No Place Like Home
Baseball and the Catholic Faith
"Baseball is like church. Many attend. Few understand."
Leo Durocher
[At the time of drafting this article] 2021 Spring Training is in full swing, starting this Sunday, February 28th. Peanuts, crappy beer and fresh cut grass permeate the air like incense at the altar as Baseball Players from around the world hit the diamond to play America’s pastime.
On April 1st, parishioners everywhere will file out of Mass and file back into historic landmarks like Fenway Park in Boston, Wrigley Field in Chicago and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
Baseball is one of, if not the most, Catholic of all sports. Catholic Manhood is here to prove that case. The timeless, classic game of baseball has its rituals (batting habits), relics (memorabilia), prophets (announcers), saints like The Babe and even sinners like Pete Rose.
The game of baseball is like going to church – many attend, but very few truly understand. The sights of thousands of fans, the smell of peanuts and brats, the sounds of bats cracking, an organ playing jingles, can be pure sensory overload and truthfully a bit weird to the outsider. Until you go for yourself, you can never know what draws so many people to the game. The more one pays attention to the game, the more the seemingly unrelated events fit together intentionally. You have to appreciate the history of baseball to properly appreciate the present. To fellow Catholics, visions of the sacrifice of the Mass come to mind.
All of the aspects and sensory details of the game of baseball can translate very well into the experience of the Mass. People (ideally) filling up the pews, the incense drifting up into the air, the organ playing behind you, directing one’s heart and soul to something higher. The focal point, replacing the diamond with the Body of Christ.
Judas would be the casual fan at the game in the 5th inning that heads out for “more important things”. But you stay until the bitter end – rain or shine with the hope of catching a Grand Slam to center field. You stay because you have faith. Like many invested Catholics, invested Red Sox fans will get frustrated with calls on the field made by the umpires [Bishops]. Of course your viewpoint is better than theirs, but they call the shots and you must follow along because you know that ultimately, the integrity and unity of the game is what matters the most.
Both this magnificent sport and this magnificent Truth that is Catholicism teach us to believe in the nearly impossible. Whatever happens this season, it will ring true that fans of all teams will experience both pure excitement and agony, the same emotions that are evoked with the One True Faith.
7 reasons that Catholicism and baseball are a match made in Heaven
Both venerate the past and have a Communion of Saints, all the way down to popular shrines and holy cards.
Both have a sense of ritual, in which pace is critically important. To add a contrast, Basketball is more of a pentacostal movement, based purely on emotion.
Both have obscure rules that make sense only to those invested. For example, the infield fly rule – ( a fair fly ball (not including a line drive nor an attempted bunt) which can be caught by an infielder with ordinary effort, when first and second, orfirst, second and third bases are occupied, before two are out.) and the Pauline Privilege for Catholics – (the allowance by the Roman Catholic Church of the dissolution of marriage of two persons not baptized at the time the marriage occurred. The Pauline privilege is drawn from the apostle Paul’s instructions in the First Epistle to the Corinthians.)
Both generate years and years of statistics and lore. (Scripture and Tradition!)
In both baseball and Catholicism, you can technically go as often or as little as you like, but for serious adherers, the liturgy is a daily affair.
Both are universal affairs filled with people and players from all walks of life and all ethnicities.
Both reward patience and perseverance. If you are the immediate satisfaction type, neither baseball nor Catholicism are your preferred “game”.
My goal in sharing the uncanny similarities of baseball to my Catholic faith is not to say that baseball is equivalent or that it is a type of religion, it is merely an ode to America’s pastime and the qualities paired with the history of the game that has made it so endearing in so many cultures for so many years.
Being stuck inside all this time and having the MLB announce that crowds are allowed back in stadiums perked my ears. The sense of community and camaraderie have manifested again in our society. As a faithful Catholic, and the principles of the faith that it teaches, baseball can be appreciated more through a catholic lens.
Baseball is back. It is here to stay. So is the One True Faith.