Former Mets baseball player, Mike Piazza, revealed how his faith helped him through his career and now his retirement in an interview with Bleacher Report.
“It just brings me a lot of peace,” Piazza said in the article. “It allows me to deal with the issues of my new challenges in life for being a husband and a father and having a family.”
He explained there was a point in his life where he began to focus on the “bigger picture,” and not just success in his career. He prayed during his baseball games, but told Bleacher Report it was not to win or succeed but to “do his best.”
“I just prayed to God to clear my mind and allow me to execute and do the best that I can,” Piazza said in the report. “If I got a hit or didn’t get a hit, it really was irrelevant to me. Success and failure is not necessarily measured in wins and losses or numbers.”
The former Mets player realized his ability to play baseball was a gift that he wanted others to share in, the report explained.
“Once we get to certain point in our lives, we need to internalize our success and really give thanks for why we are successful,” Piazza told the Bleacher Report. “A lot of those things are a spiritual gift.”
Raised Catholic, Piazza also believes faith is a gift. “We need to get back to roots and understand the path to true peace,” he said in the report. “Ultimately, if you look inside your own heart, you’ll find peace.”
Piazza gave an example of how his faith played an important role – the first game in New York after the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
“I remember specifically on the first base line when I first heard the bagpipes and I started to cry, I was saying to myself, ‘Please God, let me execute and do my job. Please help me hold it together.’”
It was during this game that he hit a home run in the eighth inning, which became know as the “Healing Power of a Swing,” according to the Bleacher Report.
“I truly believe that was divine intervention; that was God, or at least the Holy Spirit, working through me to calm me down, let me execute and do my job,” Piazza said in the report.
Mike Piazza will be entering the Hall of Fame in 2013.