While Bethlehem Jesus got a visit from three wisemen who followed a star and brought gold, frankincense and myrrh; Daejeon Jesus was sought out by the Houston Astros who followed the trail of his strikeout victims and victories and 19 days ago signed him to a one-year deal that’s worth $2.6 million and contains a club option for 2027 that could pay him over $10 million.
As stories of this holiday season go, few are more stirring than the saga of Ryan Weiss, the former Wright State pitcher who has followed an often arduous, sometimes joyous path that has included familial heartbreak, physical pain, two years of glory at Wright State that made him a fourth round draft pick, minor league struggles, thoughts of quitting baseball, stints in independent baseball, and finally stardom in Korea.
All of that led him to sign his first Major League Baseball contract as he turned 29.
“In no regard has my life been quote-unquote easy,” Weiss admitted. “Yeah, I’ve done a couple of things, but all of it is after I’ve faced something difficult and had to prove myself.”
Few people know him better than Alex Sogard, the successful head baseball coach at Wright State who was Weiss’s pitching coach, mentor and ever-present friend back in the Raiders’ 2017 and 2018 seasons.
Sogard had just ended his seven-year minor league career and joined Jeff Mercer’s staff when Weiss was emerging from a medical redshirt freshman season at WSU as he recovered from a stress fracture in his back.
But a month before the season began, Barbara Weiss, his 48-year-old mother, died suddenly from a heart attack.
Six years before that, his dad, Michael, who was divorced from Barbara but still a big part of Ryan’s and his younger sister Rachel’s lives, took his own life.
In an instant Ryan had no dad or mom and a new mandate.
“When my parents passed, it felt like I was forced to grow up a little sooner than the average kid,” he said a couple of days ago by phone from North Carolina. “It was like, ‘I’ve got to start being a man, not just a man-child.’
“I’m not going to say that happened easily, but that’s what I faced.”
He was aided by Sogard, who guided him on and off the ball field.
“When my mom passed, he took me under his wing and was there for me in several regards,” Weiss said.
“I owe a lot of my success to him. He saw something in me that some other people did not. He’s been paramount in my career.”
When Weiss needed someone to talk to during the day, Sogard’s office door at the Nutter Center was always open.
When he lifted weights at night, as many Raiders’ players did, Sogard joined him just to make sure he had a sounding board.
With the support, Weiss prospered that first season:
He had a 95 m.p.h. fastball, a 2.13 earned run average and ended up the Horizon League’s Freshman of the Year.
As the Raiders’ ace the following year, he helped lead the team to the NCAA Tournament.
After the selection show that year – when it was announced WSU would head to California to play No. 2 overall seed Stanford – I sat with him outside TJ Chumps in Fairborn where the Raiders had gathered.
“I’m trying to take the Weiss name and make it as great as it can be,” he told me that day. “No matter where my parents are, I’m trying to make them proud ... And that’s what I will do.”
And he’s done that against steep odds.
“He’s a guy who was dealt a pretty tough hand and has had to go through far more than anyone should,” Sogard said. “He just as easily could have hung it up, but he’s passionate about his belief in himself and he’s always been an extremely hard worker and he’s fought for what he wanted.”
Still, that’s easier said than done.
After being drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2018, he worked his way up to Triple A Reno in 2021. But the following year he was designated for assignment and Kansas City claimed him off the waiver wire.
Some 11 months later, in early May of 2023, he told his wife, Hailey Brooke — he and the former Wake Forest volleyball player had wed two years earlier — that he was thinking of quitting baseball because he was “having no fun.”
He said she told him she supported him no matter what he chose to do – that she wasn’t with him because he was a ballplayer – but she did have one question:
“If you were having fun, would you still play?”
“I was like, ‘Well, of course!’” he said.
“And she said, ‘Well then, you’re not done with the game yet. Maybe it’s just the situation you’re in.’”
After the pep talk, he didn’t ask for his release, but two weeks later he was cut.
He thought another team would pick him up and when none did, he said he was left with “a chip on my shoulder. And that motivated me to show I was good enough.”
He signed on to play independent ball with the High Point Rockers.
After two months he said his pitching coach Frank Viola, the 15-year Major League veteran, asked him if he was interested in playing in Taiwan.
“I’d heard nothing but great things about Asia and, once I got the details, I was open to it,” he said. He joined the Fubon Guardians and was doing well, until an injury brought him back to the States.
Soon he had returned to indie ball.
Scouts from the Hanwha team came to watch one of his teammates pitch and then, as they hung around another day, they happened to see him pitch. They were impressed enough that they came to see his next start.
“Two weeks after they first saw me, my wife and I were on our way to Korea,” Weiss said.
Little did he know he was headed to a match made in heaven.
‘How cool would that be?’
Weiss said when he first started dating Hailey Brooke McFadden, he gave her a quick tutorial on life in minor league baseball:
“I was like, ‘It’s kind of crazy. You’re going to live a lot of places and we won’t do some stuff for a lot of years.’ It was a whole speech, ‘Yada…yada…yada.
“But she was all for it and just loved it.”
He said she helped him embrace the full Korean experience.
“And it was amazing,” he said. “The people are amazing. The culture is amazing and the baseball is super, super competitive.”
He initially was signed to a six-week contract for $100,000, and did well enough that the team re-signed him for this past 2025 season for $950,000.
He responded by playing the best baseball of his pro career.
He went 16-5 in 30 starts, striking out 207 batters in 178 2/3 innings and compiling a 2.87 earned run average as he led the Eagles to the KBO Series for the first time in 19 years.
“I’m going to be honest with you, I think the culture there just really suited my personality,” he said. “The Korean people really appreciate hard work, and they appreciate kindness and respect.
“Those are things I try to do, though I know I’m always going to fall short somewhere. But it was easy there to be myself and that’s when the real you comes out.
“We both loved it there.
“The scene at the ballpark always was electric. It really was incredible.
“The fans get there two hours before the game and they stay until the game ends. That’s super refreshing.
“The fans are always cheering. There are songs for every player.”
The Daejeon Jesus nickname was given to him out of extreme affection, though he admits “it felt very, very weird at first. I’m a follower of Christ and don’t want to be compared to Jesus in any way because I’m not even close.
“Finally, though, I just looked at it as a way I might be able to lead people to him and make them aware. And how cool would that be?”
Another cool thing, he said, was seeing people walking around the ballpark — and the city — wearing his Eagles’ jersey with his number and his name written in Korean characters.
He was so appreciative of people doing that that he’d stop them and thank them. He’d end up talking to them, posing for photos and signing the jerseys if they wanted.
Often Hailey would join in the conversation — she’d speak Korean to them — and the people especially loved that effort.
“She can probably hold a good 15 to 20-minute conversation in Korean,” Weiss said.
“And me?” he added with a chuckle. “I just learned the bad words at the ballpark.”
And yet there weren’t many cuss words uttered — except maybe by opposing batters — when he was on the mound last season.
After all, he was Daejeon Jesus.
And he loves you.
‘Something special can happen’
Here in the Miami Valley, the Hanwha Eagles have a fan who is even better known and more celebrated back in Daejeon than is Weiss.
Dr. In-Hong Cha, who was born and raised in Daejeon, is now a Professor of Music at Wright State’s School of Music.
He teaches applied violin, serves as director and conductor of the University’s Symphony Orchestra, is the concertmaster of the WSU Chamber Orchestra, and leads the Faculty String Quartet.
Previously the concertmaster of the Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra, he’s played his violin and conducted orchestras all around the world. One of his albums was nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2017.
He also was a wheelchair athlete of note who won several international competitions and has received the Korean Presidential Award for being “the most distinguished Korean living in a foreign country.”
“Last May I was back home, and my good friend there told me, ‘There is a very good pitcher playing for the Hanwha Eagles who is from your Wright State University,’” Cha said Friday evening.
“He told me, ‘His name is Ryan Weiss.’”
The more he heard about the former Raiders pitcher, the more he wanted to meet him, but he said he wasn’t sure Weiss would agree to a pregame introduction.
Cha soon discovered his fears were unfounded:
“When I met him, I found out just how good and kind and personable he is. I saw why he’s so loved by the people and why he was called Daejeon Jesus.”
He said people appreciated Ryan and his wife Hailey for the way they embraced Korea.
“People love him, not just as a baseball player, but as a person, a human being,” Cha said.
“I don’t think any foreign sports player in Korea has been more beloved and enjoyed than Ryan.”
When Cha visited Weiss before a game in May, they both wore Wright State caps as they posed for photos.
Cha was asked by club officials to return to Korea for a playoff game when Weiss pitched. They wanted him to either play the national anthem or throw out the first pitch.
Because the date would be in flux until the last minute and he was committed to conduct a concert back at Wright State, he had to decline.
Now that Weiss has left the Hanwha Eagles for Houston, Dr. Cha feels some of the same sense of loss that Eagles’ fans do:
“When Ryan left, lots of my friends back there were so sad. They knew he was a special person.”
Back here, Sogard will tell you the same thing.
Weiss — who now lives outside of Raleigh, N.C. where he and Hailey are building a new home on land they bought — happened to be back in the Miami Valley for a friend’s wedding when he became an international free agent on December 1.
Sogard said Weiss, who visited their home, was on the phone nonstop with teams and soon the Astros — who are in need of pitchers — commanded his attention because they offered opportunity and a substantial contract.
“They wouldn’t make an investment like that if they didn’t think he was some piece of the puzzle,” Sogard said.
“I’ve really been looking at the Astros schedule and trying to work things out,” Sogard said. “They open up in Houston, but that’s in the middle of our season. If I can’t make it then I’ll try to slip away midweek sometime.
“But my wife is definitely going to be there for Opening Day. We want to be there.
“He’s like family to all of us — our kids included. That’s why we’re all so thrilled for him. He’s an A-plus human being, just an awesome kid, and obviously very talented.
“He’s been through so much, but because of his perseverance and his work, it makes for a really neat story.
“It shows when you get knocked down, you just keep going and something special can happen.”
And it did.
Daejeon Jesus found heaven.
It’s in Houston.
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