"Are you forgetting what you've always said?" (my wife) Janice said. "Remember? You and Byron used to say you should pitch as though Jesus Christ is your only audience."
    That took my back to wonderful, hot Texas days, when I'd been just a scrambling Double-A ballplayer. I'd been with some of my closest friends, playing baseball, enjoying the game, and knowing that a loving God had the only opinion of me that really mattered. Those days in Amarillo had been the happiest of my life. The reason had been, above all, that I knew who I was living for. I knew my audience.
    To everybody else, you were only as good as your last performance. The pressure was relentless from the crowd, from the manager, even from the expectations of your friends and family back home. Heck, the pressure could be relentless from inside yourself. But God was concerned only that you did your best. And he was bigger than all the rest combined.
    Growing up, I had always been the center of attention. That was exactly how I had wanted it. My performance had been for me, and no one else. I had to be the star.
    That kind of motivation can keep you going strong, so long as you succeed. But it's not so good for dealing with failure, or with forces beyond your control. Seeing Jesus Christ as your audience shifted the pressure off yourself. If you lost, the loss would hurt, but it didn't change anything fundamentally. God would still be there.