Mill-Village Batboy Turned Missionary Used Baseball to Help Start Churches in Venezuela
Bill Cashion of South Carolina says the Lord let him "stay in baseball," and ballplayers helped plant 20 churches around Caracas. Now his devotional book is raising money for Venezuelan earthquake victims.
See where this is ›SLATER, S.C. —
Bill Cashion grew up as a batboy for the Slater Sluggers in the mill village of Slater, S.C., and spent his ministry using the game to spread the gospel, from minor league clubhouses in Greenville to the churches of Caracas, Venezuela, The Baptist Paper reported Nov. 2. Cashion, a longtime Southern Baptist missionary and pastor, now serves as interim pastor of Cleveland First Baptist Church.
“Baseball was a part of my DNA,” Cashion told writer Lonnie Wilkey. His father and grandfather were textile league stars; his grandfather played 10 years of minor league ball in the New York Yankees organization, and his father was offered a contract by the Cleveland Indians but joined the Navy during World War II.
Cashion attended Slater-Marietta High School and Baptist College at Charleston, now Charleston Southern University. He was a bivocational pastor in North Carolina, where he coached basketball and baseball, and in 1978 became pastor of Washington Baptist Church in Greer, S.C. He served as baseball chaplain for the Greenville Braves, then the Double-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves, and later spent 11 years as Spanish-speaking chaplain for the Greenville Drive, a Single-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox.
See where this is ›In 1985 the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, now the International Mission Board, appointed Cashion as a missionary to Venezuela, where he coordinated church planting strategy for the churches of Caracas. The Baptist Paper reported 30 new missions and churches in the Caracas region and about 50 more churches in Venezuela tied to that strategy. Baseball and basketball players helped start 20 churches in the Caracas area, the paper said. “The Lord allowed me to stay in baseball,” Cashion said.
He helped start Baseball Chapel in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League and led Bible studies for the Caracas Lions, a professional winter league team, along with sports clinics and academies sponsored by several Major League Baseball teams. “Sports, like music, is an international language,” he said. Cashion has also worked in Argentina, and he has led a sports evangelism mission team to Costa Rica every year since 2006, with another planned for next year.
In 2020 Cashion published “The Winning Season: Stories of Victory from Baseball and the Bible,” a book of 162 devotionals endorsed by former Major League pitcher Don Gordon, a longtime missionary. “The baseball stories are enjoyable, but the Bible passages are enduring,” Cashion said. Half of each sale goes to victims of two earthquakes that struck Venezuela in June, The Baptist Paper reported. Cashion and his wife, Kathy, continue in ministry in South Carolina.
