LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM
World Series MVP Ben Zobrist and his wife, singer Julianna Zobrist, count their many blessings—family, freedom, country and, of course, baseball.
Call it Julianna Zobrist’s aha moment. Seven years ago, after watching her husband Ben Zobrist’s late-night baseball game, she stepped into a stadium elevator while holding her then-infant son, Zion. A woman turned to her and in a baby-talk voice said, “Oh, Mommy! Please get me in bed. Don’t be so mean. I really should be in bed.” New mom Julianna felt gut-punched.
“I had just rocked my baby to sleep in my lap in the stands and had Bud Light thrown over my head,” the Christian pop singer says. “I thought, Maybe she’s right—he should be in bed. Maybe he should be sleeping a normal schedule and not be on planes and traveling.”
She told the story to Ben, who several years later would be named MVP when the Chicago
The Zobrist clan: Blaise, Julianna, Ben, Kruse and Zion chill at Wrigley Field.
Cubs, the team he signed with in 2015, ended a 108year drought and won the World Series.
“He said, ‘Jules, that’s not us.That’s not our life,’” Julianna recalls. “That was the turning point for me. I realized I’m either going to be living in fear of what other people think or I’m going to have to own who I am and who we are as a family.”
Two kids later—Zion’s sisters Kruse, 5, and Blaise, 1, have since joined the family— the Zobrists are still traveling, watching Dad play, watching Mom sing, staying up late, praying together and doing things precisely their way.
SIX-DAY RULE
It goes back to 2004. Ben, who was playing for the Wisconsin Woodchucks of the summer collegiate Northwoods League (he was voted MVP and led his team to the 2003 league championship), got drafted by the Houston Astros. He was soon traded to the Tampa Bay Rays, and his major league career was underway.
“We decided that if we were going to do this baseball thing, we were going to do it together,” Julianna says. “Neither of us was naïve; we knew the divorce rate in baseball is 84 percent. So we implemented a six-day rule, where we try to never be apart for more than six days.”
Except for extreme circumstances—such as when Julianna was far along in her pregnancies—they’ve met their goal.
“She wants to be with me, the kids want to be with Dad and I want to be with all of them,” says Ben, 36. “So we do it. But it’s not always easy.”
Julianna, who is the one tasked with the almost daily packing up and shuttling of the kids, agrees. But then she gives a breezy shrug. “It’s all about planning,” the 32-year-old says.
Prior to every baseball season, which runs from spring training in February to early November if the team makes it to the World Series, the Zobrists sit down and create a schedule around Ben’s games. Julianna has purposefully taken it slow with her career as a Christian artist to accommodate her young family and their travel schedule. But, whenever possible, she still books recording sessions, interviews, speeches to women’s groups and performances, usually in the city where the Cubs are playing. She even performs at Cubs games, where she’s honed her renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Bless America.” And when Ben walks up to bat, it’s Julianna’s music you hear (most recently her cover of “Bennie and the Jets,” recorded with Elton John’s blessing).
During the season, the older kids are homeschooled by a tutor at home in Chicago and on the road. During the offseason, they attend school in Franklin, Tenn., where the Zobrists have a second home.
Staying together means the family is always in motion. “I travel constantly, but I’m still trying to get used to it,” says Ben. “But the kids see our life as an adventure, which they get from their mom. She always treats it as an adventure, and they’ve caught it from her. They adapt so well to all these scenarios we put them in, and it’s benefited our whole family.”
‘Ben is the most steady individual you’ll ever come across. Nothing fazes him. He’s so very grounded. I’m the sprouting wildflower. He’s the consistent soil.’ —Julianna
WHEN JULIANNA MET BEN
Julianna, the daughter of a pastor, was a junior in high school in Iowa City, Iowa, when she met Ben Zobrist, the son of a pastor from Eureka, Ill., through her brother-in-law Dan Heefner, who played baseball with Ben at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill.
“There were no sparks the first time,” she says, laughing.
But their paths kept crossing, first in Daytona Beach, Fla., where Julianna’s parents had taken her for spring break and Ben was playing in a baseball tournament. Soon after, Ben transferred to Dallas Baptist University and ended up playing baseball with Julianna’s brother Jeff, who became his roommate and talked up his sister. (“You’ll love her. She’s smart and funny. She just dresses weird.”)
Then, during her sophomore year at Belmont University in Nashville, Julianna heard from Ben on a particularly bad day.
“I threw out my back in dance class and broke up with this guy I was hanging out with,” she says. “That same day, Ben emailed me to ask how I was. He was always interested in my life and my heart.”
That day, Julianna started praying about him.
“I prayed that God would either put this guy in my life or shut that door,” she says.
Two weeks later Ben showed up at Belmont with Julianna’s brother to surprise her for her birthday. Ben and Julianna started dating immediately, and she says if he had asked her to marry him that night she would have said yes.
“He seemed so serious,” says Julianna. “I knew that if I fell in love with him that it would be the real thing.”
Ben and Julianna were married in 2005 and took to the road as Ben, a utility player (he mostly plays second base but has also played third base, shortstop, first base, designated hitter and outfield), played for the Tampa Bay Rays, the Oakland A’s, the Kansas City Royals and now the Chicago Cubs.
Those Cubs fans, Julianna says, are hands down the most passionate of any team in any sport, especially after the team became world champs last year—thanks in large part to her husband, who drove in the first of two go-ahead runs in the top of the 10th inning during their thrilling Game 7 victory over the Cleveland Indians.
“There is so much emotion with Cubs fans,” she says. “It’s generational. When we won, it was as if all these memories and family stories were relit in one night.”
“People are so grateful,” says Ben, nicknamed “Zorilla” by fans. “Strangers come up and hug me on the street. Then they ask if we’re going to win again this year.”
AMERICAN DREAM
By anyone’s barometer, the Zobrists are living the American dream. But it’s a dream they both say they never had.
“I honestly dreamt of lesser things,” says Ben, who was on track to become a youth pastor when his baseball career began to heat up.
“I remember thinking, Man, it’d be awesome if I could be a professional baseball player
someday. But I never thought I’d get to the major leagues. I never thought I’d get to the World Series.”
Julianna’s aspirations were equally humble.
“I grew up hoping I could get a scholarship and study music,” she says. “And if music didn’t work, I’d study science. I dreamed of things, but I never dreamed this big.”
Ben and Julianna both
credit their faith and their country for all their blessings.
“America is the land of opportunity,” says Ben. “It’s a land of freedom. We get to do things here that in most places ‘Neither of us was naïve; we knew the divorce rate in baseball is 84 percent. So we implemented a six-day rule, where we try to never be apart for more than six days.’ —Julianna no one gets a chance to do.”
“Being an American family, we get the benefit of that freedom,” says Julianna. “To be able to play a game for a job, and for me to be able to make music and write songs—it’s mind-blowing.”
“We’ve been given great gifts and opportunities and we want to pass those on, not only to our kids but to other people,” says Ben. “That’s part of what being an American is all about.”