hoped we could all part peacefully. For my part, I wasn’t planning on saying anything; I just wanted to be able to walk away and start over with a new team. But at the same time I knew that at some point I was probably going to have to respond to whatever way the Braves chose to break this news.
Once the Braves made their decision to go in a different direction, things happened pretty quickly, because the Boston Red Sox had already offered me a contract. With the Red Sox, I didn’t even have to throw a pitch and I was guaranteed $5.5 million. My agent spoke to John Schuerholz and told him the news, and that was that.
Well, I wish that had been that anyway. Parting ways with the Braves obviously didn’t pan out as peacefully as I had hoped.
When the Braves’ organization later painted a completely different scenario of why I left—which was not accurate—I was forced to react. As embittered as I might have been, though, I just responded with the truth—that the offer the Braves made me was not even close to the offer the Red Sox gave me.
It should have ended much better, it could have ended much better, and it’s really a shame that it didn’t. But all I could do was pick up and move on and start dealing with my new reality:
I was no longer an Atlanta Brave.
Chapter Nine
NO DECISION
Nineteen ninety-five was a huge year for me. I mean huge. It was literally as if my whole life had led up to this year, and I finally reached a place where I realized, That’s it; my life will never be the same again.
Of course, 1995 happens to be the one and only year that the Atlanta Braves won the World Series during our fourteen-year reign as division champions. A one-hitter by Tom Glavine and a solo home run by David Justice in Game Six proved to be enough not only to finish off the Cleveland Indians, but to remove the stigma of a notorious losing legacy in the World Series. When we hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy high above our heads at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium on October 28, we literally lifted our team out of the chronicles of inglorious baseball teams. We were no longer in danger of becoming baseball’s version of the Buffalo Bills; we were finally champions.
Certainly, the World Series win in 1995 was significant in my life. It was a landmark achievement not only for the entire Braves’ organization, but for every player who filled the roster at the time. But winning the World Series actually pales in comparison to the life-changing event that I am describing. I’m talking about the day I truly became a Christian.
Parts of that day remain etched in my memory like they happened yesterday, as if preserved in a neatly labeled Mason jar and tucked away on a shelf in the corner of my mind. The words that were spoken, the intuitive feeling of transformation in my heart—those things have stood the test of time. Other details have been lost to the years, lost to the cobwebs on those shelves—like what I ordered for lunch and even when exactly it happened. (I’d honestly be hard-pressed to pick out the date even if you gave me a calendar.) What I can tell you is that I was at a Bennigan’s in Atlanta having lunch with then-Braves chaplain Walt Wiley.
Walt was a guy who was very nonconfrontational; he embraced everyone’s thoughts and allowed each of us to experience God in our own way, all the while ensuring that everything was grounded in the truth. He led our regular Bible-study sessions, and his subdued-yet-steady manner was a huge influence on me. I owe a great deal not only to Walt, but to the two chaplains who followed him, Mike McCoy and Tim Cash, during my tenure with the Braves. As a pro baseball player, you spend so much time at the park, you miss out on normal opportunities to worship and attend church. These chaplains did a great job of coming down to the field and feeding our souls and talking about things relevant to our faith and baseball, to the lives we were living.
I am grateful that these three chaplains somehow saw the man I was and also the man I could be. I was fortunate to have not only the chaplains, but also some great teammates like Sid Bream, Jose Alvarez, and Marty Clary, who were really looking after my heart from the beginning. These guys were all incredibly influential in my faith journey and collectively inspired me to seek out my own answers to life’s big questions. I started thinking about things I had never really thought about before, like my own existence, and why we are here on earth. What is this whole faith-based anything?
I’ve got to be honest here: I used to have—I don’t know the best way to say this—I guess I mean that I had a misguided view of born-again Christians (which is more than a little ironic considering I ca
ll myself one today). Some of the folks I came across who ardently professed to be born-again—I was just taken aback by their testimonies. It wasn’t as if I was skeptical of their newfound faith; it’s that I was critical of their past. More often than not, I would walk away thinking something like How dare they? How dare these people tell me how to live my life when a lot of them have been down these really bad roads, made horrible decisions, and truly hurt people? And now all of a sudden they’re going to tell me how to live my life? And I’m not even a bad guy! I just couldn’t seem to get beyond the things some of these people had said or done in the past.
But I had a lot of questions and I was always searching for answers. I guess you could say I had a certain kind of hunger to get to the bottom of it all. I was earnestly interested in what other people thought and believed and rarely passed up an opportunity to discuss such matters with someone, even relative strangers on occasion. My appetite for knowledge led to one pretty awkward, yet ultimately defining moment in my faith and in my life. I’m talking about the first time I met Richie Hughes.
It was 1992 and I was interested in starting an annual youth baseball camp in Atlanta. I needed to find someone who could not only help me get the idea off the ground, but could also run the camp the way I wanted it run: with integrity and with a focus on learning the fundamentals of the game while also giving kids lessons about life. I saw the camp as an opportunity not only to teach baseball, but also to talk about other things: having goals, having dreams, and also just having fun. The kind of fun I knew growing up—getting outside and playing, not sitting in front of the TV or playing video games all the time. It was incredibly important to me to find a partner I could entrust with this vision. My agent, Lonnie Cooper, suggested Richie.
Richie is a huge part of my life today, but I had actually only known him for about sixty seconds when I asked him something like “So what’s the deal with these born-again Christians?”
We were standing in his office at Mount Paran Christian School in nearby Kennesaw, Georgia, where he was currently serving as the basketball coach. After we had made our introductions, I just stood there looking around his office and the items on display and I asked him, “Is this a Catholic school?”
He said, “No, it’s a Christian school,” which led me straight into the aforementioned question. Now, the ironic thing is that I didn’t realize that I was asking the question to a man who would later become an ordained minister in the Church of God. So you can imagine the look on my face when he says, “Well, I am one.”
We’ve all heard it said a million times, but it bears repeating here: “God works in mysterious ways.” For me to ask that question to Richie at that moment in my life … well, you just couldn’t have scripted it any better. Obviously, his answer caught me off guard. He went on to share a little bit of his own testimony and I just stood there listening. That’s how our relationship started and it only grew from there. He became not only a great friend, but also a mentor in my walk with God, joining the ranks of the chaplains and teammates who were already nudging me along. Collectively, they all played a significant role in the making and shaping of my faith.
When I met Richie, I was twenty-four. I was a young kid with a lot to learn. My attitude toward born-again Christians reflected my immaturity to a certain extent, but to be honest, I think it’s also just in my nature to be judgmental. I’d like to think that I have largely outgrown this over time, but the fact is, even though I’m a Christian, I’m still human and I still have my tendencies. It’s not so much that I am self-righteous—it’s that I sort of naturally have what I call a “Prodigal Son” outlook.
If you’ve ever spent any time in a Sunday school classroom, odds are you are familiar with the parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15. It’s a story about a father who has two sons. One day, the younger son asks his father to give him his half of his inheritance now. His father appeases him and splits his estate between his two sons. The eager, younger son promptly packs up, leaves town, and as the Bible puts it, “wastes all his money on wild living.” Next thing you know, a famine spreads across the land. The younger son is forced to take a job as a swineherd and he eventually finds himself coveting the food that he’s feeding the pigs. He decides to return home, repent of his sins to his father, and ask for his forgiveness. Upon his return, his father is so overjoyed that he throws a spur-of-the-moment party.
Meanwhile, the older son returns home from working in the fields all day. When he finds out all the attention is for his wayward brother, he refuses to join the celebration. His father has never slain his finest calf to recognize anything he’s done and he’s been here working hard and doing the right thing the whole time. He sulks outside while his father tries to explain his motives: “For your brother was dead and has come back to life. He was lost, but now he is found!”
At this point in my life I was that older brother. I didn’t want to hear any of these lost-and-found stories. As far as I was concerned, if you did wrong, you deserved the judgment you received, not a party. Again, it’s not that I thought I was better than anyone else, but I was just caught up in the seeming injustice of it all. I’m not proud of it, but that’s just where I was back then: My own resentment kept me from rejoicing in some people’s testimonies, especially the über-zealous born-again Christians. To me, it was as if some born-again Christians had this tendency to see themselves as hammers and other people as nails. And now, as newly minted hammers, their newfound purpose in life was to pound us sinners home, literally beating us over the head with their message: “I’m free now, I want to tell you why I’m free, and this is why you’re living your life wrong.”
In retrospect, my Prodigal Son attitude wasn’t getting me any closer to God. It was actually distancing me from Him. But you couldn’t have told me that back then because I wasn’t ready to listen. I was too busy worrying about doing the right things and doing all the things that I thought were going to get me to heaven. I was constantly checking and double-checking that I was on the right path. Baseball chapel? Check. Prayer? Check. Be a good person. Double check. What I didn’t know was that there were a few more things on the list. You know, things besides just having good intentions.
If there’s one consistent trait I’ve had since childhood, it’s that I have always been extremely well intentioned. I was fortunate to be raised by a great mom and dad who began lessons in moral training early and repeated them often. I’m sure I was still in diapers when I first started hearing about the Golden Rule. My mom and dad laid the framework for me, they taught me the moral principles, they taught me how to live with moral character, and they taught me right from wrong. I’m not convinced that this happens a lot in our society today, but it was the way things were in our house. Over time, it just became natural to me: I always wanted to do right. I never wanted to get into trouble.
So on one hand, there were my parents, guiding me along in my faith and helping me continually orient my life by my own moral compass. On the other hand, there was baseball and my dream to one day pitch in the major leagues. These were the two constants that defined my life, and therefore to a large extent my behavior, from the age of seven on. I avoided anything that might jeopardize my baseball ambitions or my morals. I never skipped school, I never drank, I never smoked. I was never caught up in doing things that would make me popular. I went to church, I went to Bible study, and I practiced my butt off. I always showed up on time and I never told a lie. I was a good kid. The ranking order in my life was God first, then family, school, and sports. It was a great way to be brought up and it helped form me into the man I am today. But my obsession with wanting to be good and do good didn’t always pan out for me. It wasn’t solidifying me, it wasn’t giving me peace, and in certain scenarios it wasn’t even turning out “right.”
Everything I did for baseball and everything I did for people, the way I was living life—it wasn’t for God. It was all about pleasing other people. I wanted people to like me. I wanted to do th
e right thing and do the right things for people. The way I was looking at things wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was skewed. When you live your life like this—trying to please man and not God—I guarantee you will not find peace. And for that matter, you won’t find your salvation either. You are far more likely to find frustration and confusion; at least that’s how it was in my experience.
Prior to 1995, my misplaced intentions caused me not only heartache, but they cost me wins as well—I’m absolutely convinced of that fact. I just wasn’t properly equipped to deal with success and failure yet. When things were going well, I’d feel good about myself. When things didn’t go well, I felt like I let people down. It was always a roller coaster of emotions and mixed results. Take, for example, my relationship with my mom and dad at the time. My mom and dad were so important in my life that I wanted to make them proud every day. Everything that I did, the work that I put in, a lot of it was just to try to make them happy. I used to call my dad a lot, but I’d only call him if things were going well with baseball. If things weren’t going well, if I was playing poorly, I didn’t call. It wasn’t right, but it was the way I was.
Honestly, I think that living a life in the public eye easily exacerbates this kind of thing. I’m sure there are a lot of people who can relate to some of the things I’m describing here, but the difference between me and most people is that my mistakes were often made in front of thousands of fans, if not broadcast on national TV as well. And when you’re in that kind of spotlight, I think it becomes an almost monumental task to keep your own feelings of self-worth separated from your performance on the field. I know for me, before I truly became a Christian, a lot of times the way I performed was simply a measure of how well I was reacting to situations and controlling my thoughts. A lot of it basically boiled down to how I felt about myself at that moment. And, like I said, it was always a roller coaster.