I think what motivated me was just hope. Something inside of me, deep down in my guts, always felt like there was something in there.

I could never get a real good clear picture of what I could become.

When you start a game, you don't think to yourself, "well, OK, I'm going throw a one-hitter today." It just becomes an organism, your outing becomes an organism and it grows.

I had a lot of fear that would motivate me to try to work hard, because I didn't know what I would do if I wasn't a baseball player.

In an unhealthy way, I found a lot of validity in having always been a very good athlete, a very good baseball player, and I've since grown out of that place into a different perspective and learned how to live differently, thankfully, where baseball is certainly something that's very important to me. It's not who I am, though. It's just what I do.

I would use sport as an escape from the pain of what was real. Instead of dealing with the pain, instead of being honest about the pain, instead of asking for help - if I had to do it differently, I would do it differently in that regard.

Ultimately, our lives hinge on the ability to make right choices and decisions. By God's grace, I made the most important decision a person can ever make. I invited Jesus Christ to be Lord of my life and made a commitment to follow Him. God offers each of us the free gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus by "confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead" (Romans 10:9). It is a wonderful and peaceful feeling to serve a God who loves me and cares about every detail of my life.