WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Carlos Correa was struggling for his life in the waters of a Minnesota lake last summer. His hamstrings and quads were cramping, his stamina getting weaker. He was halfway between the shore and the boat, and with his oldest son clinging to his neck, he was fighting for survival.
Correa, who wasn’t wearing a life jacket, spotted a buoy floating in the water a few feet away and decided clinging to it would be his only chance of escaping Lake Minnetonka alive. His 3-year-old son, Kylo, who was wearing a life jacket, was on his shoulders and asking if they would be all right.
“Pappi, are we going to be OK?” he said.
Correa reassured him they would. And then, he said a prayer.
"'Lord, save me,'" he said. "'I promise you that if you save me from this one, I will serve you and I will serve you forever.'"
Correa managed to reach the buoy but slipped off. He fell under the water and grabbed the chain, injuring his left hand. With Kylo’s weight on his shoulders, Correa switched to his right hand, then his left and back to his right to stay above water. He yelled toward the boat for help. It was his last gasp.
"I'm like, 'This is all I got," he said.
Correa’s father-in-law heard his cries and frantically swam from the boat toward him with a life jacket. He flung it. Correa reached out as far as he could and grabbed the jacket with his pinkie, while clinging to the buoy with his other hand. He was finally able to catch his breath.
“I was like, from that moment on, I’m going to serve you,” Correa prayed to God. “I am going to keep my promise. And from that moment, I’ve been fully devoted.”
Correa first told his harrowing story of a family afternoon boating trip that nearly turned tragic from a makeshift pulpit to a group of senior citizens at a retirement home in Houston last December. He shared it again for a reporter Tuesday following a Spring Training workout.
Correa was always religious, but the incident made him become bolder with his faith. He organized a Bible study at his house in Houston each Saturday last offseason. It started with eight people and ended with 60 coming to his house to eat and congregate -- the Correa House Church, he calls it. The group, which included friends, family and some teammates, spent five or six hours together discussing scripture, world events and even playing games.
“We did really fun stuff, and people felt attracted to it to the point where we were all looking forward to every Saturday so we could meet,” Correa said. “It became a thing, and then I came [to Spring Training] and it was tough leaving the house church behind, but we’re working on doing some stuff during the season. Maybe before some day games, after Sunday games.”
He started discussing the Bible and his faith with teammates, often leading to passionate clubhouse discussions like the one he had last year with teammate Jesús Sánchez.
“The more I dove into scripture, I came to understand that it's impossible for 40 [players] to agree on the same subject when most of them don’t know each other,” Correa said.
Correa’s jolt of faith led him to be more active in his church.
Correa’s parents had been part of the Spanish congregation at Champions Forest Baptist Church in Houston for years, with Carlos and his family attending special events around holidays. Correa started attending regular English sermons last year and told pastor Jarrett Stephens of his desire to teach and preach the Bible.
“I said, ‘I can help you with that,’” Stephens said.
Instead of putting him in front of his congregation of thousands, Stephens suggested he deliver a sermon at a retirement home where he holds Bible study each week. Before a group of 20-25 people, and with Stephens and Correa’s wife, Daniella, there, he preached for nearly 30 minutes.
“He crushed it,” Stephens said. “He stayed around as long as people wanted to talk to him, and he talked with every single one of them. They were so happy. They still ask me, ‘When’s Carlos coming back?’”
Correa paced back and forth with the Bible and his notes resting on a stand, telling the story of his experience in the water and relating it to scripture. He spoke of the challenges he endured as a player -- fracturing his ankle in two places in the Minor Leagues in 2014 and how that injury later caused both the Giants and Mets to back out of megadeals with him seven years later. He wound up signing with the Twins after leaving the Astros at the end of the 2021 season.
The Twins traded him back to the Astros only two weeks after the incident on the lake. He never wanted to leave Houston in the first place.
“It's easier to have faith when things work out for you, and everything is beautiful, and everything is great, and you're liked,” he preached, “but when you face some trials in your life, how are you going to respond?”
The murky Minnesota waters last summer provided Correa with the answer to that question. He and Kylo made it out of the water for a reason.
His prayers were answered.
“Some storms don’t come in your life to drown you,” he said.