Baseball is Catholic
That argument has been made many times, though of course people have been making all sorts of claims about baseball since, well, Abner Doubleday (who probably didn’t “invent” the game). But the Marlins’ once and future octogenarian manager, Jack McKeon, makes the best case in the pages of today’s rabidly anti-Catholic New York Times, whose wicked cabal of editors somehow let these passages slip through:
Jack McKeon’s baseball days begin in a pew. At 8 on Tuesday morning, the Florida Marlins’ manager attended Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, less than 12 hours after his team beat the Mets on a 10th-inning grand slam. Such games are testament to his faith in the saint he prays to every game during the national anthem.
“A good night for St. Thérèse,” he said, sitting in the lounge of a Midtown Manhattan hotel.
In each major league city, McKeon has a favorite, or at least a convenient, Roman Catholic church. If he does not know their names, he can describe them or tell you how to get there. In Cincinnati, it’s SS. Peter and Paul. In Chicago, Mass is at Holy Name Cathedral. In Philadelphia, he goes to what he calls “the oldest church in the U.S.” When the Marlins stayed at a hotel on the East Side of Manhattan, he followed these directions: “Walk out the door, take a left, walk 30 yards, and take a right, where the homeless hang out.”
For each of the regular churches in his personal directory, he learns the Mass schedule.
“At St. Patrick’s it’s 7, 7:30, 8, noon and 12:30,” he said. “They’re very flexible.”
Mornings at church “give me energy,” he said. “You’re free. You feel good.” His daily ritual is part of a baseball routine that is now in its 62nd year, stretching back to D League ball in Greenville, Ala.
“When I go to the ballpark, I have no worries,” he said. “God’s looking after me.”
[snip]
McKeon said that in 1950, he asked John B. Coakley, an older minor league teammate in Gloversville, N.Y., to join him for Mass one Sunday morning. “He said, ‘I’d love to, but I don’t understand all the signals you have,’ ” McKeon said, laughing at the memory. In a telephone interview, Coakley added: “I told him if he taught me the signals, I’d become a Catholic.” And he did.
Harry Dunlop, who coached for McKeon at Kansas City, Cincinnati and Florida, attended Mass often enough with McKeon to enjoy it.
“If you’re a Presbyterian, it’s tough to go to church on Sundays, because you have to get to the park early,” he said. “So I said: ‘What’s the difference? It’s a house of God.’ ”
He converted, too.
Of course, McKeon’s foil these days are my Mets, who are a curse to their fans. Marlins beat ‘em last night, too, and Santana had a setback from his shoulder rehab. They’re not loveable losers, just losers.
I should pray to a better saint, but the kicker of the McKeon story shows that may not work:
One of McKeon’s partners in faith is Tommy Lasorda, a former Los Angeles Dodgers manager.
At church one morning in Cincinnati, McKeon watched Lasorda light a candle.
“Later,” he said, “when I got to home plate, I said, ‘Tommy, I saw you light a candle, but it won’t work. After you lit it, I went up behind it and blew it out.’ ”
As a life-long devotee of St. Therese of Lisieux, it is good to know that she is spending at least part of her heaven following baseball. She was not much good at games during her childhood, so she must be making up for it now. Levity aside, Therese, 114 years after her death at 24, is a beacon of hope for the Catholic Church. Few saints stand more for the primacy of love as the core of Gospel truth. Her remarkable, and now beatified parents, provided her with a loved-filled childhood that she used to reject Jansenism, so prevalent in Catholicism then and even now. Her parents remarkable letters have just been translated and published in one volume by Alba House titled, “A Call to A deeper Love”.
I hate to say this, but my first thought was, what would Sandy Koufax say?
My second thought was that great Catholic coaches/managers sometimes think winning is the only thing.
Still, a nice story about Jack McKeon who shows -along with Joe Paterno -some of us old guys can still lead the young uns.
Love the candle story :-)
And that guy was totally right about the signals at Mass. Being deaf, I need the signals to know what’s going on, but these days there aren’t nearly enough of them. I’m sure that’s one reason so many people find Mass boring. It’s very static. Somebody ought to tell the liturgy guys.
To play the percentages properly, as a good baseball manager should want to do, McKeon should pray not to the established saints but to saints-in-waitng, those not yet canonized. These “minor leaguers” will be more than eager to cooperate in supplying miracles.
“Rabidly”? I hope not. I’ve begun paying about $250 a year for the privilege of reading that paper. If they’re all hydrophobic religious bigots I guess I’d better stop.
They are, generally, strongly biased against the institutional Church. But that’s probably not much more than the general anti-institutional bias of American journalists as a whole. Americans seem to believe that all institutions are inherently evil. For progressive folk – like most journalists – religious institutions are probably more suspect than most institutions, since they tend to think that religion is for simple-minded or, at best, old-fashioned people, who are probably easily led astray by charlatans.
But on the other hand, also like most Americans, I imagine, American journalists think it’s a sign of personal goodness that a person is devoted to his or her religion and goes to church often. That’s why the Times fairly often runs pieces like this one. They like old nuns particularly, and hard-working educators (so long as they don’t molest the children).
Like a lot of commenters and some bloggers here, journalists make a big distinction between institutional religion (BAD) and personal religion (generally good, so long as it doesn’t hew too closely to institutional religion).
Ann writes (12:17 pm):
No use telling the liturgy guys anything, Ann, unless it’s theologically relevant. Signals, sights, sounds – it’s all about text today. Be glad you don’t have to listen :o)
I recall seeing a DVD at a parish function a few years ago about Catholic baseball players and managers and the importance of their faith to them. I don’t recall the name of the DVD, but Jack McKeon was featured, as were, among others, Mike Piazza, Ozzie Guillen, Carlos Beltran, Tom Glavine, Mike Scioscia, and Jim Leyland. The film seemed to get the attention of the youngsters in attendance, too, who hopefully made the connection that there’s no contradiction in being a good athlete and a good Christian. I’ve also heard women’s basketball star (and now ESPN analyst) Rebecca Lobo speak movingly about the importance of Catholicism in her life.
Nice story and nice people. However, I am not a fan of this kind of Catholicism. It is the Church of the Liturgy glorified. As if the attendance makes the disciple or the pilgrimage remits the sin. It follows the “How many Catholics were killed in the train wreck” mentality. To repeat, kudos to good people everywhere. Yet “bene distinguit, bene scit.”
Bill, you’re talking aesthetics. You don’t like Gothic cathedrals, maybe. Some people do.
Had to look up your Latin. Google tells me it means, “He who distinguishes well, teaches well.” Are you saying that bad liturgy (that is, liturgy you don’t like) leads to bad Catholics (that is, poorly informed, poorly formed)? If so, does that by extension sort of mean that people who like “this kind of Catholicism” will, perforce, have a hard time getting into heaven? If so, probably best not to tell that to a baseball coach. He might blow out your candle.
…and of course there is this too funny classic about baseball v football from George Carlin (Catholic background)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om_yq4L3M_I
I do have the impression that the heritage of baseball is that of Southern rural Protestant white boys, although not excluding a handful of DiMaggios and a Greenberg here and there. Football and boxing were the Catholic sports. Maybe baseball Catholicism is more Latino these days.
McKeon short changes St. Patrick’s Cathedral. There are 7 Masses on weekdays (not the 5 he mentioned), and 8 on Sundays. And there’s a special altar to his patron St. Therese of Lisieux in the ambulatory.
On another note, some will see blasphemy in this picture – - Yankee Derek Jeter sits in the Pope’s chair at St. Patrick’s Cathedral (scroll half way down):
http://www.nypost.com/f/mobile/sports/yankees/yankees_hope_week_JS9IfrG1Ce209ls15DzRwL
On second thought, the real blasphemy would be the Pope sitting in Jeter’s chair.
I am talking about the obsession with celebrities as Catholic, especially if they attend Mass on Sunday. As if that legitimizes the faith rather than vice versa. That proclivity falls flat as with the Catholic glorification of Mel Gibson.
“I am talking about the obsession with celebrities as Catholic, especially if they attend Mass on Sunday.”
Bill, how else are we going to persuade the kiddies that being Catholic is hip and cool? Sure as hell not by taking them to Mass and making them go to CCD and fill out think-and-do books.
I used to groan everytime one of the nearby parishes had a dinner honoring some local jock, but, frankly some of these fellas speak about their faith in positive ways and in language that grabs people. They don’t over intellectualize it or make it boring.
George Perles, former MSU football coach, now trustee, has spent nearly 30 years raising money for Special Olympics, and calls it his major accomplishment in life.
The Lord works in mysterious ways through many and various representatives.
Jean, Bill has a point as do you.
I still remember when we had a Catholic almanac with Catholic all america teams -whkich struck me as pretty absurd.
I think we’re past most of that thanks to VII and (now dying) ecumenism but Catholic role models for young and old can be really good -unless they turn out to have feet of clay in a big way.
Jean (9:13 am):
Yes, and that turns some of us off, too. It paints a picture of Catholicism as a dumb jock religion.