Rob Andrews' Dramatic First Home Run

Historical Essay

by Matt Sieger

Rob Andrews

photo courtesy of @S.F. Giants

Rob Andrews, the brother of Mike Andrews, also a major leaguer, played his first two seasons for the Houston Astros before they traded hm to the Giants during spring training of 1977. The Giants released him after the end of the 1979 season, which marked the end of his major league career.

While he had over four hundred at-bats in both 1976 and 1977, he was not an everyday starter at Houston and was utilized primarily as a utility infielder by the Giants in 1978 and 1979, logging only 177 and 154 at-bats, respectively, In August 1979, he told San Francisco Chronicle columnist Art Rosenbaum that he wanted to play every day or be traded to a team where he could do so. If that didn’t work out, he was preparing to become a minister.

In a July 1978 interview, Andrews talked about how his faith helped him handle his backup role on the Giants:

I’ve been a starter all my career, and if I hadn’t become a Christian, I never would have been able to handle the situation. Now I can emulate Jesus and give 100 percent of myself if it means sitting on the bench or pitching batting practice. I used to be a hell-raiser. I’d go into bars and tear them apart, get into fights, hang out with all the cowboys and stuff like that before I realized there is a purpose in life. Society tells you all along that you're the cream of the crop, and everybody looks up to you, and suddenly you have a large pride and ego, and that old macho image—be a man and do it yourself. The Lord had to lower me down about twenty notches before he could even work in my life, and I’m thankful he did.

Released by the Giants after the 1979 season, Andrews tried out with the Mets in the spring of 1980. It looked as if he had landed a spot as a utility infielder until he suffered injuries to his back and arm. The Mets wanted to send him to the minors until he recovered.

That’s when, at age twenty-seven, he decided to retire.

“I was just a little frustrated with sitting on the bench in San Francisco and not once having the chance to play regularly in my whole career,” Andrews told Alan Arakelian of the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “I didn’t feel like sitting on the bench in Shea Stadium (in New York). I kind of made a covenant to the Lord, that if I had to go down to the minors, I would hang it up.”

After Andrews retired from baseball and was working as a youth pastor and teacher, George Vecsey of The New York Times interviewed him for a May 1981 article about religion in baseball. Andrews said, “I saw Gary Lavelle go through hard times that would have killed me. But he was always calm. He never preached to me but one day I asked him, ‘Gary, what is it?' He said it was Christ.”

Andrews was one of several Giants who Lavelle helped come to faith in Jesus. At least one person noticed the difference—Andrews’ manager in late 1979, Dave Bristol.

“I saw Rob Andrews turn his life around, and that was great,” said Bristol.

Andrews told the Santa Cruz Sentinel, “I was Rob Andrews, the baseball player. When I became a Christian (in 1978), I didn’t have any need for any artificial stimulation for my ego.”

Andrews showed he was not afraid to proclaim his new beliefs after a nationally televised game in St. Louis on July 17, 1978, when he beat the Cardinals with a ninth-inning home run. It was his first major-league home run in 1,228 at-bats and his second game-winning hit in three days. In the post-game television interview, he shared his faith in Jesus.

“The Lord is a great stagesetter,” he later told the San Francisco Examiner about that day. “It gave me the opportunity to share my testimony with millions of people. I think God is using the Giants this year, the way he used the Denver Broncos [football team] last year to bring glory to his name. I think he’s using athletics to bring faith out of the closet. There are twenty-four men on our roster, and we can reach millions.”

Being his first, the home run was a big deal for Andrews. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “I was looking for a fastball and he threw me a slider. I didn’t think the ball would go out of the park. I saw it hooking and expected it to fall in somewhere. I thought I just might try for second. I was digging for second when I looked up to see where the ball was. It was a struggle to make all the bases. I was on Cloud Nine.”

Andrews said that after he arrived in the dugout he asked his teammates to verify whether he had touched all the bases.

“I think five or six guys passed out on the bench after I hit the homer,” Andrews said. “I was stunned. I thought, ‘What’s going on here?’ Then I saw the umpire motioning me around. When you haven’t hit a homer in 1,200 and some at-bats, you just don’t get much chance to practice trotting around the bases.”

Said Andrews with a big sigh, “It’s definitely the highlight of my career. I still can’t believe the ball went over the fence.”

The ball actually hit the top of the left-field fence and hopped over. Andrews said, “I honestly believe God picked that ball up and carried it over the fence.”

Teammate Darrell Evans wouldn’t go that far, but said, “I’m not going to say we’re a team of destiny. But we sure win games in the strangest ways.”

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Excerpted from The God Squad: The Born-Again San Francisco Giants of 1978.