Seeking God First
Brandon Wulff and Tom Hager
In partnership with Athletes For God
It was finals week of my junior year in college, and I couldn't concentrate at all.
Like most students at Stanford, I was feeling anxious that week, but the difference was that my nerves had nothing to do with exams. My mind was focused on the MLB Draft.
As the draft approached, I was almost certain that I had played my last game at Stanford. The draft is divided into three days - Day 1 is for the first two rounds, Day 2 is for rounds 3-10, while Day 3 is for rounds 11-40. And as the second day was set to begin, one NL team called me to let me know they were thinking about selecting me in the 10th round.
The good news was that I felt pretty confident I would be drafted at some point. The bad news was that I would have to wait the entire day - all 8 rounds - to see if my name would get called on Day 2. This was a dream I had worked my whole life to achieve, and no exam could pull my concentration away from my phone that day. As the day started, I had no idea which team would choose me, or what city I would be playing in, or what minor league level they would be starting me at.
By the end of the day I still had no answers.
About 90 seconds before that team was going to make their 10th round selection, they called me to let me know they were going in different direction.
It hurt, but I wasn't devastated. At least not yet. I knew the 11th round would come around the next morning, and there was still a great chance that a team would take me then.
That didn't happen. The 11th round went by, as did the 12th. And the 13th. And the 14th. And as each pick went by and one round gave way to another, my potential signing bonus started to slowly melt away. There's no guarantee I'll ever make it to the Major Leagues, but when you sign with an MLB team, that signing bonus actually is guaranteed. And the later you're picked, the less it is, and the less financial security you have as you start your minor league career.
By the time I got to the 20th round, I decided to pull my name out of the draft. It was only halfway over, but I didn't want to be in the draft anymore. At that point it wasn't even about the money...I just wasn't feeling valued anymore. And to be completely honest, it has never been about the money. It was just about having the chance to compete.
I started that week wondering which team would make my dreams come true, and by the end of that week I felt like they hadn't come true at all.
Whoever said there's no crying in baseball was wrong, because on that day I can promise you there were definitely tears.
But when you surrender to God's plan and just submit to His will, it's amazing where He can take you. My name is Brandon Wulff, and this is my story.
If you would have seen me as a sophomore in high school, you wouldn't have thought I would have even been in consideration for the draft.
I went to Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, which has one of the top athletic programs of any high school in the country. As a sophomore I had yet to crack the starting lineup, and I just wasn't reaching my potential - either as a baseball player or as a Christian. It was around that point that I started working out with a trainer who still mentors me to this day.
He gave me a verse Matthew 6:33, which has become my motto in my life. "But seek first His kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
I would say that even though I was maybe a believer before then, I was really only saved after hearing that verse. I started to put God first in my life, and I've never looked back since. I suddenly had a greater purpose in my life, and even though I don't think it had anything to do with my transformation as a baseball player, by the time I was a junior I had cracked the starting lineup.
Don’t get me wrong, God definitely blessed me with the people he surrounded me with, the chances He gave me, and the ability to improve my athletic skill set, but a problem I see a lot of young athletic Christians get into is this idea that if we believe in God and what Jesus did, then our baseball career will be blessed and you’ll be a big leaguer. That’s not what God does.
Yes, He is able to bless your career, and He will, but even if He doesn’t, He’s still God! (Daniel 3) God wants to bless you in all that you do, but His end goal isn’t to make your baseball career more successful—He cares about saving your life and saving others through you, and if it’s through baseball that He does it, praise God!
As for those days at Bishop Gorman, considering everyone in our lineup - as well as all of our starting pitchers and bullpen relievers - went on to play D1 baseball, it felt like an accomplishment just to be starting.
I technically could have gone out for the draft after my high school senior year, but I knew that realistically there was no way I was getting drafted in the early rounds back then. So I started to look at where to play college baseball, and Stanford was an easy choice. You could even say it was the obvious choice.
It's got the best combination of athletics and academics of any school in the country. There's literally current and future Gold Medalists walking around our campus, and I feel like once you get a degree from Stanford, you can achieve just about anything you want. To top it all off, we have the best coaching staff here in the country.
It was an easy pick to come here, but when I walked off our field last year, I was almost certain that it was the last time I would ever get to play here.
It was just a few weeks before the draft, so when we hosted Fullerton in the NCAA Regionals I knew it might be the last time I ever played at the legendary venue known as Sunken Diamond.
We were hosting Cal-State Fullerton last year, and even though the Titans have a great program, we were heavy favorites to win. Fullerton was 34-23 going into that game while we were 46-11 and were the # 2 team in the country.
We weren't just favorites to win this game, we were a popular pick to get to Omaha and win the entire thing.
But sometimes in baseball the hits just don't come. We lost our first game to Fullerton 2-1, which put us in a must-win position the next day. And yet, with the season riding on this game, we struck out 15 times.
The loss was devastating, but sometimes the hardest things in life can turn out to be blessings in disguise.
If we would have advanced farther in the tournament, maybe my draft stock wouldn't have fallen so low. But since I decided to come back, I've tried to make the most of my time here.
I graduated halfway through my senior year, which has allowed me to focus solely on baseball and my faith. I love coming to the ballpark early, especially on Sundays just as the sun is coming up, and I just like to sit here at our stadium and get in the Word.
But I think one of the most important things we can do as Christians is to share our faith with others, and being a leader on this team has helped open that door for me. We do a prayer circle as a team before the game, and now I'm actively involved in the FCA branch on our campus. Because I don’t have any classes throughout the day I felt as if God was calling me to do something more productive than sitting around waiting for practice to start.
I was presented with an opportunity to come on staff with FCA, and because that group had already had such a huge impact on my walk with God I felt as though I needed others to experience Jesus through FCA the way that I did. Now I’m what people in ministry call a “professional Christian” but really I just want others to know Jesus the way I’ve come to known Him.
I think one of the reasons I'm so passionate about sharing my faith is because I've already seen what can happen when you put yourself out there. I shared my testimony on Instagram last year, and the response was completely unexpected. I had people message me on the app - people I had never even met or heard of before - who told me they were inspired by my story. Sometimes you don't really know the impact you have on someone, and I want to make sure I never waste the opportunity to help somebody overcome some struggles.
I hope I've made a similar impact with some of our underclassmen, because I've gone through some of the same struggles that they're facing right now. We have 18 hitters on our roster right now, and only 9 of them get to be in the lineup at one time, which means half of our hitters - who could literally start at almost any other program in the country - are sitting on our bench. And as someone who was once playing on the jv roster in high school, I know what it's like.
But if success came to us too quickly or easily, maybe we wouldn't have the appreciation for it later on.
Our team is once again one of the top teams in the country, and we are determined to come home with a National Championship this time around. I could tell you that we won't settle for anything less, but there's really no guarantees in this game. All we're going to do is play hard and have fun, and see where God takes us. That goes for life outside of baseball too.
But we're really just taking it one game, one at-bat, and one pitch at a time. It’s cliche, but if you want to win championships, that's what you have to do. We don’t go into weekends trying to win three games in one swing, we take it one game at a time.
As for my draft stock, I'm not sure what will happen there either. These days I'm more focused on glorifying God than anything else.
If I'm still here, it means God has me here at Stanford for a reason.
I’ve heard from other guys what the journey in the big leagues can be like. I even got to meet with Mark Appel, a former #1 overall pick from Stanford, who never got to make it to the major leagues. But Mark came and visited with our FCA group here, and showed that life is about a lot more than being a major league baseball player.
I can’t promise that I’ll make it to the big leagues, but I can promise that I’ll try to glorify God on my way there.