I'm John Ryan Jensen, editor of the Church News.

Welcome to the Church News podcast.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be found working in every profession imaginable around the world.

Some, including the two guests on this episode of the Church News podcast, are professional athletes.

But these two play in a unique league with equally unique rules as a

spin-off of America's pastime. Kaden Boler grew up largely in northern Utah's Cash Valley,

where he played high school baseball before serving a mission on the other side of the world

in Cambodia. Bronson Ballholm is from Southern California. He played baseball in college,

including time with Arizona State University. The two now play in the Banana Ball Championship League, bowler for the

Loco Beach coconuts, and Ballholm for a team called the Party Animals. The league began with the

creation of the Savannah Bananas, and the wildly different form of baseball that they now play

in this six-team league has become a place where their testimonies of Jesus Christ have grown

and where sharing the gospel and its principles can look as different as the games they play

each night. We caught up with the two players at Las Vegas Ballpark, ahead of a weekend

series for their respective teams.

On this special episode of the Church News podcast, we are in Las Vegas, Nevada, with players from

banana ball. For those of you unfamiliar, the best way I can describe that is perhaps the Harlem

Globetrotters of baseball. I don't know. There's a better way to describe it, so we'll just have to talk through it a little bit on today's episode. I'm joined by two of the players for two of the new teams in Banana Ball. Kaden Bowler and Bronson Ball Home, gentlemen, thanks for being with us today. Thanks for having us. We're really excited to have you.

I mean, Banana Ball is a lot of fun, but we're excited to talk with you because you've got a journey or in journeys with the gospel of Jesus Christ that have brought you through Banana Ball, which is, which originates in Savannah, Georgia.

I love to know from each of you kind of how you got your start in in baseball first and

then we'll get to kind of what's happened and developed in in your personal lives since then

you played baseball your whole lives yeah I mean I tell people I started playing baseball

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