What Jeremy Hefner learned while with the Mets to propel the Braves' pitching turnaround

As he thinks about it, Jeremy Hefner guesses it all goes back to that speedboat by the Baltic Sea.Hefner was a high school freshman in Perkins, Okla., a town of about 2,000 people. And here he was, on the water from Helsinki to Tallinn, part of his church’s mission trip to help a partner organization build a youth center. It was his first major step out of his hometown comfort zone, his first major step toward understanding perspectives derived from different backgrounds and experiences.Advertisement