A Matter of Faith

There had to be a typo, right?

We’ve become anesthetized to the headlines in the sports world about steroids, salaries, guns, alcohol, gambling... you name it, we’ve heard it. We’re on a steady diet of pleas for forgiveness with a side dish of feigned tears and lumps in the throat. Nothing shocks us anymore.

Except when an up-and-coming major leaguer decides to give it all up to become a priest.

Come again?

Wait... he must be in the middle of some big salary negotiations and he’s trying to up the ante. Maybe he foresees a position war in spring training, and he feels this might give him the edge. I know, he must have gotten caught doing steroids or a hooker and he figures this is the best way to sneak out of the game.

It has to be one of those, right? Because who leaves the glitzy world of sports to pray all day? Instead of spending his Saturdays in a weight room getting ready to play ball in front of thousands of people, he’ll be sitting in a 3x3 booth, waiting to hear an old lady tick off the two sins she accumulated on her soul since her last confession the week before. Instead of pounding homers to increase his value, he’ll be doling out Rosaries to enhance his chances at the pearly gates.

Now that is shocking.

It takes a special person to enter the religious life. We can hold the door for the neighbor behind us or write a check to our favorite charity, but at the end of the day, most of us are still looking out for numero uno. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but there is something more and Grant Desme is looking for it.

His God-given gift for baseball was overshadowed by his love for God, which says a lot about him and more about the state of sports today.

It’s the positive, decent stories that give us pause because we’re used to the bad apples.

Fans aren’t looking for players to be saints, but it would be nice to hear more stories about the good guys to restore our faith in the games we love.

Character-Driven

Class acts are hard to come by. In the world of sports, it can often seem like looking for a needle in a haystack because they just don’t make for sexy headlines.

But on Friday, ESPN.com posted the following: Red Sox 3B Beltre empathizes with Lowell.

A tad bit warm and fuzzy among headlines talking contracts and missteps, don’t you think?

The article goes on to say that before signing with the Red Sox, Adrian Beltre was worried about Mike Lowell. He empathized with Lowell’s injury and predicament. He did not want to barrel into Fenway as the third base savior while a man only two years removed from World Series MVP honors was pushed to the periphery. It was only after being assured that he would not be stepping on the toes of Lowell, that the Red Sox would continue to think of Lowell as more than a cog in the wheel of Boston’s drive that Beltre felt free to make the decision that was right for him and his family.

We’re not used to hearing stories like this. All we see are numbers. How many years and for how much? Certainly other factors play into the decisions of players in contract negotiations, but we only hear about the bottom line and startling greed, which is what makes this story all the more interesting.

It says a lot about Lowell and Beltre and speaks volumes about the men behind the players that the nature of their characters made headlines.

They say that God always answers your prayers; it just might not be the answer you were hoping for. Like many other Red Sox fans, I’m praying that Mike Lowell stays in Boston, but the answer to our prayers might be that we’ve got another class act to follow in his footsteps.