TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- For most teens, deciding on a college can be an agonizing process filled with tough choices and second-guessing. For McKay Christensen, it was even more complicated.
Colleges like Stanford and UCLA were offering him football scholarships. Pro baseball teams wanted to draft him. He could go to college and play both sports, or skip school altogether and make the jump to pro baseball.Or he could put everything on hold for two years while he served a Mormon mission.
"I grew up wanting to serve a mission," the Chicago White Sox outfielder said. "(But) it was a tough decision. I was 17, 18 years old and I had to make a decision that would ultimately affect the rest of my life."
Christensen chose to serve. Just a few weeks after he graduated from Clovis (Calif.) West High School and the Anaheim Angels made him the sixth pick overall in the June 1994 draft, he was on his way to Japan.
And baseball? He didn't have time to think about it.
"I played catch once or twice, and I went to the batting cage once or twice, but it was with the other missionaries just to goof around," he said.
That didn't mean he'd given up his dream, though. Traded to the White Sox while still in Japan, Christensen, now 23, stopped home when his mission ended, said a brief hello to his family, and headed for Sarasota and the Gulf Coast League.
But just as the adjustment to life in Japan had been difficult, so, too, was getting back into baseball. His first day in Sarasota, one of the coaches ran him ragged, showing Christensen he was in even worse shape than he'd thought.
His arm was sore all the time. The swing he'd had in high school seemed to have disappeared. And the pitchers! Man, they didn't throw like that in high school.
"Oh, big-time frustrated," he recalls with a laugh. "There were a lot of nights I'd go home and think, 'I'm just not getting this down.' "
Ironically, it was his mission that helped him. People in Japan were rarely receptive, so he'd had little choice but to learn patience and perseverance.
And slowly, his skills came back. He hit .280 last year at Class A Hickory, and his on-base percentage of .391 was second in the Carolina League.
"It wasn't so much that I was physically not doing anything for two years, but mentally, my mind wasn't on that at all. It was almost like learning it all over again," he said.
Hitting .262 with a slugging average of .381, there's a good chance he'll make Chicago's opening day roster.
No matter where he ends up, though, Christensen has no regrets.
"I didn't see it necessarily as choosing to go on a mission or not. I was choosing to follow something I believed in, something I lived my life for," he said. "I would never, in two lifetimes, give back those two years I spent."