Kent Bottlefield is done playing major league baseball, but it didn’t keep him from batting around thoughts about the Lord’s calling, worshipping from behind the bridesmaids, and being who he is created to be.   

CMCentral (Kevan Breitinger): How you doing today? Thanks for making time for our interview. 

Kent Bottlefield: Oh, glad to do it. 

I’m fascinated by your story, Kent. You’ve probably told it a million times, but can you tell me about your transition from ball player to music artist? 

Music is something I always had a passion for. I sang in children’s choir, and when I reached high school I sang in the adult choir at our church and loved it. I took piano lessons when I was 10 for about 6 months or so, and quit those because I spent that half hour every week wishing I was outside playing with my friends (laughing). It was the only thing my parents ever let me quit. 

But a couple of years later I started to teach myself to play real simple things, and built on that and started putting my love for Biblical lyrics and my love for melodies and piano together to start writing songs. Probably from the age of 12, 13 years old.  

So you’re saying that after finishing up as a ball player you fell back onto those earlier talents you hadn’t completely developed? 

Yeah, the transition came after my surgery when I couldn’t go back to playing ball but still had my same love for music. 

I’m sorry, but I didn’t know that you had gotten hurt.

So I bought into a recording studio which really combined all my passions… and all my fears (laughing). I could write for other artists, and sing background vocals, and be part of orchestra sessions and hear the music come to life, but I didn’t have to actually get in front of people and sing. So in my mind it seemed perfect for me and I thought I might do that for the rest of my life. But for a year, when working with other artists, the same question kept coming up: have you ever done your own project? My answer was always no, and I don’t want to, because I’m enjoying what I’m doing behind the scenes. I didn’t like the spotlight as a baseball player and I didn’t want to jump back into it doing something else.   

I was quite content, but the question kept coming until finally my wife cornered me and said ‘Kent, this has been coming up over and over for a year. I really feel like God is calling you to go into music as an artist.’ At the time I really didn’t appreciate her telling me that, because I had a tremendous fear of being in front of people speaking or singing anything. I had written a song for a wedding, and I was relieved on rehearsal night to find out I was playing and singing from behind the bridesmaids so no one could see me. That’s the kind of fear that I had. So to have my wife suggest that she felt I had been called to do this awoke that fear all over again.  

So I was still reluctant but when God calls, He calls. I had basically been running from it for a year, and I realized I had reached the end of the road. So I followed, although the fear didn’t go away immediately, I can tell you that. Over the course of time, he helped me to understand that He’s never gonna call us to do something for His glory and only take us half way and drop us off. He’ll take us all the way so that He might be glorified and not us. I take great comfort in knowing that the Lord gives me all of the abilities and talents I need to glorify Him. It doesn’t mean I’m perfect every night; I mess up all the time on piano or vocal, just like any artist. But I don’t get all worked up over it because I pray that people are hearing Him and seeing his message, and not even paying attention to me. It’s almost my way of hiding behind the bridesmaids every night except for in a greater way, because I feel like God is out front, and I work very hard to try to make sure every night is like that. Then it becomes a real time of worship for me, and not a performance. I’m there worshipping, and hopefully everybody else is joining in with me. 

That’s a great way of looking at it, Kent, and it brings to mind the Scripture that speaks of hiding in the cross. 

Yes, that’s essentially what it is, yes. 

I guess you’ve gotten well past your fear, because to me you come across on the album as being very comfortable in your own skin. 

I am, but I am who I am. I just recently had somebody come up to me after an evening show who does some coaching. He had some suggestions for me, and I’m always looking for ways to improve on what I do. It’s like baseball: you never learn everything. If you think you have, you’re done. I’m always trying to learn, but part of what he was telling me had to do with me being somebody I’m not. I’m not gonna jump around on stage and light my hair on fire, that’s just not part of my personality. I’m gonna give the people who I am, what I’ve walked through, and hopefully it will come through the perspective of how God sees it, not how Kent Bottlefield sees it. I guess that’s the best way to say it, I am who I am. It’s not that I’m unwilling to change, but I’m also not willing to become somebody I’m not, somebody I wasn’t created to be. 

Well, ‘I am who I am’ worked for the Apostle Paul and Popeye, so it can’t be all bad (laughing). 

(Laughing) Good point!  

I like so many of the new songs. Which one do you enjoy playing live most? 

That’s a tough one…. I really enjoy the song “I’ll Be Free.” I enjoy the arrangement and the orchestration and all that, but that one seems to me to be really simple, and yet the cry of a lot of people. We do have a sin nature, we do make mistakes and mess up. I’m not looking to check out of here anytime soon, but you know what? I do long for the day when I will be free of all that. All of us, even people who don’t know Christ at this point in time, who don’t know exactly what they want to be free of, or how to get free, even they are looking for ways to be free of the struggles we face. So I do enjoy that song, and vocally the range is interesting. 

I like that track because it’s just straight-up worship, as opposed to some of the other ‘story songs.’  

I don’t get to perform “76^th Street” a lot, because the majority of what I do is in churches and it doesn’t quite fit many places I go. But I love it because it’s my story. Things around me may have changed, but a part of me will always be from 76^th Street. I’m trying to take a lot of the things I learned in those four walls to pass along to my own son now about what God expects of us. 

I don’t know if your parents are living, but did they ever have the chance to hear that song? 

Yes, the first time my Dad heard it we were on a trip to Japan, where I was doing some concerts and some baseball clinics. I had just finished that track, and he doesn’t hear real well, so I wrote out all the words for him. He was reading as I was singing and he just started crying. It meant a lot to him. I took a lot from those days in my childhood, and it has everything to do with who I am today. And he knew that when he heard it. If my boy ever did that for me, I’d be crying too. 

It’s a wonderful tribute, you’ve been very blessed. 

I have been, yes. 

I’ve been blessed too, by our time talking. Thanks, Kent. 

Thank you, take care.