THOMASVILLE — John Smoltz has 21 long years of baseball stories to share.

The former Atlanta Braves pitcher couldn’t share them all last week at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes annual banquet, but did share some. After sharing his story of living by God’s word, Smoltz answered some of the crowd’s questions and left nothing to hide.

Smoltz, baseball meet technology

Baseball has changed a lot along with technology. One of those includes incorporating music, and closers are no exception.

“Everyone has to have a song when they get to the plate,” Smoltz said. “It’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

The Braves crew asked Smoltz what he wanted his song to be.

“I didn’t have one,” he said. “I played the accordion. You got any Lawrence Welk?”

So he gave the reigns over to the crew and told them they could pick his song. He didn’t usually pay attention, but one day the song caught his ear. It was “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. He covered his mouth with his glove while he laughed coming out from the bullpen. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the song, he said, because he had the CD. It was simply comical.

After that, Smoltz asked his fellow bullpen mates for help picking out a song. The next time he was called into a game, “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC belted through the stadium sound system.

“It was a valuable lesson in not getting involved at the very beginning,” he said.

Which K?

Smoltz joked his favorite strikeout was all of them. But he does have certain specific Ks in mind. His first was New York Mets star outfielder Darryl Strawberry.

“I’ll never forget that,” Smoltz said. “I wanted to take a timeout and go into the clubhouse and scream.”

Smoltz got him to strikeout looking to lead off the bottom of the seventh in the 6-1 victory.

Tony Gwynn was the hardest, he said. His most nervous time on the mound came in his last playoffs against the Los Angeles Dodgers. He knew this was about to be the end, and even though it should have been a routine appearance, he still felt the nerves.

When he did retire, he didn’t give a year-long retirement tour full of gifts from each team he visited for the last time.

“I just didn’t show up to work the next year,” he said.

Year-round baseball?

Early on in his story, Smoltz touched on the fact many kids, especially those in conducive climates such as south Georgia, play one sport year-round. During his question and answer session, he was asked to explain his thoughts on that. He said he thinks kids should have balance and avoid being burnt out at a young age. There is no drastic advantage to working year-round, he said.

“You have time,” Smoltz said. “You will be found.”

The jokester

Smoltz likes to joke around and said he was commonly the ringleader of clubhouse pranks. His favorite came around 3:30 a.m. after the team had gotten into Chicago for a series. The Braves had an off day the next day and Smoltz said he was too excited to sleep since he knew he was going to play golf.

Since he couldn’t sleep, why not take over for the lone bellman on duty who was in charge of bringing up the players’ bags when the bags arrived at the hotel?

Smoltz pulled various jokes, including using a British accent to tell teammates calling for their bags that the cargo was damaged and needed to be identified in person before it could be sent up.

One teammate called to ask for change for a $100.

“I told him, ‘Sir, if I had change for a $100, I wouldn’t be a bellman,” he said.

And another asked for a cab to go out and hit the clubs. Smoltz, acting as the bellman, said he couldn’t do it. He then called back and insisted he would call a cab. The teammate declined, until finally giving in and saying he’d liked to be called a cab.

“OK, you’re a cab,” Smoltz said into the phone and hung up.

It wasn’t a joke, though, when he got a call from Tiger Woods during spring training. Woods urged him to take the Sunday off, hop a 6 a.m. flight to Augusta, play a round of golf, and then catch a flight to be back at camp by 3 p.m.

Smoltz said he doubted manager Bobby Cox would let him go, but he would hate himself for not asking. So he asked, telling the man he spent years with in the Braves system that he knew it was unlikely he could go, but Woods had invited him to play golf Sunday.

“He said, ‘I’ll see you Monday,’” Smoltz said. “And I almost fainted.”

Woods hit a 66 and Smoltz hit a 78.

The future

Smoltz said is asked more and more often if he would ever be a coach or manager. He said he’s happy with what he does now as a broadcaster and will see what God holds for him in the future.

So what about those current Atlanta Braves, the ones that finished third in the NL East, tied with the second-place Mets at 79-83 and 17 games back from the Washington Nationals?

Well, Smoltz doesn’t advise you get too excited.

“You want the truth?” he asked. “They’ve made some mistakes and it might take some time to fix those mistakes.”

Smoltz said he believes the team will turn it around, and that the move into the new stadium in 2016 will be the most likely time the Braves start to make their climb back up.