Moyer's mission

Jamie Moyer's rise to stardom built a platform for Christian service | Mark Bergin

Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Long before the Phillies' Jamie Moyer was baffling Rays with changeups on baseball's biggest stage, his professional pitching career was in jeopardy. Seven years after making his Major League debut for the Chicago Cubs in 1986, the soft-throwing southpaw was back in the minor leagues. Teams had released him in each of the previous two seasons, not seeing much in a kid approaching 30 whose fastballs rarely approached 85.

But Moyer is not the quitting type. Over the next 3½ seasons, he gutted his way back onto big league rosters, survived yet another release in 1995, and finally landed in the rotation of a perennial loser out west in Seattle, where everything changed. In a decade-long run with the Mariners, Moyer joined the elite of his craft, twice cracking the 20-win mark for a single season and headlining a five-man rotation in 2001 that helped produce a record--setting 116 victories.