The last home game of Wesleyan’s regular baseball season was Tuesday, and on such a mild spring evening the comforts of that home were on full display.
Beyond the outfield fence, lit softly by the day’s dying light, was the pristine red brick campus, surely posing for the next brochure cover.
The field itself was as green and full as the governor’s front lawn.
And the team playing on that weedless ground had an equally well-manicured game going, as Wesleyan easily overcame Mount Pisgah.
These Wolves looked far better than the 15-7 record they brought to the park and not so far removed from the Wesleyan teams that won three straight state championships (Class AA in 2008, Class A in ’09 and ’10).
Here was a kingdom in miniature where a coach could grow comfortable and fat, one he might lord over until he was too old to remember his way to the park.
So, why, after the Wesleyan Senior Day observance, was there another farewell in the air, this to their 36-year-old coach, Mike Shaheen? Why was that voice on the public address system saying of the head Wolf, “We were devastated but also exalted when we heard what he was planning to do.”
Because there are turns to a life that are made on faith, not perception.
And sometimes a baseball coach decides he must involve himself in a very different kind of save situation.
The high school baseball playoffs begin this week, and, of course, there will be a small private Christian school from Norcross in the mix. Shaheen’s Wesleyan Wolves have become a postseason fixture, a seemingly self-sustaining small-school powerhouse.
By mid-June, just a little more than a month after Wesleyan goes as far as it can this season, Shaheen, wife Jodi and their two adopted children, Wyman (6) and Grace (4), will leave all that comfort and familiarity far behind to go on a religious mission to the Dominican Republic.
Felt calling
In his 10 years at Wesleyan, eight as the Wolves’ head baseball coach, Shaheen found much joy in his job. With his players, he always tried to expand their world beyond the shelter of the private school. In the last year, they’ve taken part in three public service projects. He led Bible study classes two days a week, even if only one kid showed up. He encouraged his players to join school-wide mission trips during spring break — yes, one was to the Dominican, where the students helped build latrines.
Yet, as he worked more and more outside the walls of Wesleyan, whether it was taking part in a Fellowship of Christian Athletes program in Atlanta or traveling to the Dominican Republic, Shaheen felt an insistent tug. He wanted to do something different, something more.
The Dominican kept drawing him. He had visited the island four times in the past, and was struck by both the poverty and the blazing passion for baseball.
His wife saw the signs, long before any decisions to move were made. “I just knew how much [serving in the Dominican Republic] was on his heart,” said Jodi. “I thought sometime we were going to be there full time. But in my mind, I was thinking, later, after the kids were grown. I wasn’t thinking about the present.”
When Shaheen learned that the FCA was seeking a full-time representative on the island, someone to spread its message, someone to help build FCA-sponsored teams and a baseball-based ministry, he saw that as a divine message he could not ignore.
He was welcomed as an answered prayer. “He’s a special guy; he’s got all the tools that this role calls for,” said Bob Wiedemann, the FCA’s director of community sports.
“He’s got the heart for ministry. He has a passion for baseball. He has a heart for sharing life through the game of baseball.”
Lifestyle change
Shaheen’s commitment is open-ended, although he says he couldn’t imagine building any sort of decent foundation there in less than three years. He could spend a working lifetime on the island, too; he is just not sure.
This is a mission in the classic sense of the word — meaning there is no salary. He and his family will be provided a home on the grounds of a baseball academy that serves as a developmental facility for the San Francisco Giants. It is a three-bedroom, cinder block home, much sparer than their current one. But as Jodi said, “There are people on that island who live in shacks, who don’t have toilets or running water or electricity. So, we’re living in pretty good style.”
Beyond that, his ministry must rely upon donations. Already the Shaheens have received some support from the Wesleyan community as well as various churches in the area.
The working conditions will be a little different at his new post. While some of the Dominican baseball fields will be as nice as this one he leaves behind, he also will take his message to the villages’ rough-cut diamonds. Like the one he visited last summer where the infield was carved out by machete and the outfield grass was knee high.
“The gap between where Mike is and where he’s going is enormous. This is flat out nothing but a calling of God on his life and he has chosen to follow it,” Wiedemann said.
Getting there is half the battle.
Trying to sell a home in this economic climate has been agony. It seems a question now of just how many thousands of dollars they are willing to lose in the transaction.
They have found a new home for their dog, but are still looking for one for their two 10-year-old cats.
At least the children seem to be taking well to the idea of the move. Jodi said that during the family’s visit to the island last summer, whenever they were driving into the Giants complex, little Grace announced, “We’re home, we’re home!”
As for her older half-brother, “Wyman has heard so much about it from the people at Wesleyan that he feels like it’s his job — he’s going to go over there and tell people about Jesus,” Jodi said.
Other family members were not so sure.
Shaheen said he has heard plenty of questions from kin, most of them wondering how he could pick up and leave such a good life here. What he gets most from friends is, “I could never do something like that.”
He tries as best he can to explain that there is a reason such dramatic life choices are framed as “callings,” not “suggestions.”
“I kept thinking that, with the three championships and the success we had — the players in college, in the pros, all the influence it seems like I have around here — that still God wants me to do something different,” he said.
Everyone at Wesleyan seems to love the baseball coach and would love to see him stay. Even an umpire bear-hugged the coach at home plate Tuesday.
Their affection makes it no easier for him to leave.
Yet leaving is a part of his Wesleyan legacy, along with the championships and the 200-plus career victories.
After he has shipped out — his family taking all it can squeeze into two suitcases each — what remains is an example.
It’s one duly noted by Wesleyan senior Justin Stevens: “He has shown us what it means to give sacrificially to something you believe in.”
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