Three Home Runs and a Dropped Elbow

Jim Sundberg came up to the Texas Rangers in 1974 and caught for sixteen seasons. He won six straight Gold Gloves, played in three All-Star Games, and won the 1985 World Series with Kansas City. In July 1977, after a day game in Toronto, he was alone in a hotel room with a paperback about Bible prophecy. He set the book down on the bed, got on his knees, and gave his life to Christ.

Dr. Jack Graham has cheered for him since his own seminary days, when the Rangers were new in Arlington. In this conversation he and Jeremiah Johnston get the Billy Martin stories, Nolan Ryan’s rubber snake and the day Bo Jackson called his shot. They also get the story he tells about his father and his son.

His father loved baseball and taught him the game. When he was ten, Jim hit three home runs in one game, struck out once, and asked his dad what he thought. His dad told him he had dropped his elbow. So Jim promised himself when he became a father, he would do the opposite. Years later his son called from college to say he was done with baseball, and told him why he had played at all.

Sundberg and his wife Janet wrote a book on sports parenting while their three children played competitively. He walks through what they learned: why a strikeout is not a person, why kids want their parents to be parents after the game, and how a family keeps its faith when tournaments take every weekend. He explains how he turned a catcher’s gear into a study of the armor of God in Ephesians 6. Dr. Graham shows how holding the strike zone is a picture of holding the pattern of sound teaching. And in The Disputable Matter, Dr. Graham asks the question every sports family is arguing about: should you let your child play select sports?