From Injury to Identity: How Levi Martinez Found Purpose Beyond Baseball
“My foot never moved from the turf,” Levi Martinez says.
It was the second practice of the year. He had just hit a double off the wall and was feeling confident at second base. Levi’s eye was on stealing third when the pitcher made a sudden pickoff move. He heard the pop before he felt it. His knee buckled. He fell backward as his teammates rushed to surround him.
The diagnosis confirmed what he feared: a torn ACL. Surgery in June. A full year of recovery. No games this season. For a collegiate second baseman who describes himself as “super independent” and deeply active, the physical pain was only the beginning.
“My brother had to help me get ready every day and help me go to class, carry my backpack, get up from class,” Levi says. “I don’t like relying on people.” Back home after surgery, the dependence deepened. His dad helped him shower. His parents drove him to physical therapy. He refused opioids and endured the pain, fueled by “Tylenol and prayer.”
Worse than the physical pain was the loss of identity. “Lying on the couch all through recovery did something to me mentally because it’s just not who I am,” he says. “It felt like a large part of who I was had been ripped out of me.” Levi began to realize just how much of his life had been built around baseball. What little time he spent off the diamond used to be taken up by hiking and daily prayer walks. Now even those were impossible.
“It was a pretty lonely experience,” he recalls. “The only person I had left was God.” In the stillness, Levi began to reflect. In the busyness of spring season, church attendance had slipped. Faith had become secondary to performance and progress. Recovery forced him to reconsider. “When you’re stuck on your back, in the middle of recovery, it forces you to look up and to listen,” he says. “All I had left was God. It was at my lowest point that I realized I didn’t need more independence. I needed to hold onto Him even tighter.”
That grip changed him. “It made me realize how prideful I could be,” he admitted. “God showed me that my own desire for independence, to do everything myself, also impacted the way I viewed others.”
The experience reshaped his relationships. It even changed the way he saw and related to his family, especially his grandmother, who has lived in a wheelchair for years. “It gave me more compassion for her and her situation because I was living it.”
When fall semester began, Levi returned not just as an athlete in recovery but as a resident assistant and FCA leader. Instead of competing for position, he found himself competing for impact. His church attendance skyrocketed. Mentorship through his RA team and deeper involvement in FCA helped him anchor that growth. “Following God became the most crucial and consistent part of my recovery,” he says. “I realized God had blessed me with an incredible community. I wasn’t just an athlete. I could be built up by others and I could also help build up those around me.”
So, Levi started to share his struggles, embrace his weaknesses, and accept help. His vulnerability opened doors for others. Teammates felt safe sharing their own struggles. “Being available with teammates, and being comfortable enough to share my story with other people, to help give them encouragement, has given me a purpose I never would’ve discovered without this injury,” he says.
Today, eight months post-surgery, Levi has been cleared to throw, lift, and hit. He still can’t run, so stealing third will have to wait. But his perspective has shifted. “I’m just enjoying what God has given me in this season.” For Levi, that pop might have marked the beginning of a major loss, but it also marked the beginning of something deeper—an identity not rooted in performance, but in purpose.
And next year, when he finally steals third, he knows exactly who will get the glory.
