With more than 30 years of coaching experience under his belt, Bethesda Big Train pitching coach Craig Lopez said his purpose as a coach reaches far beyond the baseball field.
When new players arrive in Bethesda, Maryland, each summer to play college-level baseball during their offseason, Lopez seeks to build up more than just their pitching skills — he seeks to build them up as young men and tell them who they are in the eyes of God.
“It’s not that I’m trying to fix them,” Lopez said in an interview. “I have been gifted to look at them and try to get their body to work the best that it can and … in the last seven years, teaching them the inside-outs of what it means to be a man in today’s society, and baseball is just my means of being able to do it.”
All the difference
Seven years ago, Lopez was addicted to painkillers after having several surgeries, a fact he said he isn’t proud to admit. However, he has been freed by the love and redemption of Jesus Christ, Lopez said, and it has made all the difference.
Lopez uses baseball to validate these young players as more than just a means to an end within the game itself. He said many of them leave high school being the best, and it can be demoralizing when they go to college and are no longer the top dog.
This is when he reminds them of the perfect, validating love God has for them, and he encourages them to be the best they can be wherever He puts them in life.
Part of what has motivated Lopez to be a positive force in these young men’s lives is the death of his oldest son, Jacob, four years ago.
When Lopez takes his players to the huddle, he said there is a lot of encouragement and affirmation, but there is also power in who God said these players are.
“I try to do the best that I can to help young men in a chaotic world with a lot of things going on to be all they were created to be, who they are,” Lopez said. “And I just call it out — it’s a little bit about being positive and affirming, but really it’s powerful just what God says about them and to help them be OK with being a child of God and being the absolute best at who they are, how they are and what they do in this game.”
Medium to share
Lopez said he is honored to be used by God in this way — being given “the greatest sport on earth” as the medium to share an important message with young men.
On his commutes from his home in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Lopez prepares his mind and opens it to what God wants him to say and do through listening to sermons about what it means to be a godly man.
One thing he has learned and implemented in his pregame huddle is vulnerability. Before each game, he tells his players to look at one another and tell them something affirmative and uplifting.
“That’s where the heart comes from,” Lopez said, “that’s where we have life at, and in this moment of time on planet earth, let the people around you know that they matter, that they’re wanted, needed and chosen, that they’re loved, that I see the greatness in them.”
For his players, it builds trust, confidence and companionship as they let each other know that they are for one another on and off the field.
“I’m going to be intentional to let people know that they are loved by Christ,” he said. “That’s my purpose: to know His love and share it from the inside out.”
