Faith and baseball: Chinooks share more than just a passion for the game

CHUGIAK — Teams in the Alaska Baseball League don’t even get so much as a weekend to get to know one another before league play starts. That makes bonding and finding team chemistry all the more difficult, but in that regard, the Chugiak Chinooks may have a leg up.

With their team selected by ‘Athletes In Action’, a faith-based recruiting organization affiliated with Campus Crusade, the Chinooks spend additional time together in prayer and Bible study.

“We’re a faith-based team, so before we go to the ballpark we spend an hour a day in discipleship,” said Chinooks field manager Jon Groth. “We have time in that context which is a little different from other teams. That time together helps mold a team and build chemistry.”

Groth is the only field manager the Chugiak Chinooks have known, ever since they moved from Fairbanks six years ago. Last season, the Chinooks finished last in the standings.

“We were in the running until about halfway through, but we didn’t play well down the stretch,” Groth said. “We finished with a couple wins at the end, but that (mid-season swoon) kind of took us out of contention.”

General Manager Chris Beck has been with the ABL and Athletes in Action considerably longer, 18 years, in fact, 17 of them in Alaska. He said the ministry puts together four baseball teams for summer play — one in an Ohio league, another in New York, another that barnstorms for a month in Panama and Guatemala and the top tier of recruits head to Alaska.

He said getting players to come to Alaska is getting more challenging.

“A lot of kids don’t want to travel, and there’s so many leagues now, kids have a lot of options,” Beck said. “So you have to work a little harder even though this is one of the best leagues in the country. It takes a unique kid, but once you sell the baseball side of it, they’re good.”

Among those visibly ‘unique kids’ is pitcher Edwin Hiott, a junior at Charleston Southern University in South Carolina, bearded and tattooed with a ballerina wind-up and sidearm southpaw delivery.

“It’s awesome; the scenery is amazing,” Hiott said. “The light is a little tough to get used to. I flew in at midnight and it was still sunny. It’s tough to get your sleep schedule on track.”

Hiott said that not only spending time in fellowship, but sharing a general worldview with teammates helps, too.

“I had a coach ask me if I wanted to come out here and I thought it would be fun to play with a bunch of guys who are pursuing their faith and want to pursue playing baseball for the lord,” Hiott said. “We get to spend a lot more time together and know each other more deeply and personally than I think most teams do.”

Necessarily, limiting your team to players to just a certain stripe of practicing Christians, most of them attending religious colleges, is bound to lessen the talent pool, but ideally, that cohesiveness can make up for it.

“Alaska is just a different experience, a different atmosphere than Florida — I figured I’d get out of Florida,” said Michael Batten, a junior at Southern Wesleyan University in South Carolina, originally from Riverview, Fla. “At the first meeting you just think to yourself, ‘what am I doing here? But then you get to know other guys and get to know why God put you here. I feel that the daily devotions we do is going to bond us as a team and as friends for a lifetime. I hope to keep up with these guys throughout my life.”