Get Your Daily Dose of Eutrapelia

By |2025-09-08T14:24:24-05:00September 8th, 2025|Categories: Baseball, Catholicism, Leisure, Sports|

Eutrapelia—the habit of playing well, of having good leisure—is one way to practice rest by doing something that brings us delight. It prepares us for eternity. If we cannot learn to rest in something good here on earth, how will we be able to rest in heaven? What would alien invaders make of watching a [...]

Was Ty Cobb Really a Nice Guy After All?

By |2025-08-28T20:27:57-05:00August 28th, 2025|Categories: Baseball, Books, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

It's rare that an author billing his work as a piece of revisionism ends up, seemingly unwittingly, reinforcing the traditional interpretation of his subject. But Charles Leerhsen accomplishes this unusual feat in his biography, "Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty." Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen (464 pages, Simon & Schuster, 2015) It's rare [...]

Throwaway Elbows

By |2025-03-06T17:02:41-06:00March 6th, 2025|Categories: Baseball, Catholicism, Sports|

Today, as we wash off yesterday’s ashes, we stand six weeks away from Easter. The long winter of sin is thawing; a new day is dawning as the Resurrection approaches. Easter and springtime seem to go together, and with the approach of spring comes yet another reason for hope—Opening Day. While Opening Day may bring [...]

The Day Don Larsen Pitched That Perfect Game

By |2024-10-26T15:56:12-05:00October 25th, 2024|Categories: Baseball, Philosophy, Sports|

Don Larsen didn’t know he was going to start that fifth game of the 1956 World Series until he arrived at Yankee Stadium and discovered a baseball tucked inside his baseball spikes. Shapes of Philosophical History Mr. Meyer passed away late spring in 1956 leaving behind his wife and one child, a son, Curtis, who [...]

Long Defeat in Baseball

By |2024-08-30T10:35:25-05:00August 30th, 2024|Categories: Baseball, Catholicism, Sports|

Loving baseball means heartbreak. Every baseball season starts with optimism, especially if you’re a Dominican student brother who supports a team who isn’t afraid to shell out some cash for good players. Perhaps the team has called up prospects with promises of greatness. Perhaps the front office has made a savvy trade. “This season’s the one,” you say, “the [...]

Heroes and Homilies

By |2024-08-19T18:07:38-05:00August 19th, 2024|Categories: Baseball, Books, Catholicism, Sports|

Just as any great ball players should study the form and technique of past athletes, so every Christian, and especially every minister commissioned to preach the Word, should study the Fathers of the Church. We can spend time in their company through their writings. The Power of Patristic Preaching: The Word in Our Flesh, by [...]

The Perils of the “Godded-Up”

By |2024-06-29T19:07:32-05:00June 27th, 2024|Categories: Baseball, Books, David Deavel, Senior Contributors, Sports, Uncategorized|

Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were both "Godded-up" to an extreme degree, treated at various times as if they could not err, treatment that author Allen Barra thinks contributed to the fact that neither man ever really grew up. Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball’s Golden Age, By Allen Barra [...]

Forgotten Virtue: The Baseball Hero Nobody Knows

By |2024-02-14T18:57:33-06:00February 14th, 2024|Categories: Baseball, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

Gil Meche His career stats indicate that he was a mediocre baseball pitcher—perhaps the epitome of mediocrity: 84 wins; 83 losses; a 4.49 Earned Run Average; a Walks-plus-Hits-to-Innings-Pitched ratio of 1.42. Yet Gil Meche, who played for the Seattle Mariners and Kansas City Royals, was responsible for one of the most astounding, yet almost unnoticed, [...]

The Day Rick Monday Saved the American Flag

By |2023-06-13T18:07:21-05:00June 13th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Baseball, Independence Day, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

On April 25, 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial celebrations, Chicago Cubs outfielder Rick Monday saved an American flag from being burned by two protestors who had trespassed onto the field during a game at Dodger Stadium. As the bottom of the fourth inning got underway, the protesters placed the flag in left-center field [...]

The Moral Decline of the Dodgers

By |2023-06-12T16:33:45-05:00June 12th, 2023|Categories: Baseball, Catholicism|

More than 75 years ago, Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey made history for the Brooklyn Dodgers by breaking baseball’s “color line." But today’s Los Angeles Dodgers are making a different kind of history by honoring men who put on nuns' habits in order to mock the Catholic Church. The devoutly Christian Robinson and Rickey must [...]

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