Consider this a rare GetReligion hot-stove season baseball report. The shocker is that it is not written by our resident baseball fanatic, Bobby Ross, Jr. I guess that’s because this story concerns a member of the Baltimore Orioles, a team currently in a radical-rebuild mode (that could use a miracle or two).

This is another Baltimore Sun story about the troubled slugger Chris Davis, whose struggles at the plate have made many national headlines. It doesn’t help that Davis is (a) aging, (b) holding a first-base slot that blocks younger players and (c) a few years into a massive seven-year, $161 million contract.

I have written about Davis before. At some point in time, some powerful judge in media land appears to have made a ruling that it is out of bounds to include references to his evangelical faith in stories about his life, values, family and career.

Davis recently made big news with his pen and a checkbook and, I would argue, journalists needed to ask some faith questions in this case. But first, let’s look at a hint of faith language in a different Sun story that ran the other day: “I have hope now’: Orioles’ Chris Davis carrying confidence early in offseason.” The key is that Davis is feeling better — physically and mentally — and already getting ready for 2020.

Jill Davis noted that her husband normally takes October off, but she said Davis has been ramping up his activities to the point it won’t be long before he spends his days working out, running and hitting, all while balancing the scheduling quirks their three daughters bring. The Davises have a family trip planned for early December, plus a mission trip in January.

OK, I’ll ask. What kind of “mission trip”? A generic one?

This leads me to some big news in Baltimore, $3 million worth of news that’s totally consistent with the life that the Davis family lives: “Orioles’ Chris Davis and his wife, Jill, make record donation to University of Maryland Children’s Hospital.” Here is the overture:

Chris and Jill Davis made their way from room to room at the University of Maryland Medical Center’s pediatric intensive care unit. A visit in July inspired how the Orioles’ first baseman and his wife spent their Monday morning. This trip in the afternoon was made by choice.
They stopped by rooms of little girls who, like their three daughters, love princesses. They met two boys who, like their two youngest children, were twins. They brightened the days of families who had children, like their own once had, facing congenital heart defects.

A few weeks ago, while scanning a few articles in a print copy of Foreign Policy, my go-to magazine for all things outside U.S. borders, I chanced upon a piece about human trafficking.

I began to read about how a group of Americans in Acapulco posing as sex tourists are really part of something called Operation Underground Railroad (OUR). The piece traces how they’ve invited some pimps and their girls over for an afternoon of fun when suddenly the local police rush in and arrest all the bad guys.

It’s gripping narrative and fun to read. Then the author spins us some background, how “strange bedfellows -- feminists who opposed sex work, politicians from both political parties, and right-wing Christians -- allied behind the cause of defeating modern-day slavery.” A few paragraphs later, it introduces Tim Ballard, the founder of OUR and how he got into the sex trafficking busting business. Then:

Ballard’s Mormon faith also heavily influences his work. “The other option was to face my maker one day and tell him why I didn’t do it,” he says of his decision to start combating crimes against children. Ballard insists that religious belief isn’t a requirement to join OUR but notes that the staff members often pray together. If someone isn’t “comfortable praying,” he says, “they’re not going to be comfortable working with us.” (In a February interview with LDS Living magazine, Ballard was more candid about his faith: He said he launched OUR after being instructed by God to “find the lost children.”)

Responding to the call for a moral crusade, a handful of private organizations have adopted what is now widely known as a raid-and-rescue strategy: identify where people are being sold for sex, send in police to haul them out, and arrest traffickers.

Today, OUR has a full-time staff of 12 people and a stable of trained volunteers, most of them Mormon. They include former military and intelligence officers, nurses and Army medics, cops and martial arts instructors. From small offices in Salt Lake City, Dallas, and Anaheim, California, OUR has coordinated more than a dozen raids in Latin America and the Caribbean. It claims to have saved at least 250 trafficking victims, including 123 -- 55 of whom were children -- in three stings coordinated across Colombia last October.

Screech of brakes. What did the article say? Mormons?

Oriole Chris Davis makes $3 million gift to help at-risk children, for some vague reason

Mormons to the rescue: How to write about sex trafficking but leave out a few details