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Detroit, Mich., Jul 23, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).

The worst pitcher ever to take the mound for the Detroit Tigers became a Catholic priest.

Granted, Allan Travers was already on the path to the priesthood before suiting up for Detroit on May 18, 1912. But his story — and place in baseball history — is the prime example of being in the right place at the right time (or the wrong place at the wrong time). 

Travers played in only one game, but one was enough to show that God had plans for him that didn’t involve the big leagues. 

The story begins, as most stories of Tigers lore do, with Ty Cobb. 

The Tigers were in New York on May 15 to play the Highlanders (the precursor to the Yankees). Cobb was playing in the outfield when he was verbally abused by a New York fan who was using profanity and racial slurs to describe Cobb’s play.

Cobb — never known for keeping his cool — stormed into the stands and unleashed a volley of punches on the fan. Tigers players rushed to the scene of the chaos, yelling at Cobb to lay off the man, who was missing one hand and three fingers on his other hand after suffering an industrial accident. 

Cobb didn’t care and continued the barrage. 

Ban Johnson, president of the American League, happened to be at the game, checking on the family-friendly excitement of what was turning into America’s pastime. 

Having one of the league’s star players beat up a disabled spectator didn’t jibe well with Johnson’s vision for baseball, so Cobb was suspended indefinitely. 

The Tigers felt Cobb’s punishment was unfair, so the players voted to strike until Cobb was reinstated for the club’s next game in three days against the two-time defending World Series champion Philadelphia Athletics.

Johnson called the Tigers’ bluff, informing then Tigers owner Frank Navin the team would face a $5,000 fine for every game Detroit forfeited. 

Navin needed to field a team, and quick, so he and Tigers manager Hughie Jennings collaborated with Athletics owner/manager Connie Mack to field a team of players to take the field.

This was well before the age of expansive minor league rosters — or commercial airlines, for that matter — so it wasn’t as though the Tigers could call up the farm team in Toledo and get them to Philadelphia in time to play the A’s. Instead, scouting was done the old-fashioned way, spreading word throughout town, asking who wanted to play baseball.

And this is where Aloysius Joseph “Allan” Travers, the student manager on the St. Joseph’s College baseball team, comes into the story.

Jennings worked with a friend of his, Joe Nolan, a sportswriter for The Philadelphia Bulletin, to field a team. Nolan knew Travers, a junior at St. Joseph’s who lived in Philadelphia, from the time the A’s fielded a second-stringer team to play St. Joseph’s College. 

Nolan asked Travers to find 10-12 amateur players in the area who could suit up for the Tigers in case the Tiger players followed through on their strike threats. The idea was that the amateurs would never actually take the field; rather, it was just a tactic to get Jennings’ “real” players on the field.

Travers rounded up eight players who were free that day and enticed by the $25 Navin offered to each player.

Jennings had his team of strike-breakers, as requested by Navin.

When the umpire called “play ball,” the Tiger regulars took the field, but when the umpire spotted Cobb and told him to take a seat, the rest of the team walked out and took off their uniforms.

The strike-breakers would have to play after all. They were ushered into the locker room and donned the Tigers’ gray uniforms (this was in the days before names were on the back of uniforms). Two bench coaches joined the group to offer the squad some big league experience.

The question was, who would pitch?

There were no takers at first, so Navin offered an extra $25. Travers volunteered; $50 was good money for a college kid in 1912. There was one small problem — Travers had never played organized ball.

He was the assistant manager on the college baseball team, tasked with keeping stats and writing game summaries.

But there he was, the college student with plans to join the seminary after graduation, pitching before 20,000 fans at Shibe Park against the two-time defending World Series champions. A modern David versus Goliath, a plucky underdog story.

This time Goliath won.

Travers did as well as one would expect the assistant manager of a college baseball team to do against professionals. He pitched a complete game, surrendering 24 runs on 26 hits (both American League records), walking seven and striking out one. He got an MLB strikeout — they can’t take that away from him.

But the 15.75 ERA leaves a mark. He also batted 0-for-3 at the plate.

Travers’ time in the major leagues was abrupt. After the 24-2 shellacking the A’s put on the strikebreaking Tigers, Cobb persuaded his teammates to end the strike before the team’s upcoming series against the Washington Senators.

Travers’ calling was the priesthood, not pitching.

After graduating from St. Joseph’s College in 1913, he joined the Society of Jesus, studying at St. Andrew on the Hudson in New York and Woodstock College in Maryland. He was ordained a priest in 1926, making him the only priest ever to play in a Major League game.

His ministry took him to teaching positions at St. Francis Xavier High School in Manhattan and St. Joseph’s Prep and St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia.

Father Travers didn’t speak about his baseball exploits, but he did give an interview about his bizarre start for the Tigers.

“About noon when Nolan told me about the strike of Detroit, he told me the club would be fined and might lose its franchise if 12 players didn’t show up,” Travers told sportswriter Red Smith. “He told me to round up as many fellows as I could. We never thought we’d play a game.”

The priest said Jennings told him to avoid throwing fastballs to “avoid getting killed out there,” but the A’s didn’t hold back, even resorting to bunting when they found out the third baseman had never played baseball before.

“I fed ‘em nothing but slow stuff after Frank Baker almost hit one out of the park on me, which fortunately went foul,” Travers said. “I was doing fine until they started bunting. The guy playing third base had never played baseball before. I just didn’t get any support. I threw a beautiful slow ball and the A’s were just hitting easy flies. Trouble was, no one could catch them.”

Curious enough, the only “fame” Travers got from his start was his picture in the newspaper with the word “Strikebreaker” printed above. There was a trolley strike in Philadelphia that month, and Travers’ mother was worried for her son’s safety because people might suspect he was a scab.

Travers didn’t like talking about his baseball “career” with his students, and his story is not well known, save for a few baseball history blogs.

He did sign a ball from that fateful day that wound up in the collection of Ada, Michigan, resident Steve Nagengast, who claims to have the largest collection of Tigers autographs. Nagengast was featured in the Detroit News, and the anecdote about Travers piqued Detroit Catholic’s interest.

Travers didn’t have the greatest impact on Tigers history. But the $5,000-per-game fine the Tigers faced for each game the club forfeited would have been devastating, especially in an era when professional teams folded and changed towns all the time.

So who knows.

Father Travers’ one-game career might have just saved the Tigers.

This article originally appeared in Detroit Catholic and has been adapted and reprinted here with permission.

[…]

Washington D.C., Jan 19, 2018 / 11:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Father Martino Choi told some 18,000 teens and adults about his mother’s decision in favor of life at a Youth Rally and Mass for Life held in Washington, D.C., on Friday morning.

“I know a woman who went in for her ultrasound, and was told by the doctors that the child’s organs were not developing properly. The child would probably not make it a year after birth, and they recommended abortion,” Fr. Choi said during his homily at the Capital One Arena Jan. 19.

“This woman is my mother, and I am that child,” he stated.

Choi is a parish priest at St. Patrick’s parish in Rockville, Md., about 20 miles northwest of the District of Columbia. He said the doctors had told his mother that abortion would shield him and her from unnecessary suffering. He continued: “The devil knows who to disguise evil with a lie that somehow death is better than life … but death is never better than life.”

The young priest also shared stories from his parish where he has counseled parents who lost a child between days and months after the child’s birth.

“Not a single one of those families comes to me and says, ‘You know what, Father, we wish we hadn’t had this child. We wish we hadn’t had to suffer through this.’ None of them say that. They all say, ‘Thank God that we got to love this child, even if it was just for a couple of days.’”

“One family, whose kid never left the hospital, said that in his three months of life their son taught them the depths of love and courage that we could not understand before his birth…”

These stories resonated with the teens at the Mass for Life, who came from dioceses both across the U.S. and internationally.

“I thought that it was really amazing,” Kelly Lambers, a high school student from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, told CNA. “His mother didn’t give him up even though she knew he didn’t have that long to live, but now look at him; he’s a priest!”

Lambers traveled nine hours by bus with her classmates from Mother of Mercy High School to attend the rally and the March for Life. She said she is particularly proud of her friends’ signs that read, “Pro-Life is Pro-Women.”

Tajil Baptiste, a young man from the U.S. Virgin Islands, also shared why he and his friends traveled to D.C. for the March for Life: “It is a a religious event for us, traveling so far from a little island, but the message that we will be bringing back to our community and our Church is ‘Let’s be pro-life, let’s change the world.’”

There were nearly 200 priests, 20 bishops, and three cardinals concelebrating the youth Mass, according to the Archdiocese of Washington. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington was the principal celebrant.

“We are gathered here to proclaim the value, the worth, and the dignity of all human life,” Cardinal Wuerl told the crowd before the Mass.

The Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Christophe Pierre, shared a message from Pope Francis with the youth and extended an invitation to tag the Holy Father as they stand up for life on Twitter and Instagram using #iStand4Life.

After the Mass for Life, the youth groups walked from the Capital One Arena to the National Mall for the March for Life.

[…]

CNA Staff, Jul 16, 2020 / 12:30 am (CNA).- National news media cannot ignore intolerance against Catholics, the Ancient Order of Hibernians has said, citing recent attacks on Catholic churches and vandalism of statues of saints.

The group cited an incident at Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Ocala, Florida, where a man crashed a minivan into the church and then lit it on fire with gasoline early on Saturday, July 11 while people were inside preparing for morning Mass.

“The Hibernians are appalled at the conspicuous lack of national news coverage, particularly among the national broadcast networks, surrounding this blatant attack. The absence of national reporting concerning such an egregious attack against a Catholic church is at stark variance with past coverage of similar despicable attacks against other faiths,” the group said July 13.

“This absence of coverage is particularly glaring given that this attack is only the latest in a wave of wanton destruction targeting Catholics including the vandalism of a Catholic church in Boston, a Catholic school in New York and the ongoing investigation of a fire that destroyed the historic 249-year-old San Gabriel Mission and over the same weekend.”

The Ancient Order of Hibernians was founded in 1836, based on similar groups in Ireland. It is the oldest and largest Irish Catholic organization in the U.S. and claims membership in all 50 states.

The Hibernians’ statement cited the ancient legal principle “silence implies consent,” criticizing the national media for showing “silence on the rising tide of anti-Catholic violence.”

“The Hibernians ask why such an outrageous attack targeting Catholics is less worthy of reporting than an attack on a house of worship of another faith or a public institution? The news media needs to take accountability for its apathy and blatant double standard and the creation of a shameful ‘hierarchy of outrage’ in which hate targeting Catholics is not ‘newsworthy’,” the group said.

The story of the attack and Shields’ arrest was covered by Fox News and the Associated Press, whose account was carried by the New York Times and Washington Post websites. However, a CNA review of ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN news websites found no additional coverage.

Stephen Anthony Shields, 24, of Dunnellon, Florida was apprehended by police and charged with attempted murder, arson, burglary, and evading arrest in connection with the Florida church attack.

According to local media, Shields told police he has been diagnosed with schizophrenia but is not currently taking prescribed medication. He said that he awoke on Saturday morning with a “mission.”

Shields also quoted scripture, especially the Book of Revelation, to officers, and told them his objections to the Catholic Church.

In 2019, Shields was arrested after swinging a crowbar at a woman and saying he wanted to kill her.

Also last weekend, in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the church of the Mission San Gabriel was destroyed by fire. The 18th century mission was founded by St. Junipero Serra, whom Pope Francis canonized during his 2015 visit to the U.S. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.

Several statues of Serra have been torn down in recent unrest, with some critics claiming he committed violence against Native Americans. Demonstrators toppled his statues in Sacramento and San Francisco, while some institutions with statues of Serra have removed them from the public for safekeeping.

Serra was an advocate for native people and a champion of human rights, and was often at odds with Spanish authorities over the treatment of natives, according to historians. He helped convert thousands of native Californians to Christianity, and taught them new agricultural technologies.

Many natives showed an outpouring of grief at Serra’s death in 1784.

Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles defended the saint in his June 29 column for Angelus News, published before the fire at the mission.

“The real St. Junipero fought a colonial system where natives were regarded as ‘barbarians’ and ‘savages,’ whose only value was to serve the appetites of the white man. For St. Junipero, this colonial ideology was a blasphemy against the God who has ‘created (all men and women) and redeemed them with the most precious blood of his Son’,” Archbishop Gomez said.

Other acts of vandalism have also taken place recently at Catholic institutions. Several Catholic churches and cathedrals have faced graffiti and broken windows in recent riots.

Boston police are investigating an arson attack late July 11 on a statue of the Virgin Mary outside the church of St. Peter’s Parish in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. An unknown individual had set fire to plastic flowers in the hands of the statue, causing smoke and flame damage to the face, head, and upper body of the statue.

In the New York City borough of Queens, early Friday morning on July 10, a vandal spray-painted the word “idol” on the statue of the Virgin Mary at Cathedral Prep School and Seminary.

In a third incident, a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was beheaded last weekend at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

[…]