Braves at Fulton County Stadium
Baseball season is underway. Anyone else feel like it just ended last week? I’m sure the Yankees will have their place, as will the Mets or Cards, so (yawn) wake me when it’s over.
However, in the interest of America’s Pasttime’s grandiose return, I thought I’d tell you about my brief stint in major league baseball. It’s not what you’re thinking, but stay with me anyway. As some of you, my loyal readers, know, I suffered an accident in 1981 that rendered me paralyzed and caused me to tool around in a wheelchair for the last twenty-five years. The testimony of that incident is so amazing I’ve been asked to share it literally thousands of times. In conversation, before corporate staffs, at youth retreats, in churches, civic events, stadiums, television, you name it.
One of my fondest memories was to share my “story” for a weekly chapel service at Walk Thru the Bible Ministries, back when my sister was on staff there. In matter of fact, it was she who got me the gig. So there I sat, telling my account before Bruce Wilkinson (“The Prayer of Jabez”) and those wonderful employees and staff, when afterward, my sister’s boss asked to speak with me in his office. I had no clue what was up, but after some minutes of milling around and being introduced to my sis’s workmates, I headed over to Walt’s office.
“I thought your testimony was quite moving,” he said. “How would you like to share it with the Braves and the Dodgers this Sunday?”
Turned out Walt was the chaplain of the Braves and he often scheduled others to speak in chapel services before each Sunday’s home game for both the Braves and the visiting teams. The world champion Dodgers were coming to town and he had been looking for a speaker. I told him “of course” and he gave me the instructions of where to park (the player’s lot!) and where to meet him (in the tunnel of old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium), where he would take me to the clubhouses of both teams. I felt like I floating in a dream.
In 1982 the Braves were in first place, having set a club record of 13 straight wins to open the season. They had been coasting all summer and the series with the defending champs was causing a buzz in Atlanta. Each game was a sellout. And here was little ol’ me going before the two most publicized teams in baseball in late July. Could the lowly Braves supplant the perennial powerhouse LA squad? This was the Braves of Horner, Murph, Garber, Chambliss, Pascual, Hubbard and Watson. But over in the other clubhouse sat the menace of Baker, Garvey, Sax, Valenzuela, Yeager, Cey and Guerrero. Continue reading »
