Meet Scott Linebrink

Twelve years in the big leagues. Twenty-five acres that told me no for years before they told me yes. I've learned more from an olive tree than I ever did from a fastball, and Fields of Life is where I put it all down.

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My Story

I threw a baseball for a living for twelve years. White Sox, Padres, Braves, Cardinals. I stood on a mound across from some of the best hitters the game has ever seen, faced down full counts with a lead on the line, and got paid to do the thing I loved most in the world.

Then in 2012, my shoulder gave out. The Cardinals released me, and just like that, the only career I'd ever known was over. No storybook ending, no victory lap. Just an empty calendar and a question I didn't have an answer to: what now?

I went home to Georgetown, Texas, and did something that made no sense to anyone who knew me. I planted eight thousand olive trees on twenty-five acres of ground that had never grown anything. I didn't know the first thing about farming. I just knew I needed to put my hands in something that grew slow, the opposite of everything baseball had trained into me.

The grove taught me things the mound never did. In 2021, a hard freeze hit the whole property. The trees releaf every spring like nothing happened, but they haven't produced a real harvest since. Some rows never came back at all. I've spent a lot of hours out there since that freeze, waiting on trees that may or may not fruit again, and learning what it means to keep showing up for something with no guarantee it pays off.

Most of what I do now runs through Water Mission, where I serve as Director of Ministry Advancement, and through Pro Athletes Outreach. Both are built on the same thing I found out in that grove: real growth takes patience, and it usually starts after everything you were counting on falls apart.

I'm married to Kelly. We have two daughters, Ellie and Abby, and most days you'll find me somewhere between the ballfield stories I still tell and the olive rows I'm still waiting on.

Fields of Life is the book that came out of all of it. Baseball, the freeze, the ministry work, the family. It's not a highlight reel. It's what I actually learned out there, and I wrote it hoping it does for you what those twelve years and that grove did for me.

Moments From the Story

On the Mound

Twelve seasons, four teams, and a front row seat to the best hitters alive. I gave everything I had to that game, right up until my shoulder said I was done.

The Grove

Twenty-five acres, eight thousand trees, and not one of them planted by someone who knew what he was doing. I learned to farm by getting it wrong first.

The Mission Field

I've stood in villages with Water Mission where people walk miles for water we'd never drink at home. It puts twelve years of baseball in perspective fast.

My Family

Kelly, Ellie, and Abby. Everything else in this book happened around the edges of this.