09/06/2026
Baseball brought us together. God knew why.
🩵🩷⚾️🙏🏼
Yesterday, #21 Isaiah Rivera was on the mound in the last inning of a game that would determine whether we moved on in bracket play. Before finishing the job, he stepped off the mound, dropped to his knees and prayed.
Then he went back to work.
He did his job. His teammates did theirs. And we moved on.
But watching him yesterday reminded me of another moment from this summer.
A player from another team accidentally took a ball to the head when he wasn’t looking. Before anyone told them to, #99 Noah Hill gathered the Crashouts boys in the dugout to pray over him in the opposing dugout.
Those are the moments.
Yesterday was also our first 12U tournament since so many of our boys aged up to 13U, so things looked a little different. We had new pickup faces. New families. And we had three of our Crashouts families show up who’s kids weren’t playing at 8:30 in the morning and stay ALL DAY.
They didn’t have to.
Another mom ran GameChanger so the one who normally does it could actually sit back and watch her baby play. Dad’s jumped into the dugout to help coach. Parents cheered for kids who weren’t their own. We laughed, danced, yelled, sweated to death 😂 and stayed until it was over.
They could’ve been anywhere else. Preferably somewhere with AC. 😂
And somehow, every time we add new faces, I’m reminded how blessed we really are.
We hear the outside noise. We hear the stories. We even heard some of our pickups were discouraged from coming to play with us yesterday.
And I just can’t understand it.
Because this is kids’ baseball.
There is enough room for these kids to play different places, meet different coaches, make new friends and fall even more in love with this game. We’re not interested in where you’ve played before, what happened with another team, or whatever adult drama may have existed somewhere else.
Bring us the kid.
We’ll cheer for him.
That’s what our parents do. That’s what our coaches do. And that’s what we’re teaching our boys to do for each other.
We started this because we wanted kids to have somewhere to play baseball without finances determining their opportunities.
But God has given us so much more than a baseball team.
He’s brought together some of the best kids and families we could’ve asked for. He’s given our boys teammates who will compete beside them, laugh with them, pick them up when they’re struggling—and drop to their knees and pray with them.
That’s bigger than baseball.
Our boys pray together.
They play together.
They’re growing up together.
And we are so incredibly blessed to have a front-row seat. 🩵🩷
