Josh Gibson was the best-hitting baseball player ever.

Tales about Josh Gibson are tales of legend. He once hit a line drive just inches over the pitcher’s head, yet somehow the ball kept rising until it cleared the center field fence nearly 500 feet away. Normally, a line drive like that would barely even make it to the outfield. What a testament to this man’s monstrous power.

During a game in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Gibson crushed a ball right out of the stadium. It never came down—at least, not that day. The next day, Gibson played in Philadelphia, a city on the other side of the state. Suddenly, a baseball fell from the sky and dropped into an opposing outfielder’s mitt. The umpire pointed at Gibson and yelled, “You’re out—yesterday in Pittsburgh!”

But the story of this man is about so much more than baseball. Each of us can learn a lesson from this prodigious slugger: Stay urgent in your everyday responsibilities, always holding on to your crown.

Gibson’s professional career began in the most unusual way. One day, Gibson attended a Homestead Grays vs. Kansas City Monarchs Negro League baseball game in Pittsburgh. The Grays catcher injured his hand, making the team desperate for a substitute. The manager climbed into the stands and asked Gibson, a renowned 18-year-old semiprofessional, to step up. He did, and he never looked back.

Over the course of his 17-year career, Gibson dominated the game of baseball like no man on the face of this Earth before or since. His dream was to play Major League Baseball, but this was during the 1930s—no blacks were allowed. Instead, he tore the Negro League apart, batting .384, hitting 962 home runs and winning nine home run titles and four batting championships. And that’s not counting several seasons he spent playing for leagues in Mexico and Puerto Rico.

If you’re not familiar with the game of baseball, suffice it to say that those are some unbelievable statistics! “I played with Willie Mays and against Hank Aaron,” Hall of Famer Monte Irvin once said. “They were tremendous players, but they were no Josh Gibson. Oh yeah, Josh was better than those two.”

Mays and Aaron were black ballplayers who came along after Gibson paved the way for them. They played in the mlb once it allowed black players, and they achieved great fame and riches.

Gibson achieved unrivaled greatness because of his desire to play in the mlb. He wanted a chance to prove himself against the “more talented” league. He knew that he had to do something incredible every game to get noticed by the scouts and given a chance to fulfill his greatest desire. He woke up every day with fire in his bones and an unstoppable drive to be the best.

His drive really was unstoppable. In 1943, at age 31, a brain tumor put him in a coma. Despite recurring headaches, he still won three of his home run titles and two of his batting titles in the last four years of his career. The goal set before him was simply too fantastic to give up.

The Ballplayers relates this story of the “black Babe Ruth’s” last day. “On Jan. 20, 1947, Gibson told his mother that he was going to die that night. She laughed, but told him to go to bed and that she would call a doctor. With his family gathered around him, Gibson asked for his baseball trophies to be brought to his bedside. He was laughing and talking when he suddenly sat straight up, had a stroke and died.”

Josh Gibson died prematurely at the youthful age of 35. Just three months later, the mlb’s color barrier was broken when Jackie Robinson became its first-ever black player. After 17 years of toiling away in obscure leagues and receiving little to no recognition for his accomplishments, all because of a passion to play in the mlb, he missed his goal by just three months! He never knew if or when he might achieve this goal, but he worked hard every day just in case. What urgency he displayed!

Like Gibson, we don’t know when we will achieve our goal of being born into God’s Family. On the other hand, we know that it will happen if we can endure to the end.

“Spiritually speaking, we have all probably passed our projected due date,” executive editor Stephen Flurry wrote in a November 2011 Trumpet article titled ”Your Spiritual Due Date.” “Who among us would have thought that time would have gone on this long before Jesus Christ’s return? That’s one reason so many of our brethren have fallen away from God’s truth. In their hearts they have said, ‘My lord delayeth his coming’ (Matthew 24:48). Many of them simply gave up on the birth.”

Do you ever feel like giving up? It is so easy to get caught up in the mundane, monotonous, dreaded, cumbersome or tedious details of everyday life. Maybe you feel like there is just too much to do. Why put in the effort when you will just wake up and do the same things tomorrow?

“But passing our spiritual due date is nothing to sulk about!” Mr. Flurry continued. “What an opportunity—if it adds more urgency to our spiritual lives. Think about how much more needs to be done before the birth. Think about how much more we can do while there is still time. We haven’t a moment to lose. Don’t let up. Instead, let ‘Could this be the day?’ motivate your life!”

Don’t sulk about your responsibilities. Wake up and behave as if you have just been shot out of a cannon! Live it and love it. We don’t know when Christ will return, but we do know that time is extremely short. What a shame it would be if we lost urgency now. Remember the example of Josh Gibson, the forgotten slugger, and move forward with ever-increasing urgency!