It’s Okay to be Romantic About Baseball

What the Red Sox Taught Me About the Gospel, Ministry, and the Longing for Home

“How can you not be romantic about baseball?”

The line gets tossed around like a joke, but I’ve never heard it and not felt something deep in my bones.

Because I am romantic about baseball.

I always have been—since I was a teenager in the hills of West Virginia, where there were no pro teams to inherit, no ballparks to visit, no city to call “ours.” If you loved baseball there, you had to choose your own team.

You had to choose your own heartbreak.

I chose the Boston Red Sox.

It started around 2000, when we finally got the MLB Extra Innings package. I was just beginning to understand the rhythms of the game—the slow burn, the long season, the way it somehow feels like nothing’s happening and everything’s happening at the same time.

One night I landed on a Sox broadcast.

Fenway under the lights.

Remy and Orsillo in the booth, cracking jokes and calling pitches like they were narrating an old family photo album.

I didn’t understand everything.

But I felt it.

And then came the voice of Joe Castiglione. My parents—knowing how much I loved it—bought me a satellite radio subscription so I could hear him call games from anywhere. I’d sit there in the fading light of a West Virginia evening, listening to Joe’s voice call every pitch like it mattered. And somehow, even though I’d never stepped foot in Boston, Fenway became a kind of home.

That’s the thing about baseball.

It teaches you how to long for something you’ve never fully seen.

And in its own way, it helped me understand faith.

I gave my heart to the Sox years before they broke it in 2003. I was fresh out of high school when Aaron Boone walked us off the field and into another offseason of grief. It was my first taste of sports heartbreak, and strangely, it felt like preparation. Because real life brings real loss. And loving something that lets you down won’t just teach you about baseball—it’ll teach you about being human.

Then 2004 happened. The bloody sock. The steal. Big Papi’s magic. The comeback from 0–3. The curse, undone.

It was resurrection in real time.

I didn’t just watch that season—I lived it. I wept. I laughed. I believed. And when they won it all, I did something ridiculous and completely necessary: I ordered a physical copy of The Boston Globe so I could hold the miracle in my hands.

That year taught me to hope again.

But life doesn’t stop for championship parades.

Time moved forward.

My career took my time.

My heart took me to Ohio.

There have been joys, memories, loss.

I’ve walked through the ache of unanswered prayers.

I’ve cried myself to sleep when the anxiety was too much.

I’ve stood at hospital bedsides praying for healing that never came.

I’ve preached funerals for people I love.

I’ve watched people walk away from the faith.

I’ve felt the sting of betrayal from those I trusted.

I’ve wrestled with my own doubts in quiet hotel rooms after long days of ministry.

And through all of that—I drifted.

From baseball. From simplicity. Maybe even, for a time, from joy.

The MLB package got too expensive. Time too scarce. So I started rooting for the local team—Cleveland. It made sense. They were close, exciting, and scrappy. But it never felt like home. It was like being a foreign exchange student—you learn the customs, cheer sincerely, even speak the language. But deep down, you still dream in your mother tongue.

The Sox never stopped being my team.

They were just…waiting for me to remember.

And about five years ago, I did.

I caught a game. Then another. Then I stayed up late for a West Coast trip. Then I read every beat writer I could find.

And I realized—I wasn’t chasing nostalgia.

I was coming home.

Because baseball has never just been entertainment for me. It’s been formation.

It’s taught me how to wait.

How to grieve.

How to believe in stories that don’t look like they’ll end well.

It’s taught me that even in silence and slow innings, something is happening.

And in that way, baseball has mirrored the gospel.

Because ministry isn’t quick. Faith isn’t clean. And real life—real discipleship—is a grind. It’s full of starts and stops and quiet Tuesdays where no one claps and no one sees.

Sometimes it’s just showing up again.

Sometimes it’s just keeping score and whispering prayers, wondering if breakthrough will ever come.

But like baseball, faith forms you while you wait.

And the gospel never lets you forget:

The story isn’t over.

There is a home waiting. A better one.

One not made by hands.

And maybe that’s why baseball still stirs my soul.

Because I’ve buried dreams and people I love.

Because I’ve questioned my calling.

Because I’ve wondered, many times, if anything I’m doing actually matters.

But somehow, a game that unfolds over 162 days and 27 outs still dares to say:

“Don’t quit yet. You never know what could happen in the ninth.”

That’s resurrection talk.

That’s gospel language.

These days, life looks different. Jen and I are walking the road of adoption and foster care. It’s beautiful. It’s brutal. And in quiet moments, I find myself dreaming—imagining the day I sit with our child, a game on in the background, and say:

“Let me tell you about Cowboy Up. Let me tell you how we came back from 0–3. Let me tell you how Big Papi gave Boston its joy back. Let me tell you why this team matters to your dad.”

Maybe they’ll roll their eyes. Maybe they’ll choose the Yankees out of pure rebellion. That’s fine.

I’ll still tell the stories.

Because the Sox have taught me how to carry stories that are heavy and hopeful all at once.

They’ve reminded me how to love through loss.

How to wait through winter.

And how to believe, against all odds, that joy comes in the morning.

I’m a Red Sox fan.

Still. Again. Always.

And I’ll be here—keeping score, whispering prayers in the bottom of the ninth, and holding tight to the promise that one day the final curse will be broken, and every last one of us will finally be home.