All right, welcome to the Ocean Water Podcast, the voice for indigenous water rights. We'll talk about that a little bit today. I have my good friend Justin Spire on with us today. Justin and I have been friends for 13 years. Justin was a United States Marine from 1991 to 1995. He was a professional baseball player in the big leagues, major league baseball for 15 years. He spent 10 years in the big leagues, meaning that he played 10 full seasons, full time in major league baseball.
He had over 600 games pitched. Former Athletic Action Board member for the West Coast, public speaker for the Angels, military, churches, youth groups. He's a father and a husband of two boys and one of my best friends. So just an honor to have you on today, brother. How are you doing today? I'm great, man. I'm doing good and excited to be on, excited to see you. It's great, man. It's great to have you on. We've been talking about this for a while. So you've been retired for a while now.
You packed a full life into a 15 year professional baseball career. And so when you're at home these days, where do you and where do you like to go and what do you like to eat? You know how I do it, bro. I mean, I could go straight to the Prince or the Popper. I could go to a nice steak from Goldstream. But don't kid me, I could enjoy a Kronik Carnasada burrito better than anyone. So Kronik is my go to. I could eat there almost every day. Just give me a Carnasada and we're good to go.
That's true. We've been to that place many times, man, many times. So what are you doing these days, brother? What are you doing these days and how did you get into it? Well, I like how you use that word retired, but I'm going to use that term loosely because I always joke around saying I pitched with the game on the line in Yankee Stadium against Jeter and A-Rod and all those guys many a time. And I went through Marine Corps boot camp and those things were tough.
And I had my own personal demons and personal things to overcome in my life. And they were all tough. But raising kids is the toughest thing, I'll tell you that. But it's the biggest blessing. You know, it's the biggest blessing, but it requires the most patience. But yeah, I don't really feel retired. You're working harder now, dude. I'm working harder now with less, bro. That's how we do it. The older we get, we do more with less now. You know what I mean? Less sleep. Kids eat.
Wife eats than I eat. And we do more with less. But it's a good thing because we're, especially right now, we're trying to live on our basic needs instead of our wants, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's been an interesting season, man. But it's been awesome. I know you're loving life with Brittany and Chase and Brock and life's good. It's awesome, man. So if current Justin could say something to 20-year-old Justin, what might he say? Oh, man.
I still tell myself this to the day because I'm so task-oriented and I'm so destination-oriented person. I like to get things done. I'm type A by nature. I would have said enjoy the journey and not the destination. And so even in the middle of this pandemic, what I would say is enjoy what you have and be grateful for what you have because when it all comes back to you, you'll have a deeper sense of humility and gratitude. I wish I would have enjoyed my baseball career more.
I was so focused on that next outing, the next challenge, the next hill to climb, the next team to beat. And I wish I had enjoyed myself or took some time to really stop and stay in the present moment instead of future trip a little bit on the next thing. And I even tell myself to the day, even right now, like, hey, enjoy your kids right now. They're going to be in school before you know it. I have a lot of interest besides just my family.
I love my kids and I love my wife and I love my life, but I have so many other interests that are on hold right now. So I tried a little. I tried not to focus too much on the things that I can't control right now, just really stay in the moment and not focus on the destination so much. So that's what I would tell younger Justin is just live each day and enjoy what you got in front of you. Those are good words, man. Those are wise words.
It doesn't matter if you're 10, 20, 30, 40, that'll play right across the board, man. I think there's the tension between being driven and just enjoying your day and enjoying your life. It's Thursday right now and we're just trying to enjoy Thursday and having a nice chat. There's a lot of legs to what you're saying there. So you play, you spend, to provide a little bit of context, it's about 1% of athletes that actually ever make it into Major League Baseball.
And then there's about 1% of that 1% of guys that pitch that actually pitch 600 innings and actually play 10 full years in Major League Baseball. So it's like the 1%, 1%. I've known you a really long time. You've always been really focused. You've applied that same focus now to Brittany and your family and Chase and Brock and it's been a wonderful thing to see as your friend. So the question is, what are you curious about right now? What are you interested in?
All that drive and all that motivation and all of that passion that you have, it doesn't go away, it just gets rechamped. So what are you interested in now, man? Oh man, so many things. I'll get to the question really quick to inspire some of the kids that I hope are watching this is I was drafted in the 56th round.
And the crazy thing about it is I signed for no money and I wasn't that good in high school or college and I had a dream and a passion and a belief that I could get to the big leagues. And I went through seven different levels of the minor leagues to get to the major leagues and ended up sticking there. And what I would say is God does big things to small people and I was that small person with a dream.
So I would inspire the, I would just inspire the youth that may watch this and say, hey, if you have a dream and right now is a time to be dreaming, it's not a time to give up hope right now is a time to cultivate dreams. And when things start to go, which hopefully soon is a time to attack your dream. So I'm a living proof that dreams can come true and good things can happen. So I just, I would encourage all your young viewers not to give up on their dreams that I'm living proof of that.
What am I curious about now? I'll flip on that and say, number one, I'm a people person. I'm a social person. I don't like zoom. I don't like FaceTime. I like meeting with people in person. I don't like the fact that my kids are learning virtually right now. I think there's a big, I think there's a, there's a big disconnection with that. You can't, you can't, you can't know social skills and, and team skills from a distance.
So my biggest concern is for the youth of our country on coming out of this thing and making sure that they, yeah, are equipped tech, not technically, but also don't lose their social drives and their team drives and their ability to look someone in the face and shake their hand. And, you know, that's what I'm concerned with through, through this pandemic, but it was also a concern before this happened.
I think that I hope that we don't get lazy and, and lose those social interactions because of this. That's my concern. That's good, man. So what's something that in the last 12 months, you feel like you have failed at? I failed at a lot of things, but you know, it's good when I do. I fail at being a father. I lose my patience with my kids. I lose my patience with my wife sometimes.
And the good thing about it is we have a very forgiving family and a very, I'm teaching my kids forgiveness and learning that, hey, you don't have to be perfect, which is a good thing because I think that through our failures and lack of patience and self-centeredness or sin, whatever you want to call it, we learned to be more others incorporated and team incorporated.
So we have a very forgiving family, which I hope will play out with our, my boys in knowing, hey, I could go full steam ahead and I'm not worried about if I'm going to fall and scrape my knee because, you know, I have a mom and dad that love me, that forgive me, that, that are going to empower me to continue to pursue, allow me to pursue my dreams. So, you know, failure for me is, is, is a great measuring stick of where you're at, but it's also, you know, I've, I've lost my patience.
Yeah, I mean, I fail all the time daily, you know, but, you know, I'm continuing, I get up every day trying to be better, you know, as a husband and a father. So, you know, that's what keeps me driving. And you know, I'm, I'm a second, I think that I'm at the finish line is, is a, where, is where I get in trouble. So trying to stay and enjoy the journey and stay in the present moment, continue to try to get better in those aspects right now.
So good, and I think part of our development is like, just figure where we fallen short and, and then trying to learn from that, trying to, trying to better ourselves. You were always really good in your, in your career about kind of quick down, quick up. You'd be able to shake off, shake off mistakes quickly. You had to for, for preservation, you know, to, to pitch as long as you did.
In fact, I never forget the time you took me to Angel Stadium, you took me out of the, took me out on the mound and you're like, Hey man, I want you to show me, I want to show you where I work. And you walked me out to the mound. And then I think it was three days later, I got to see you strike out the side. So I saw an empty stadium where you got to work. And then a couple of days later, I got to see, I actually saw you get a standing ovation. You struck out the side. That was pretty cool.
So it's been nice to see not just success on the mound for you, but, but success at home, which is hard, which is kind of what we've already talked about. You know, it's really good. So I want to hang a bit of a right here and want to kind of go into the world of water. Kind of what's your, what's sort of your understanding of the world of water in the States? There's a problem with water.
So I say that I said that intentionally, hopefully to get a response because most of us Americans don't, you know, if we live in a bubble, we don't really think there's a problem with our water. You know what I mean? Our homeless, our homeless here, you know, God bless them. We, you know, they're not going to miss a meal and they're going to have water because we have a lot of great organizations that supply for the poorest of the poor here in this country.
So but my understanding of the water in, you know, other third world countries is devastating. You know what I mean? You know, I'm very grateful when my kids have food and have clean water here because I know there's kids that have major issues in all across the globe with water. So it's a huge problem. And there's a, there's a great solution. You know, I mean, you're, you're part of the great solution, you know, and I do work in India with a buddy of mine, Suresh Harvest India.
They do great work there and water wells and that's great. And you're doing great work at turning, you know, salt water into drinking water. It's huge. It's huge to be able to accomplish both those, both those things, you know, inland and on the coast. So, you know, it takes, it takes both. It's a hybrid approach. It's not one or the other, it's both. So I'm glad to know you and I'm glad that you're, you know, tackling this huge epidemic.
That's the true pandemic in my, in my opinion, it's a true pandemic of people that are suffering from lack of water more than anything else, you know?
Yeah. Globally kind of the landscape is, you know, roughly one in nine have an, have an access and quality problem and kind of what that looks like and how it manifests itself is there's sort of these, what I call the pockets of forgotten people and, and the pockets of forgotten people look very much like the work we've done in El Salvador where, take for example, Palmer Cedar, where we've been for the last six years, we've sent over 120 people there, 13 different trips.
We've done 13 different feedback loops of learning. And what we found was that there were 38 families in this area and that's about a 250 to 300 people. And what we found was that they didn't have access or quality. So through our friendship and through our relationship, we came alongside them and we'd install a system that now turns 360 gallons a day of, of ocean water into drinking water using solar.
And a lot of people, when I do this podcast, they think that this, this photo behind me is sort of the Guinequí photo. Like I, I surf and it's a good wave and actually this is a very personal photo. Not only is this a picture of a wave right in front of where our water system is, but this is a picture of Simpapo who helps lead ocean water in Palmer Cedar.
So right now during the, this pandemic, the guy on this wave here that I surfed with just a few months ago before they went on lockdown, him and his family have personally been distributing water to 38 families in, in Palmer Cedar and also providing for them food. And you know, that's really important because I think a lot of times we, we sort of lose sight of, of how we can help. And really we don't, we don't really need to help the entire world.
If we'll just, if we'll just get excited about helping a few people, a lot of beautiful things can come out of that. Oh, big time. What I love about your story is God's done something really big and came from a very small dream. You know what I mean? Actually a really big dream, but it was just an idea of riding your bike across the United States and then a couple of buddies deciding like, Hey, let's, let's support Ryan in riding his bike.
And then he rides across the U S and then he rides, you know, and then you ride on into Mexico. And then, I mean, what are the stats on that? You, you, how many countries did you ride? And then how many people ended up getting water just from that one thing? Yeah. Well, it goes back to when, when we became friends and I had just finished up grad school. I had finished my master's degree and I had, I had $700 in my, in my checking account. I sold all of my stuff. I sold my house.
I sold everything. I liquidated everything. And I decided that I was going to ride my bike across Canada with my friend. And that is how I started learning about water. I got a phone call from a friend of mine. He said, Hey man, do you, do you need to raise money for this NGO? I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, yeah, they're doing this water stuff. I got very interested. Uh, it really, that phone call really opened my eyes.
And then, then I rode across the U S and then I rode through Mexico. I ended up riding for a year and I rode through 10 countries all the way down into South America and to Columbia. And then I relocated to San Diego. That's when I started my, my doctorate in public health. But, but going back to when it started, yeah, it just started with, I was, I had, I was coming, coming out of a broken season. You know, I had gone through a divorce.
I had gone on this bike ride and I think sometimes God does his best stuff when we're just kind of at the end of ourself, you know, we don't have anything left. Maybe we might just have a bicycle or, or a, or a job or, or, or this idea. And sometimes when we're, when we're finally at the end of our rope, you know, fresh breath can come into us and God can start to kind of do something new in us. That was certainly my story.
And that's been my journey now for 10 years, really feeling like this is a kind of a lifelong commitment now to, to helping people source their water from the ocean. You know, we don't have a water problem in the world. We have a water access issue. We have plenty of water. It's just all out in the ocean.
So we're, we're really excited now at Ocean Water to find the forgottens, to find those forgotten people, those 20 families, those 30 families, those, those 40 families and come alongside them and help them get their water from the ocean. And at the same time, we invite them into God's family. We invite them into a, into a local church. Now that church looks a little bit different here in the United States. That church has walls and it has a piece of land and it has a parking lot.
It's very different when you get into third world. It looks very much like back in the Old Testament when people would have a meal and they would talk about the teachings of Jesus and they would pray for each other. So that's kind of the space that, that's kind of the space that we're in. And we're really excited because there's 108 countries in the world that have a direct access to the coastline and thousands of those, of those beaches don't have churches.
So that's, that's how we pray for God, for God to use us. That's what I love about your model is empowering, right? Because we're not going to go into these countries and change their culture, change their traditions or change them. I mean, I love how you said, Hey, we're going to come in soup, soul, salvation. We're going to give you water for free and we're going to tell you about one guy, Jesus, you know what I mean?
And we're going to love on you and then we're going to leave and we're going to empower you to continue with what you're doing. And what I really want the viewers to know is you have a lot of success stories leading into what you're doing now. And you know, you're the book that you wrote and the money that you raised and the people that you in fact affected for water was before even were you before El Salvador, there was other people you were affecting for good.
I mean, can you talk to talk about some of that like what you you rode your bike for how long? How many countries? How much did you raise and how many people you got water to was 100,000 I think, right? Yeah, yeah. So the first the first part of it, we I rode my bicycle 10,000 miles through 10 countries and I wrote a book about that's on Amazon is called Ride for Water. I completed a doctorate in public health.
We helped about 100,000 people get access to clean water using using bucket systems, point of view systems, very important systems. And then I have committed the rest of my life now to pivoting from bucket systems to ocean based systems. And so to me, it's all the same stuff. We're just trying to love people and a lot of people in the world talk about problems. But really, you know, a lot of problems aren't problems. You know, a lot of problems are just caused by unrealistic expectations.
But let me tell you what is a problem. People that don't have waters problem. People that don't have food is a problem. People that don't have housing is a problem. And so those are those are three really solvable problems. And and we're just, you know, every every good thing that's happened in my life has happened through through a conversation kind of like we're having today.
And that's one of the reasons I'm so committed to having these conversations and in the right time when they pop up is because everything good in my life has happened through a conversation. A friend will call me or someone will text me or I'll have I'll meet with someone and and then I'll go back and I'll think about what that person said and then I'll reflect on it and then I'll want to be a different person. That's kind of the way that I'm wired.
So my hope is that through these conversations and and through these times that we spend together that that parts change and you know one person changes and another changes and then that's how that's how great things happen. So it's just it's been really fun. Yeah. Well, that's what I love. And that's what I really wanted to impress upon your viewers is this is not just happened overnight.
This has been you know 13 this has been a lot of years in the process of this great development that's happening with ocean water. And there's a huge backstory with all of it. And there's tons of conversations and ideas that are percolating to this situation right now that you're that you're doing which is mind blowing. It's unbelievable. It's awesome. And so I'm excited about it. It gives me great hope. You know if we could change one life two lives I mean get people what we take for granted.
It's a beautiful thing to take the blinders off. So you know and look outside you know our bubble in the United States. And so you know that's that's what I always say. I don't travel much because I travel so much for baseball and I say my my my time and my talent stay here in Orange County but my treasure will go. Yeah. I try my treasure may travel but yours truly will try to impact the the people closest to me.
So you know you don't you don't travel much these days but you've put you've put more miles on the airplane than most people would do in five lifetimes. So you get a pass bro. But I want to I want to thank you for taking time to to chat today and talk today and you what you're a very very very interesting guy. You wear a lot of hats. You're good at a lot of things. And so just promise me that at some point in the future we'll do something totally different.
You're one of the funniest people I know you and Drew Tevez. And so you know we'll do this again man. And just thank you so much brother for for just for taking some time out today to do this. Oh it's my pleasure dude. I love what you're doing. I love who you got who you got doing it with. And I love the people that are inspired to go out with you to do what you're doing. So yeah man always there for you and and your organization and well our organization right. So yeah yeah. I love I love that.
I love the team thing that we got going on and I love the teammates that you've put together. You know what I mean. That's really the word. I mean what we basically spent 10 years now putting a team together putting a strategy together learning lessons the important lessons of how to how to do it right how to scale. And so I think in the next 10 years now we're going to see all of the hard work and the team we put together really help a lot of people. So it's just a really really exciting time.
Be fun. I love it man. Love it. Are there any last words any last words we need to hear from you dude. I shaved that mustache bro. Never. Justin thank you so much for your time brother and we'll do this again. All right. Love you man. Love you bro. Thanks so much. Thank you most.