SURPRISE, Ariz. - When he was a child and needed to, Delino DeShields was always able to, at least figuratively, lie in green pastures, to borrow a biblical phrase.
Now, he does so permanently.
When he first started playing travel baseball, maybe at eight years old, DeShields' mother, Michelle, presented him with a pillow. She hand-lettered the verses of Psalm 23 on it, so that he would always know that the lord was his shepherd. The Psalm portrays God as a shepherd, who protects the faithful from evil. It was, and still is, a source of great comfort for the deeply spiritual DeShields.