Episode 20: Barry Zito: From Fame to Found: The Curveball That Saved Barry Zito from Baseball and Himself
Transcript
Patsy: Hi, I’m Patsy Clairmont, and I’m a Boomer.
Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer, and I’m a Millennial.
Patsy: And you are listening to Bridges.
Andrew: Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations
Patsy: Take me out to the ballgame. Listen, I know that you are a huge fan of the ballpark.
Andrew: Wait, were you just singing?
Patsy: I was singing on purpose to make you miserable, Andrew.
Andrew: Thank you, thank you.
Patsy: But to cheer you up, what I sang about was something you really care about, and I’m going to throw this hardball to you. It’s all about our friend…
Andrew: Barry Zito, who is known for his somewhat historic and modern-day times Major League Baseball career — a pitcher for years and years, now retired and is a songwriter here in Nashville. So an interesting trajectory, considering I was a huge Major League Baseball fan growing up and now one of my trades is being a songwriter, one of the reasons I came to town. So I felt identified with his story, except that I never made hundreds of millions of dollars.
Patsy: Didn’t you?
Andrew: I can’t wait to sit down today. We are going to have a fascinating conversation about more than baseball, about more than career, but about identity, about how sometimes when we think we’re in the highest place of success, we find that actually is one of our lowest places personally. But when we come down off that high horse, we find a lot about ourselves that was valuable, has always been valuable, and will continue to be valuable no matter what our “successes” are. And that is the takeaway I look forward to with our guest Barry Zito.
Patsy: Every week we talk about a bridge after I go looking around the world for one that I think is kind of fitted to our guest, and this time it is the Golden Gate Bridge, which is one of the wonders of the modern world. And this bridge has received great fame, and it is actually orange in color until the sun touches it and then it looks golden.
Andrew: That’s right.
Patsy: And here is the deal with things that look golden: Underneath it can have some crumbly places that need to be shored up, and that happened with the Golden Gate when some of the tunnels caved in.
And I think that our guest knows what it is to be a golden boy, and I think that he also knows what it means to need some shoring up.
Andrew: That’s right. I don’t want to give the introduction for Barry Zito, but for those of you who do not know, which will be very few and far between, Barry was indeed a golden boy in the world of Major League Baseball as a pitcher — not only two World Series rings, Cy Young Award winner, which for those of you that don’t know is the highest achievement for a major league pitcher.
And what I remember, Barry, is having the largest signing deal at any point in history during your career and just thinking about those numbers, of course, because I was like 18. We do know that what does glitter on the surface isn’t always what it seems underneath.
And so we want to welcome you to the show today, Barry. Thank you for being here. I am personally a huge Major League Baseball fan, so when we were connected with you, I said, “Hands down.” I mean, I love everyone who sits across this table, but I’m not necessarily a fan of everybody, except you, Patsy.
But we want to talk about your story, especially leading up to the recent book Curveball that you just wrote about really coming to celebrity status and fame status in baseball and where that left you. What was going on in your mind and in your heart when you were really at the pinnacle of all these things I described? You had kind of every notch in baseball. What was going on internally though?
Barry: It’s hard to kind of lump sum it just because they were different phases of my career, and just like when we live life, we’re kind of are always at different levels of wisdom and perspective. Getting drafted in the first round was kind of my first big whoa out of USC, and so that seemed very natural.
I had a father that was a brilliant jazz musician but became a talent manager that was very successful in Vegas for about 15 years, and so we moved from Vegas to San Diego because my mom was a pastor in a new age church and there was no business for him to manage, there was no entertainment. So he kind of raised me as a manager, like a career manager, and so he was always planting seeds, as he said — first rounder, major league champion, even at the age of 10 or 11.
And so when some of these big successes came early in my life, it was kind of like, Cool, yeah. We’re on pace. This is where we need to be. And I say we because it felt like a team. It was me and my dad, and that became very unhealthy in many ways for me too.
The Cy Young was my second full year in the major leagues, and so that was kind of like riding the highs of not fully knowing what I was up against.
Andrew: And tell me, how old you are at this point?
Barry: 24 when I got that. And then when I was 28, I signed that monster contract. And so at that point, perspective started coming in like, Whoa, this is kind of a big deal, and fear really started to domineer over my life. I couldn’t totally be excited and really experience the joys of having this huge, crazy thing happen in my life. It felt like pressure and a lot of fear.
Patsy: And fear is something that I have lived with in my life and talk about on a regular basis. So were you having anxiety attacks?
Barry: Yeah, I had had those types of things absolutely. Isolation, depression, turning to substance, things like that. And really I think all of that rooted in the idea or the fact that I had no real foundation kind of spiritually in my life.
My grandmother started a spiritual teaching in the 60s, and that was the church I grew up in. My mother pastored that church. And the church was really wonderful and great people, but the main idea was Jesus is this kind of example of what we can all be if we can use our minds and our self-control to the perfect place that he could, and really that we can also be perfect as Christ was, which I think is a great place to strive, but I grew up in this positivity thing where everything’s love and “Don’t say sin. That’s a bad word. We don’t talk about…” Or: “Negativity or fear, we don’t talk about that. That’s just an illusion, a false belief.”
Andrew: Right, you have power over that, or literally it’s not real.
Barry: Well, there’s a thing called a Course in Miracles, which I tried it all, trust me. Course in Miracles also says fear is an illusion. It’s kind of love perverted.
And I do agree, but having those types of things in life but looking around at all the crap in the world, and people are walking into schools and opening fire on children, I’m miserable, I hate myself, so it just wasn’t adding up. Wait, if everything is perfect and love, why do I feel so miserable? There was tension for me in that.
Patsy: Now at what point do things really dramatically change for you and your thinking about your inner life and your spiritual life? Is there something that happens that’s an aha moment?
Barry: Well, for me, there was really not tension when life was good, when things were comfortable, when we’re getting what we need, when we’re succeeding, when our relationship’s great. It’s really easy to take credit for all that. Oh yeah, I believe this. I thought it. I’m achieving it. Here we are, and it’s all because of me. And that’s kind of what I was raised in, no foundation that anything’s more important than baseball, anything’s more important than my success, because both my parents were very spiritual seekers as well.
That whole tension didn’t really start to kick in hard until I signed that big contract, and then it was like, Whoa, what if I screw this up? And so I started pitching out of fear, and I actually started taking the mound to get approval from people instead of to just win baseball games. So it became this whole self worth thing that was really spoiling just the joy of playing baseball.
Andrew: Which becomes a mind game at some point, doesn’t it? Like every time you step on that mound, it no longer is a game in the sense of for the sake of your pleasure or the audience’s pleasure, the fans’ pleasure. It really becomes something that you must do. I mean, that comes from that messaging I’m hearing because what it’s saying is you can achieve no matter what.
But it sounds like you were becoming aware of and in touch with, Wait, I do not have within me the full capability to be perfect every time. It sounds like you were coming to terms with that in a very dramatic way because of the amount of expectation and pressure on you.
Barry: Yeah, exactly. And baseball’s unique in that you’re one second away from getting that feedback of where your mind is. So you release the pitch, and you’re like, I’m confident. I’m going to dominate. And then a guy hits a homer, and you’re like, Wait, what?
And so I was a control freak. I needed to control everything, and I had nothing greater to kind of give it up to because I was the creator of my own life, of my own circumstances. I took credit for it all. And so one second away, Oh wait, my mindset must not be right, and then storm off to Barnes & Noble and get every self-help book on the shelf and figure out what I have to do to get my mind right.
And so it was years of that as a Giant, under performing, everyone’s pissed at me and saying these terrible things, and you can’t even go into a public restaurant, or go have a beer with a friend in the bar and people are yelling “expletive Zito” from the other side of the bar. And “Get out of here. You suck.”
And so then things started to crumble, and to your question, Patsy, that’s when after four years, my head cracked open from all this pain, and I got left off the roster and had to watch my team win a World Series that I was actually paid to lead them to, and I couldn’t perform. I wasn’t good enough. Everyone else was pitching better. So that’s when everything just fell apart. My worldview really just fell apart.
Patsy: And that must’ve felt like the worst moment in your life, and later it must’ve felt like one of the better moments of your life, because until we figure it all out, we don’t have a way to rebuild.
Barry: So good, yeah. It absolutely was the worst moment ever and for many years, and I couldn’t say it. But then it was like, I’m so grateful for all of that. It literally made me who I am today.
Andrew: What did that look like? Kind of paint that picture for us. So what did it look like when you finally crack and you kind of break down in that moment? Take us from there along the journey into a more whole spiritual life.
Barry: So watch my team win this World Series, went home to LA after they won, and sadly, I was rooting against them from the dugout, hoping they would lose to prove to me and my ego, which I was all ego, that I was needed. They didn’t lose. I did not get my wish.
That’s an admission, and people aren’t happy that I came out and said that in my book, but that’s the truth and I think people can relate. We kind of root against other people when we are feeling disconnected from God and our Creator.
And so I went back to LA, I entered a 12-step program, which was for codependency. Codependency is if you’re not okay, I’m not okay, and so I need to figure out how to get you okay so I can be okay. And so now apply that to all the fans in the Bay Area. You’re not okay; I’m not okay. Because you don’t like me and approve of me, so I’m not okay, so how do I pitch better to make you approve of me.
And anyway, step two was willing to admit there’s a higher power that can restore me my sanity, and I was like, Yes, please. Need some of that. Need sanity. Need a higher power. I’ve always been my own higher power. And so that really made the dirt and soil fertile. I was finally open to hearing a different way than my own strength and willpower can get this done because I’d proven for years that it couldn’t. That true humility was the thing that you mentioned, Patsy.
Am I grateful? Yeah, the thing that gave me true humility and dropped me to my knees, that is where we need to be grateful because then your ears and eyes are not open. You’re still up to your old game and trying your old tricks.
And so six months later, the girl I was dating, who now I’m married to, she saw me surrounded by these self-help books. It was the next season, and I was injured and all this bad stuff, and she said, “You need to lock those books up and read this one book.” And she handed me a Bible, and I was like, “I’ve always heard of this, never really dived into it.” And that was the beginning of the curiosity, and the truth for me just poured through. I came to Christ a few months later with my chaplin with the Giants and still being changed by the Holy Spirit today, still fighting a lot of the same battles but from a completely different standpoint.
Bridges Sponsorship Message
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Andrew: What I love about the Abide Bible is that it’s invitational, not just informational. It’s inviting us not to just exercise the Word of God in our head but to really invite it to dwell in our hearts, which to me reminds me of John 15:4: “Abide in me and I in you.” So you can order your copy of the Abide Bible today at bridgesshow.com/abide.
Bridges Sponsorship Message
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Andrew: People are always intrigued by conversion experiences, especially if maybe you didn’t grow up in the Christian church. Obviously, you were taught about Jesus, but even you saying your girlfriend, who’s now your wife, giving you the Bible and that being really the first time. So even though you were taught about Jesus’ life, you had not explored Scripture yet.
A lot of people are intrigued about what the change is like. You know, what does a conversion experience that’s kind of a night to day look like? Was it a night to day, or was it a more gradual experience? Like you said, I love that you say you’re still being transformed by the Holy Spirit. But what did that moment look like in those couple months — the chaplain, your girlfriend, the Bible at your fingertips?
Barry: It allowed me to, one, stop being so selfish and stop living for my own approval, validation, self-worth, glory, and go, Okay, so now I’m going to live for something else, for someone else. And in doing that, constantly understanding there’s tension between what is God’s will right now and what’s my will, and having the awareness that a lot of times those things are pretty separate. And so how do we align those things? Well, I’ve got to let go of my grasp onto what I think I need today or have to achieve and let God kind of guide me and tell me.
That fluidity is something that I never had. I was always a control freak. And so in those moments, let’s say put the rubber to the road, I’m on the mound and I’m trying my best, and if it’s not going well, to walk away and say, “You know what? I did all I could do today. And for whatever reason, I just didn’t get what I needed or what I thought I needed.”
That exact mindset is what led to this incredible two years later in 2012 performing under the most pressure I’ve had in my whole career — having the best game of my career, this game in St. Louis, and then pitching in the World Series in 2012, and beating the best pitcher in the league. But these things are not at all what they looked like two years earlier. I would’ve given my left leg to pitch in a World Series and get that validation, but now I was like, God, I don’t really know what all this is. I’m not going to try to get into this craziness of the World Series and all the hype. I’m just going to go throw that ball the best I can and hope things work out. And if they don’t, my identity actually is not hinging on this anymore. My identity is in something that’s not changing. The circumstances of this world are not that.
And then all of a sudden, these games and people were like, “Do you feel redeemed? The whole Bay Area loves you.” And I’m like, I tried to get that for years, and I never could. And finally when I released that need and just wanted to be redeemed by the Redeemer, everything changed. I stopped caring so much about what everyone thinks.
Patsy: That’s great. To walk away from so much success, which is what eventually happened, you made a decision to leave and to pursue a whole new career. In fact, it kind of brought you full circle because it brought you back to what you had grown up in as far as music and talent and that area, didn’t it?
Barry: It did, yeah. My contract with the Giants was seven years, so after that, the contracts up, like anyone, you hang on, as they say. You go sign on with a new team. And man, I remember standing in the outfield one day in August of ‘13. We were at the Giants stadium, and I felt the Holy Spirit just start to introduce this idea to me, like you need to take a step back from baseball to really prove that you’re not attached to it. I was like, Oh gosh.
I call my wife from the locker room when I go in there and step into this little closet next to my locker, and I’m on the phone so no one can hear me, “Honey, I think I’m going to take a year off from baseball.” She’s like, “What?” She’s like, “Do not tempt me.” She’s like, “Wait, I get to have you home everyday? Don’t even say that, babe.”
After the Giants, we go home, and we live in San Diego for a year. I’m still able bodied as a player, and I even asked my agent, the best agent in baseball Scott Boras, “Scott, I’m thinking about taking a year off.” “Oh, no, no, no, no. This is a bad move. The game’s going to speed up. You’re going to come back a year later and not be able to fit in.”
So I took a full year off in San Diego and was pitching in parks and throwing into nets. And I grew up in San Diego, but I was like, This is why I love baseball, because I just love throwing it and feeling the seams on my fingers. And I think we can all get back to why we love to do what we do before it all got spoiled by what it has to be now for people, for income, for value, for validation.
So when I came back, I signed with the A’s, who I initially came up with, and their Triple A was here in Nashville, and that’s how I ended up making it to Nashville. So I got to play Triple A here, enjoy the game before I walked away, and then went into songwriting full time here and never went back to Cali.
“We can all get back to why we love to do what we do before it all got spoiled.”
Andrew: So many players struggle with identity, and anything on a major league level — that could be in music, that could be in sports, that could be Patsy in arenas in front of women for years and years — we all have our kind of time to shine, and I think all of us struggle on some level of placing our identity in our ability to drive that home, whatever that is. So a lot of players would feel like going back to the minor leagues feels like a blow to the ego, maybe like this is the end of my career or whatever. But it sounds like you really enjoyed your placement in Nashville with the Sounds?
Barry: It’s funny you say that because I used to judge people, right, at the end of their career that were going back to the minor, and I’m just thinking, How humiliating. And this is when baseball was my defining thing. And I even thought retirement was literally going to be the most shameful, humiliating thing, as a young player, like, Wow, I’ll never retire. I’m gonna win 300 games in the big leagues. I had all these crazy, lofty goals, and again, it’s about my own glory.
But yeah, when I ended up getting to Triple A, I just got to soak up this beautiful game for what it was. And yeah, we were in stadiums that weren’t as big and grand, but my perspective was flipped on its head. I was like, I get to play baseball and people are watching? I get to put on this uniform and get paid? My salary was two percent of what it was just two years earlier, but I was like, I’m making good money right now.
Patsy: Because there’s so much joy when you’re doing it from the right place. It’s not your identity; it’s what you’re privileged to get to be a part of. It’s part of your giftedness, and I think gifts are very important in helping us understand and direct our futures. But you’ve seen the height of that, you’ve been the Golden Gate Bridge in baseball, but now you’re in a place of music. Tell us what that feels like.
Barry: It feels good. So my father was a jazz conductor and arranger for Nat King Cole, and my mom was a jazz singer with Nat, and that’s how they met. So he was a brilliant, genius musician. He actually didn’t want me going into music. He always said, “You can’t make a living going into music. Just master three pitches and they will send scouts to find you.” What brilliant advice, right? I wish my parents were around to talk music.
When I was playing with the Sounds, I hooked up with a guy named Robert Filhart, who was at ASCAP. I did an article in The Tennessean saying I wanted to write songs, so Robert said, “There’s a songwriting hall of fame writer named Mike Reid who’s here in town, and he was four-time Pro Bowler for the Cincinnati Bengals. So maybe you’re the next Mike Reid.” I was like, I’ll take that.
I sent him some of my music. He loved it, and we started working together. I was already with ASCAP, and so just kind of went into writing songs. Took this time out to write this book the last two years, which has been great, but now I’m getting back into songwriting full time. Had such a great time. I’ve had a few cuts, smaller cuts and some TV placements and such like that. I’m getting some traction. As you guys know, it’s a very competitive town for writing.
Patsy: It is.
Barry: Musicians are cool. I never felt like an athlete when I was playing; I always felt like a musician in an athlete, like I don’t even know how I could relate to these guys. So now I feel like I get to hang with my people.
Andrew: Was that part of the tension, do you feel like? The creative brain and the creative spirit needs other creatives to be in community with. Did you feel like you were lacking that community some?
“The creative spirit needs other creatives to be in community with.”
Barry: Yeah. I think that, in sports, anything that’s just a little different gets blown out of proportion. I did yoga before yoga was cool. It was like, “Dude, what are you doing, yoga?” Now everyone’s doing yoga.
Andrew: He’s actually in tree pose right now. It’s amazing.
Barry: You should see it. I know.
But now being around people that are used to be vulnerable and kind of more sensitive and just in touch with that, and then you can’t really create without being those things. Even if it’s on a professional level, let’s sit down, write a song, be vulnerable for four years, and then I’ll shake your hand and we’ll walk away. And I could never really spread my wings like that in the clubhouse. I had to be in this box, I felt, but I also realize that was my own fear of truly being authentic. And I got to embrace that in my last couple of years, and I think that’s why I had so much fun in Triple A and success in 2012 because I was like, This is how I am. I’m going to stop trying to cover it up for everybody.
Patsy: And don’t you think music helps us to be known to ourselves? Because when we write, or at least I’ve found this to be true, it brings up parts of ourself we didn’t fully know, and we express it in a way that when it goes out to others it really is an enriching experience. We feel received, and we feel in a position of blessing others, but it’s really something that’s blessed us. It helps us become more whole, if we allow it to.
Barry: Sure, I agree. Yeah, to channel it really and to know that, like you said, it’s a gift that comes from somewhere. I’m just grateful for it instead of being like, Oh yeah, this is me.
Andrew: This is a podcast about the connection between different generations and the relationships between people of all different ages. Does the music give you, even though your father’s gone now, a connection back to your father when you exercise songwriting?
Barry: Oh yeah, I think of my father a lot when I’m composing and doing all that stuff. He taught me a lot of stuff about music even while I was playing. I have some pictures that I’m actually about to put up on the wall — one of my mom singing and one when my dad was with Nat in the studio. I have a grand piano in my studio that he told me to buy before I knew anything. He’s like, “Get this piano. This is the best sounding.” And now people are like, “Dude, you have that Yamaha?” And now I know a little bit about what it is, I’m glad he told me that and not some other one. But yeah, I feel connected to my father and mother a lot as I compose.
Andrew: Patsy, I hear that you have a book club.
Patsy: I do. Books are what God used to help heal me, so it delights me to offer that service to others, that they could sign up, anybody. All y’alls, come on in. We want you to join in the book club, and we will read ourselves silly and sane. We’ll have different selections, one every month with a bonus. You can check it out: patsyclairmont.com. And also on that page, you’ll see that I do cheerleading for people. I coach them in helping them stir up their creativity to tell their story. But here’s what I know: You’re into a different kind of storytelling, and you’ve been set up to win awards for what you’ve done.
Andrew: I love music, and I have a new record out called Tune My Heart, and it includes some of my really close friends, some of your friends, like Sandra McCracken and Cindy Morgan and Buddy Greene. And you can find that record anywhere you stream or download, or at andrew-greer.com. You know what else, Patsy?
Patsy: What?
Andrew: I’ve got another podcast. It’s not my favorite podcast, but if you like listening to Bridges, then you might like listening to and viewing Dinner Conversations with our pal Mark Lowry and myself. You can find it on Apple Podcasts or Amazon Prime, or simply go to dinner-conversations.com.
Bridges Flyaway Giveaway
Patsy: We’d love to sit down, Andrew and I, with each one of you and have a meal and a conversation. That’s not possible, but because of this contest, it is possible for us to sit down with someone and their friend.
Andrew: That’s right. For every one of you who purchase a chicken to help families in need through our friends at Food for the Hungry, you will be entered into our Bridges Flyaway Giveaway, where one lucky winner and their friend will be able to fly in to Franklin, Tennessee, have dinner with us, and explore our quaint hometown.
So go to fh.org/bridges today to get your chicken and enter to win.
Barry Zito singing “The Secret to Life”
Andrew: One of the fascinating things about Barry Zito that we’ve been talking about is his evolution from Major League Baseball star to Nashville songwriter. What a cool journey, and here to share an excerpt of one of his songs from his latest EP, which you can find wherever you download or stream music — it’s called “The Secret to Life” — Barry Zito.
Barry: Yeah, the world's got a seat on top
I saw it once, it wasn't what I thought
I came back down, now I'm better off
I may not know the secret to life, but I know what it's not
Yeah, the world's got a seat on top
I saw it once, it wasn't what I thought
I came back down, now I'm better off
I may not know the secret to life, but I know what it's not
Yeah, I know what it's not
Andrew: We talked about how maybe the drive for success that your father instilled in you in a good way but also become an unhealthy, maybe toxic, aspect of y’all’s relationship. I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Is that true? And did that come full circle at all as you began to find your new identity from a spiritual perspective?
Barry: It did. I think I tried to push away and become independent of my father for many years. Again, he was like my career manager, even far into my playing career in the major leagues. He would say things even when I’m on the phone like, “Barry, when we’re out there on the mound…,” and my mom’s in the background going, “Joe, you’re not on the mound.”
So he had this enmeshment thing happening, and his backstory’s crazy. I mean, he was a product of rape. This man raped his 14-year-old stepdaughter, and my dad was the byproduct. And then he was given up to an orphanage and then brought back in the home, raised by this woman’s mom. I mean, all this shame and self-worth stuff. So he was, in certain ways unbeknownst to him, pushing the fame and the money and the success all on to me because that’s where his self-worth lied.
Andrew: That’s where he kind of masked the pain, I’m sure, of his.
Barry: That’s right. And so I started to be like, Fame, money, that’s going to get me what I need. And so it took me a while to break that, but then when I found my real Father so to speak, I found this other identity and I stopped fighting for my identity everyday in the world. It changed everything.
Patsy: That had to be exhausting before. I don’t have to guess about it because I know what it is to fight for your own identity and come up with a mist that disappears, but then the relief that comes from finding out wherever you’re at, you’re okay because he’s the steady one.
Andrew: Today, how do you see yourself versus 10 years ago? What’s the difference?
Barry: I would say the profound change. You asked before how’s life different kind of post finding my identity in God. People say, “My life’s never been the same.” And I think that people that may not have experienced that kind of exact transformation are like, “Well, I don’t get it. How is your life different?”
For me, when I was running around the streets of Hollywood, chasing my identity and hot girls and the fastest race cars and the biggest houses and the coolest parties, that was something that I was doing, but there was never any conflict really in me about that. I was kind of hurting people and emotionally getting attached to women and then just moving on, so for me now, there's an internal battle, I guess I’ll say, in anything I do. I mean, I do a lot of the same things. I’m slowly getting better, but when I do these things now, there's this internal conflict going in my mind, You’re actually better than that.
It’s not a conflict of, You need to earn this, so don’t do that, and if you keep these rules, then you’ve earned it by God’s standard. It’s not that at all. That’s very Old Testament. It’s more like I make in the analogy of the idea of grace. So if I come home from a night — let’s say I had a beer or something with my buddy, and let’s say I made a terrible decision and I cheated on my wife. I come home, and in full honesty, I tell her, and she goes, “Get out of my house and never come back,” and she throws the wedding ring at me.
Okay, that’s one thing, and I’m going to go and she’s going to be in turmoil and pushing me out, and I’ll think one way about that. But if she goes, “Honey, I love you so much no matter what, and if you did the same thing tomorrow, my love for you wouldn’t change. I do think you’re a little better than that, but you’re also human and I love you anyways.”
Okay, that’s a whole different thing, right. I would literally fall to my knees, start bawling, and be like, “I’ll never do this again because I’m actually disrespecting you.”
And so that’s how I feel about God. It’s like I’m not trying to earn love; I’m just actually doing this out of respect to you. I need to behave a little better. I need to stop doing this and this and this. So that’s the kind of inner process for me.
Patsy: And I think love calls us to love. I think that God’s love generates in us a desire to love back in ways that are grander than we’ve ever done before because they come from a different place within us.
The Golden Gate Bridge is a long, beautiful place to drive across, but right in the center, if you stop and look out, you’ll see Alcatraz. It’s easy in golden moments to find ourself a prisoner inside with our thoughts and feelings that we can’t tell anyone. How wonderful that we have a God who meets us whether we’re at the top or whether we’re at the bottom, whether we’re in the tunnel or whether we’re at the very peak of the Golden Gate, that he will meet us in that place for our good.
We have loved having you here with us today. We thank you for the effort you’ve made to be here. We are celebrating Curveball and the story that takes us through all of the things we’ve been relating to, so we know our people will want to have a copy of that nearby. Thank you for sharing.
“Love calls us to love.”
Andrew: That conclusion should do a codependent’s heart really well.
Barry: That’s right, that’s right. And you know the beautiful thing about post God is you don’t take credit for anything anymore; you just give the credit away. And then it’s not heavy and it’s not on your shoulders and you don’t have to live up to it or repeat it.
Patsy: You don’t have to prove anything.
Barry: That’s right.
Patsy: I love that.
One of the things I was thinking about as you were talking, Barry, was about my own career in baseball in the neighborhood, and I was the pitcher for our game at the little park by our house and I got a line drive in my throat. But before I collapsed, I threw the guy out at first. That’s my big career, which I immediately retired from at that point.
So I’m glad that your pinnacle of success had a journey in it that brought you to a better place, one that you can rejoice about today and one that you share in your book, Curveball, with us so that we can journey with you because everybody wonders, How could you leave that golden place of being in limelight to go to a place that you had not yet proven yourself in? It seems risky, and we get to take the journey with you and find the golden moments in it all.
Andrew: Indeed. We are grateful you’ve been here with us, Barry. And you have been listening to Bridges with…
Patsy: Patsy Clairmont
Andrew: And Andrew Greer. Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations. We’ll catch you next time.
Patsy: Bridges is co-produced by Andrew Greer and myself, Patsy Clairmont.
Andrew: And our podcast is recorded and mixed by Jesse Phillips at the Arcade in Franklin, Tennessee.
Patsy: Remember, don’t forget to leave us a rating, a review, or a comment. It all helps our little show get going.
Andrew: To find out more about my co-host Patsy Clairmont or myself, Andrew Greer, or to read transcripts of our show, simply go to bridgesshow.com.