Kyle Gibson was, in 2009, heading for superstardom. Drafted in the first round of the ’09 MLB Draft, he was on top of the world and ready to live out his childhood dreams of becoming a professional ball player. However, he was full of faith as well, as he knew he was there because of an injury he suffered when he was 15, one that he says God used to change his life for the better.
Such is what Gibson, the St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, said when he opened up to Sports Spectrum’s “I Once Was” series about how God used his horrible high school injury to change his life, both in terms of his trajectory and in terms of how he treated his faith.
Speaking about that injury and how it changed his faith perspective, Gibson said that he originally wasn’t all that focused on faith because he was so focused on baseball and that aspect of his life. He said, “Baseball was always constantly in the way, you know. It really wasn’t in the way, but I allowed it to be in the way because I enjoyed being the baseball Kyle Gibson.”
Continuing, he got to explaining his injury and how it completely changed his life. He said, commenting on the brutal injury he suffered just as his high school career was taking off, “When I was 15, I made a play at shortstop, heard a ripping noise in my elbow, and honestly I was so devastated because I had nothing else to put my life in. I thought I was never going to play again.”
But instead of sitting around pitying himself as his arm healed, he decided to take a dive into his Christian faith and learn more: “I ended up needing surgery that took baseball away from me for probably about six months, and that was the first summer that I got the chance to go on a youth retreat and to go to Ridge Crest North Carolina to really dive into what faith in Jesus can do for my life for seven straight days.”
That time at camp changed him for the better, giving him a new perspective on life and faith. “I had realized that Jesus has this priority in my life and what he has done for me is something that baseball, something that man, anything else can’t do,” Gibson said. He continued, “It just gave me a completely new perspective on life, and it gave me something to base my life and identity on.”
Further, it changed how he treated baseball, using it both to give his life direction and to teach others about God. He explained, “No longer was I a baseball player who went to church. I was a follower of Christ and a believer in Jesus that played baseball. It gave me something to always be rooted in and it has given me something to always guide me and give me a sense of direction.”
Watch Gibson talk about his faith in the Sports Spectrum interview here:
Featured image credit: By D. Benjamin Miller – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121721826