Baseball great Bobby Richardson was the featured keynote speaker Tuesday morning at the Greater Prescott Area Prayer Breakfast, held at the Prescott Resort.

Richardson, who joined the New York Yankees in 1955 as a 2nd baseman when he was just 19, was an integral part of the Yankee baseball dynasty of his day. During his baseball career, which lasted twelve years, Richardson played in more than 1400 games, had 1432 hits, a lifetime batting average of .266,643 runs scored, 73 stolen bases, 196 doubles and 37 triples, in addition to his 34 home runs and 390 RBIs. He won five Gold Gloves and is the only World Series MVP to ever be selected from the losing team.

Despite those rather impressive statistics, as Richardson addressed the audience of over 400 attendees, it was obvious that his love of baseball is not nearly as important as the relationships he developed with the other members of his team. These relationships lasted long after he laid his bat and glove down.

When he was finished speaking and signing autographs, Richardson summarized his message for the Prescott area, "My background is baseball, but I also recongnize leadership, and I recognize that there were some wonderful leaders in this town that have done a lot for this community. I wanted to challenge them in a way that I've been challenged, saying basically, it's important how we live, don't let it break down at home, and then it's not a religion or a philisophy - that's the main reason for my coming - but a personal relationship with a living Savior who gives to us an abundant life."

Sally Barton, the Director at KGCB Radio Shine, talked about who comes to the Greater Prescott Area Prayer Breakfast, "We don't check anybody's faith at the door, everybody's welcome. If you want to pray, we're glad to have you," Barton said. "What a blessing it is to look around this room and realize that our community is so dedicated to honoring God in the daily ins and outs of our lives. The Prescott Prayer Breakfast really follows the national Prayer Breakfast in that we're dedicated to praying for our community leaders and for our community at large."

Barton continued, explaining how Richardson was invited to the event, "The date is most often selected surrounding the person that we choose to be our speaker. So as they are available, we pick the day, which makes it a little difficult and quite the adventure to let everybody know about the Prescott Prayer Breakfast. Really, we are not an organized group, we are not part of any denomination, we are not part of any organization, it's just a couple of us in the community that desire to honor God and encourage each other to pray. We select the person that we believe God has called to speak to our community and then work with their schedule."

"What we look for when we're looking for a speaker, is," Barton said. "...an ordinary person, who has accomplished extraordinary things in their lives for the Lord, and has been a witness. And I think that as you heard Bobby today, you would agree that he has really accomplished extraordinary things and used his life far beyond the game of baseball to build into other people's lives."

Listen to Richardson below:

Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

The Special Music was brought by Kent Simmons from Flagstaff.

Photo Gallery

Click on a thumbnail to see a larger photo.