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Category Archives: Padres Baseball

Musings on my favorite baseball team the San Diego Padres

Spring Training Fundamentals

30 Tuesday Mar 2021

Posted by Jeremy McGarity in Baseball, Christian Habits, grow, Padres Baseball

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Baseball is back! Opening Day is scheduled for April 1, and while I had my doubts with it falling on April Fool’s Day, I’m so excited for the Padres to finally kick-off the 2021 season! We came close last year, but THIS year … this is the year! Just like every other team, the Padres went through Spring Training for the past six weeks. During this time, they worked on the fundamentals of baseball that prepared us for the year we win The World Series!

Baseball Fundamentals

Rich image of professional baseball player, Fernando Tatis Jr., executing fundamentals of hitting a baseball.

Back when I used to play for the St. Louis Cardinals, we took Spring Training very seriously. And every year we’d look forward to our Farm Director’s (I spent my 10 professional seasons in the minor league ‘farm’ system) speech that starts off the season. (The Farm Director is who tells you whether you’re going up or down the farm system levels.) 

He’d start his speech with the most basic fundamentals, saying, “Gentlemen, this is a baseball. It’s 9 inches in circumference. It’s 5 ounces, made of cowhide, and it has 108 red stitches strung around it … ”

Oh yeah, he’d go into detail! Next, he’d say, “Men, this is a baseball glove …” Then, he’d explain, “This is a baseball bat …” No matter who you are on the team, you attend Spring Training and you get back to the basics. I can imagine the Padres locker room … you have people like Fernando Tatis Jr who recently signed a $340million contract for the next 14-years listening to a similar speech. With money like that, it would be easy for anyone to forget the most basic principles of the game.

You throw the ball. 
You catch the ball. 
And you hit the ball. 

But our Farm Director would finish by saying, “And men, the team that does that the best will win the World Championship!”

Christian Fundamentals

Rich image of Seven Steps class at Skyline Church that teaches about Christian fundamentals and more

Can you tell me why 300 million dollar players enter Spring Training to do the same drills we did in Little League? Or why players like Tatis even have coaches?!

Because the fundamentals are the essentials! It’s the same in the Christian faith. There are basic habits that shape our faith that have to be present for us to experience what it’s like to be a Champion for Christ. At Skyline Church, we discuss these habits in our Seven Steps for Spiritual Growth Class. If you’ve been in the faith very long, you know that a devotional time lays the groundwork for God to move in your life. You’ve also experienced that the habit of prayer is in essence primary to growing in relationship with God. You know that regular giving is pivotal in transforming your heart. In addition to what we do privately, we get together as Christians regularly!

It’s essential! Because no matter how long you’ve been in the faith, we all need to consistently get back to the basics. And while we don’t have a $340 million contract, as years tack on, we too can get comfortable in our faith and neglect to participate in the fundamentals of our faith.

We have devotional time.
We pray!
We give!
And we gather!

Ladies and gentlemen … the believers that do this the best are what I call a Champion for Christ!

Commitment

I’ll finish with this …  when I was a young guy, I liked going out on Saturday night.  Even as I became a Christian I lived in that tension of half-hearted commitment. I had one foot “in the world” and one foot “in Christianity.” That never works. There came a point when I started leaving gatherings with my friends and teammates to go to church. They wanted to know why I was doing this “church” thing so often. I had a decision to make. And, it may seem shallow, but I didn’t have the theological answers at the time. So, I just said, “It makes me feel good.” 

There’s going to come a time where you have to choose between your old habits and some new Christian habits. Some habits may be bad habits that you always knew you needed to let go of. But there are also going to be some “okay” habits that aren’t necessarily bad, but they are prohibiting you from becoming a Champion for Christ. No one makes it to the Major Leagues without sacrificing something. You may sacrifice staying out late with friends to go to church, eating out to give more, sleeping in to have a devotional time … we all have secondary pleasures that get in the way of our primary goals from time to time.

It’s in these moments, that we need to prioritize our commitments and decide what our main goal is. In these moments we need to get back to the basics and practice the fundamentals. 

Applying The Fundamentals

Ask yourself today, what is your main objective in life? Have you decided to prioritize your relationship with God above all else in life? Are you executing the fundamentals of your objective regularly? If you will apply the fundamentals you can bet you’ll be a Champion for Christ.



*Read more blogs and articles from Dr. Jeremy McGarity at JeremyMcGarity.com!

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Padres…Really?!

06 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by Jeremy McGarity in Padres Baseball

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I am an optimist. I see the glass half full. No doubt about it. How else can one explain the fact that in my bean head I’m thinking the Padres might not lose another game this year? I’ve played the story out, I’ve seen the miracle, I feel it happening!

They were by far, the worst team in Major League Baseball just a couple road trips ago. Now, they have won 6 in a row. Seriously, 6 wins in a row for a team that was truly made up of multiple Double A players and mostly Triple A players. It was the best minor league show in town.

Now we have climbed over the crumbling Colorado Rockies and find ourselves…wait for it…. just 13 games out of first place (do you hear the positivity?). Ok, that means the three teams above us DIAMONDBACKS, GIANTS AND DODGERS have to lose a lot of games… in a row… and we have to keep winning, we pretty much cannot lose another game this year to have a chance.

But, isn’t that what baseball’s all about?… a chance…. There’s no time limit on games, there’s no clock ticking down and no definite ending until the LAST OUT. So I say Playoffs here we come!

Thank you O’Malley’s! just when you started coming around WE STARTED WINNING. Here’s to our new owners, cheers with half full glasses!

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@kaden.gray has become part of the McGarity family over the years and it was such a blessing to baptize her on Sunday... along with 83 others!!! What a day @skylinechurch @rileymcgarity
Gettin’ ready for @padres Opening Day. #HUNGRYFORMORE
Spring Training Fundamentals
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Last St. Patrick's Day, we were living in very uncertain times! Looking back at this blog from 2020, I can truly say Skyline Church was, and is, relentlessly dedicated to helping people find and follow Jesus, IN EVERY SEASON. Jeremiah 33:3 says, "If you call to Him, He will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know." St. Patrick must have been mystified by God's calling on his life, but his obedience brought spiritual freedom to a tremendous population!
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