c. 2007 Religion News Service

BALTIMORE _ It’s a steamy summer night and Baltimore Orioles rookie pitcher Jeremy Guthrie is staring down the New York Yankees, whose potent hitters have hammered 70 runs in their previous seven games.

The Yankees challenge the rookie in the first inning. After two quick outs right fielder Bobby Abreu slices a double. Alex Rodriguez, New York’s superstar third baseman, earns a walk. Staring intently at his target, the catcher’s mitt, Guthrie rears back and throws a darting fastball to Yankee left fielder Hideki Matsui. Matsui grounds out weakly. Inning over.

Throughout the inning _ and the game, which Guthrie wins 4-2 _ the pitcher’s calm demeanor never cracks. The 28-year-old pitches with composure he says he earned on another type of field, the mission field, while wearing a different kind of uniform: the dark suit and crisp white shirt of a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

During his mission work in Spain from 1998 to 2000, Guthrie didn’t touch a baseball. He didn’t know if he’d ever pitch again.

“That was my personal commitment to the Lord,” he said in an interview. “If baseball was in my future then I would trust in that. And if it wasn’t, I was ready for whatever came my way. And so I just decided to leave those things behind and focus completely on my missionary work.”

Seven years later, the Oregon native is exceeding nearly all expectations. Through early August, only two pitchers in the American League have allowed fewer runs per game than Guthrie. Couple that with a record of 7-3, and many people in baseball consider the Orioles pitcher a solid contender for Rookie of the Year.

“He’s been very impressive,” Yankees manager Joe Torre said in an interview. “He knows what he’s doing, he keeps it together. They’ve got a good one there, no question.”

Guthrie is hardly the only Mormon to play professional sports. In his locker at Oriole Park at Camden Yards hang the jerseys of former National Football League quarterback Steve Young, a descendant of early Mormon leader Brigham Young; and Dale Murphy, a star for baseball’s Atlanta Braves during the 1980s who later became president of the Latter-day Saints’ Boston mission.

This fall, about 13 former Mormon missionaries will line up for the NFL on Sundays, and several more play professionally in the National Basketball Association, according to D. Duff Tittle, associate athletic director at Brigham Young University, the nation’s largest Mormon school.

But the plainspoken pitcher in Baltimore is widely believed to be one of only two former missionaries now playing major league baseball. (The other is Florida Marlins relief pitcher Matt Lindstrom, also a rookie.) Guthrie’s the rare pitcher who, at 19, turned his back on sports for two years, forsaking his career to spread his faith in a faraway land.

“The year Guthrie is having right now is blowing everyone away,” said Jeff Call, who has kept tabs on Mormon athletes for 10 years as a sportswriter for the church-owned Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake City. “To think the guy for two years wasn’t even focused on baseball, at a time when a typical baseball player’s whole life is baseball.”

With his close-cropped hair, solid build and earnest expression, Guthrie resembles an Army grunt. While other Orioles cavort around the clubhouse on a recent Sunday, lifting weights and razzing each other as Eminem’s bawdy lyrics blast from a stereo, Guthrie sits in a quiet room answering fan mail.

Married with two young children, the 28-year-old Guthrie is older than most rookies in the majors. His maturity is evident both on and off the field, said Orioles manager Dave Trembley.

“On top of his shoulders is a head that I call `the computer,”’ Trembley said. “He has poise, work ethic, sense of preparation, quality of person, the grounding of faith. When you were growing up as a kid, he’s what you thought a major league player should be.”

Guthrie didn’t always think he had the makings of a big league player. His arm was strong enough to garner interest from the New York Mets when he was a senior at Ashland High School in southern Oregon. But he spurned the Mets to attend Brigham Young University in Utah. Like many young male Mormons, he planned to apply for missionary work after his freshman year.

Church leaders and former missionaries, including Guthrie’s older brother Ethan, inspired him to take up the task. God took a swing, too, he said.

“It’s like anyone who believes in anything faith-related. It all comes from the spirit. You know, they say in John: `The spirit will teach you all things,”’ Guthrie said.

Serving two years as a missionary has become an almost obligatory rite of passage for Mormon men, especially since the 1980s when LDS then-President Spencer W. Kimball called on every worthy young man to serve the church.

Now, more than 70 percent of BYU’s male athletes leave for missions while in school, most when they turn 19. That’s an upswing from a previous generation, said BYU’s Tittle. The rate is lower among female athletes, who are not accepted for full-time mission work until they turn 21.

Overall, the Church of Latter-day Saints counts some 50,000 missionaries, most under age 25, serving in 350 mission fields worldwide, according to church spokeswoman Kim Farah. That extensive network and the 12-hour, pavement-pounding days the missionaries put in has helped fuel the church’s explosive growth from about 1 million members in 1950 to its current 12 million worldwide.

Guthrie flew to Spain in July 1998 after a lackluster freshman season at BYU. He led the abstemious life of a full-time missionary, trading curveballs and strikeouts for sidelong glances and slamming doors. He loved it, though, and said he succeeded in baptizing two Spaniards into the church.

Guthrie didn’t work out and lost 30 pounds in Spain. Still, when he returned to the states he was, somehow, a better pitcher. His fastballs were faster, his curveballs sharper and he had more control over where he threw the ball.

“It’s really unexplainable, you know, in terms of maybe how the world would view it,” Guthrie said. “I didn’t run, I didn’t lift weights. I didn’t throw a ball. So, there’s really no worldly explanation as to why I could come back and throw the ball as well as I did.”

Sportswriter Call said of all the sports, baseball is the most difficult to play after an extended break, making Guthrie all the more remarkable. “The skills you need all have to do with timing. It’s just hard to get that back,” he said. A bevy of highly touted Mormon ballplayers have left on missions. Guthrie is one of the few to return and succeed in the major leagues, Call said.

After Guthrie transferred and starred at Stanford University for two years, the Cleveland Indians chose him in the first round of 2002’s amateur baseball draft. A mix of thwarted opportunities and inconsistent performances blocked him in Cleveland, however, and the Indians released Guthrie last winter.

Soon the Orioles scooped him up, and since then he’s displayed the sense of poise and perspective unusual in young pitchers. Along with a nasty sinking fastball.

“Having a strong foundation in your faith, obviously you know that baseball is not the most important thing,” Guthrie said.

“So when you’re out there in a tough situation, maybe you’ll sit back and realize its just a game and enjoy it and have fun.”

KRE/RB END BURKE1,300 words, with optional trim to 1,100

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