Former baseball player hits home run in music industry

Jon­ny Diaz holds the No. 1 hit on Chris­t­ian music radio with “More Beau­ti­ful You.”

Can you imag­ine being on the path to a pro­fes­sion­al base­ball career, a path that is lined with mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts and beau­ti­ful women? The rich­es of this world at your beck and call? And then just giv­ing it all up for God?

That’s what Jon­ny Diaz is all about in a nut­shell. He is from a fam­i­ly of base­ball play­ers — his old­er broth­er Matt plays for the Atlanta Braves — so the ath­let­ic gene runs in his fam­i­ly. But as Diaz says, God had a dif­fer­ent plan for him besides run­ning down fly balls in right field. A plan that has Diaz’s sin­gle, “More Beau­ti­ful You” at No. 1 on the AC Indi­ca­tor Charts (Radio & Records Music Tracking/Billboard).

Jon­ny and his broth­er Matt, who plays for the Atlanta Braves.

With a base­ball schol­ar­ship to Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty in hand, Diaz (pro­nounced DIE-ez) began feel­ing God’s pull dur­ing his fresh­man year in 2002.

“My whole life, base­ball was some­thing that I enjoyed. I enjoyed going to the field,” Diaz explained. “Then for some rea­son I start­ed to be plagued by nag­ging injuries, no one spe­cif­ic injury. But it was enough to keep me from per­form­ing to my full capa­bil­i­ties. Base­ball just became some­thing that I dread­ed every sin­gle day. We spent so much time prac­tic­ing and train­ing. It was just some­thing I couldn’t wait to get over with. It had nev­er been like that. God was call­ing me away from base­ball, and I didn’t want to hear it. I did my best to ignore it.”

Grow­ing up in a Chris­t­ian fam­i­ly envi­ron­ment, Diaz had strong val­ues with deep roots, but the temp­ta­tions that come with a Divi­sion I base­ball pro­gram were all around him at FSU, a school that draws thou­sands of fans to games. It was dur­ing the time he was “ignor­ing” God’s call that he got away from his foun­da­tion.

“It was a lit­tle bit of a dark time for me,” Diaz said. “I didn’t com­plete­ly go off the wall or any­thing like that. I just kind of strayed away from the things that I had prac­ticed and believed in at that point. And luck­i­ly, I quick­ly real­ized it, and I made the deci­sion that I was going to serve God in every­thing that I did.”

Diaz became involved with Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ, and it was this group of strong guys that held Diaz “account­able.” “It was a big grow­ing point for me spir­i­tu­al­ly. It was dif­fi­cult. There’s a cer­tain image that we as base­ball play­ers had. And so there were girls that I knew that were only inter­est­ed in me because I was a base­ball play­er — a lot of temp­ta­tions that way. It was a good thing that I had a belief in Christ.

“All through high school I was pret­ty much a strait-laced kid.” Diaz explained “But it wasn’t until col­lege, dur­ing that time when I was tran­si­tion­ing from base­ball to music, that I real­ly decid­ed that no mat­ter what, I want­ed my life to be in ser­vice for Christ. I real­ized that I need­ed to decide who I was going to serve.”

Old­er broth­er Matt Diaz says he was a bit sur­prised when Jon­ny decid­ed to give up a career in base­ball.

“He was very gift­ed in base­ball,” Matt Diaz said. “But was I sur­prised? Yes and no. If you asked me two years before he went to col­lege, I would have said no way was he giv­ing up base­ball. But by the time he decid­ed to quit you could just tell he was get­ting so much joy out of writ­ing and play­ing music.

“When I left for col­lege he was so shy he wouldn’t play the gui­tar in front of me. Then when I came home, he was lead­ing wor­ship at the local church.”

Matt is also a devote Chris­t­ian, and he dis­plays his faith by the songs he choos­es when he comes to the plate — KJ-52’s “Wake Up,” Jere­my Camp’s “Take My Life” are just some of the tunes he has used.
So how does Matt keep on the straight path in the world of pro­fes­sion­al base­ball?

“I think being a Chris­t­ian has real­ly helped me in base­ball,” Matt said. “Some guys ruin their careers because they get so caught up in the ups and downs of the game. But when you are serv­ing an eter­nal God, it helps to keep things in per­spec­tive.

“I had one guy say base­ball is a sin trap, but it’s no dif­fer­ent than anoth­er oth­er pro­fes­sion. No one is safe in any job, just look at Ted Hag­gard (the dis­graced pas­tor at New Life Church in Col­orado Springs.)”

When Diaz’s dis­en­chant­ment with base­ball began, the doors to a music career start­ed to open wider and wider. Music was a hob­by and an out­let for Diaz since his teens, but it wasn’t until col­lege that he began record­ing music and using his mar­ket­ing edu­ca­tion to help sell his CDs before sign­ing with INO Records this past year.

“A lot of peo­ple ask me for advice on what they should be doing,” Diaz said. “My response is ‘What are you doing now?’ Peo­ple are wait­ing ‘to be dis­cov­ered.’ I think the most impor­tant thing is to be used by God where you are. And if that means play­ing in front of 15 peo­ple, for small youth groups, or 5,000 peo­ple, God wants to use you right where you are. So get the ball rolling. Play for who­ev­er will lis­ten.”

Well, thou­sands of peo­ple are now lis­ten­ing to Diaz’s music as “More Beau­ti­ful You,” — a song aimed at young girls and women encour­ag­ing them to embrace their bod­ies and not get caught up in the “lies, dis­guis­es and hoops they make you jump through” — is get­ting plen­ty of air­time on Chris­t­ian music radio.

“I real­ized that God’s call­ing doesn’t always line up with ours. I think that God real­ly just wants us to be hap­py in what it is he has called up to do,” Diaz said. “I love doing this, and to be able to say this is my job is an absolute bless­ing.”