Twice Shattered—A Memoir by Frank Pastore

In 1970, I was playing Little League baseball for the “Sparks” in Alta Loma, California. In Upland, the next town over (not 10 minutes away from my home), Frank Pastore was the Little League pitcher for his team. We both played “south of Foothill Boulevard,” but I have no idea whether I ever faced Frank with a bat on my shoulder.

More than twenty years later, we were introduced officially. In 1993, I moved from Upland, Indiana—where I was teaching philosophy at Taylor University—to direct a fledgling M.A. program in philosophy for the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. Frank had enrolled at Talbot two years earlier. So in the fall of 1993, early in my career as a university prof, retired Major League pitcher, Frank Pastore, was sitting in my class taking notes. He was 36 and I was 34.

Neither of us knew then of the ways our lives would intersect over the next two decades. Nor did we know what disappointments we would share as our ministries unfolded and overlapped in various ways.

Frank’s story is told in his recent memoir Shattered—Struck Down, But Not Destroyed. A signed copy arrived in my mail April 27. I read it that night, then called and told Gina (Frank’s wife) how moving it was to get to know Frank and her all over again in the pages of this moving story.

Their story pivots on two life-shaping experiences, one that ended Frank’s career in the Majors and resulted in conversion from hardened atheist to Christian apologist, and another that almost ended with a fresh and potentially deeper level of disillusionment with betrayal by Christian friends and colleagues.

True to form, Frank tells his story with compelling candor. You may or may not be a baseball fan. You may believe in God; you may not. The religious hypocrisy of people you know may or may not have left you cold. But chances are, reading Frank’s story of personal travail and transformation will get you thinking hard about the direction of your own life, and wanting to experience the purpose that fills his life and galvanizes his marriage.

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Note: Frank is host of “The Frank Pastore Show,” the largest Christian radio talk program in America. This Tuesday, May 18, I’ll join Frank on his show to talk about his book—6-7 p.m., PST. For program details, visit the 99.5 KKLA link to Frank’s program. Or check out Frank’s hub online.