When Tony Beasley, third-base coach for the Texas Rangers, was diagnosed with rectal cancer in February 2016, he could easily have said, “Why me?”

Most people do not, after all, anticipate such life-altering revelations.

“You expect that you’re going to wake up and everything’s going to be normal and you can just go through life and do what I always do,” Beasley told his alma mater, Liberty University, in recounting his cancer battle this week.

But “why me?” is not what Beasley said at all. He said, “Why not me?”

And that’s because, with a loving God on his mind, he viewed his diagnosis as a chance to lean on his faith.

“Things happen,” he said. “Trials come. And that can really change the course of your life in the blink of an eye … (and) my platform would not have been this great had I not went through what I went through.”

Beasley, who has also worked with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals, was declared free of cancer in December 2016. In his eyes, though, just as great as his recovery was the platform that followed — opportunities to share his story on a bigger stage and, thus, point more people to Jesus.

“The test is just a testimony,” he said. “For me to tell my story, God’s included. There’s no, ‘How did you go through this?’ (where) I can exclude my faith and what I believe God did in my life. There’s no way to exclude that. So anyone that interviews me or gives me an opportunity to speak, God’s going to receive the glory, and I don’t want to apologize for that.”

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