Chapter Twenty

Chapter twenty talks about how the whole Major League baseball experience increased Josh's relationship with Jesus Christ. He gave all the credit to Jesus of how he made it back into baseball. He says that if it weren't for God sparing him and helping turn his life around, he would not be here today to tell this story to people.

In May 2007, when Josh was still playing for the Reds, he had a special encounter. While signing autographs after the game, there was a boy about ten years old standing there waiting. The boy told him that Josh was his savior. Josh looked up from signing and asked the boy if he knew who was Josh's savior. The boy looked up after thinking for a moment and yelled Jesus Christ. Josh told him that he was exactly right and slapped him five.

This experience with the boy struck Josh and Katie as a very heartfelt moment. Something about that moment made them think about something deeper at work inside that boy. In fact, the story inspired Josh so much that he told it for a story in ESPN The Magazine. Not long after this, Josh received a letter from the boy's aunt. She told a little about the boy's story. The letter said that the boy's father was an alcoholic that continually tried to get sober and time after time failed. The boy and his father were big Reds' fans and the boy had heard about Josh's story. The boy told his father that if Josh could stay sober, then he could do it too. The boy's father agreed, so he continued to try to get clean and to that point had an impressive stretch of sobriety. After Josh read the letter, he handed it to Katie to let her read it. Without saying anything, they were thinking the exact same thing that all of this was much more than baseball.