“Do Catholics Make Better Athletes?”

The Loyola University baseball team, 1886. Founded in Chicago in 1870, today Loyola is the nation’s largest Jesuit university.

Everybody just expects a Catholic school to turn out a good baseball team. A significant expectation! Why should a Catholic college with its few hundred students be expected to defeat the big non-Catholic universities so regularly? Baseball is distinctly an American game: why should Catholic college boys be expected to play it any better than non-Catholic college boys? They do not excel at soccer or cricket, nor at hurley, which is the national pastime of the country from which so many of their ancestors came, but it is a fact that they are expected to play better baseball, and the indisputable record is that they do play better baseball. But why is it?

St. Gregory’s University was founded by Benedictine monks in Shawnee, Oklahoma, in 1875. (It was originally named Sacred Heart College.) It is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in the state. The baseball team is seen here in 1907.

To that question I never heard but two sensible replies: One is that the Irish are natural athletes and that most of the ball players in Catholic colleges are of Irish blood; which answer must be thrown out of court. A little Irish blood helps, no doubt, but there are hosts of Catholic boys playing baseball (and football also by the way) who are not of Irish blood; at least they do not bear Irish names. The college coach who said that Catholic boys play better baseball in college because they got more of it while growing up, came pretty near hitting it.

The Salesianum School was founded by the Oblates of St. Francis De Sales in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1903. The baseball team is seen here around the year 1914.

Catholic boys probably do get more baseball growing up. The comparison is surely true of Catholic boys and non-Catholic boys whose people are sufficiently well-to-do to send them to college later. But if they do play more, why do they play more? Do they not play more baseball growing up because it is distinctly American, and because it is in their blood and training to prefer whatever is American to whatever is foreign?

In 1830, Bishop Michael Portier of Mobile, Alabama, founded Spring Hill College for young men. In 1848, the Jesuits took charge of the school and have maintained it ever since. The college baseball team is seen here in 1905.

We have been talking of track, athletics, baseball, football so far; but take the list of amateur sporting events right through— rowing, tennis, swimming, cycling, golf and so on— and it seems to be the same story, the Catholics, who number about one-sixth of our population, have provided great performers and leaders out of all proportion to their numbers.

In 1903, the Edmundite Fathers, a French-based religious community, founded St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. The baseball team is seen here around the year 1910.

And in professional sport it seems to be that way, too: “Marty” Welch of Gloucester, remains the master of all sea-going racing captains, and “Jimmie” Murphy of the racing automobilists. Sarazen, the twenty-year-old son of the Italian cobbler in New York, won the open golf championship; and the veteran Zbyszko, retired heavyweight wrestling champion, at fifty-five, speaks of returning to the mat and recapturing the crown.

Many of professional baseball’s first starring players were Irish Catholics, many the sons of immigrants. Members of the Baltimore Orioles, seen here in the mid-1890’s, are: (first row, seated, l-r) Joe Kelley, Hugh Jennings; (second row, standing, l-r): “Wee Willie” Keeler, John J. McGraw. (Jennings’s father was Scottish, but his mother was from Galway.) All but Keeler went on to managerial careers, and all have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Considering professional sport further: the big league baseball managers are McGraw, Moran, Jennings, Duffey, McGillicuddy and Gleason. Big league baseball is the most cleanly conducted of all professional sports. The roar of anger which went up when crooked ball playing was exposed in a World’s Series was proof of the honesty of the game. In the maintenance of that high level of honesty Catholic ball players have borne their full share.

The Boston College baseball team, 1913. Boston College was founded by the Jesuits in 1863.

The Catholic coaches in our colleges and preparatory schools, notable for their number and quality, have also helped in keeping track and field athletics clean. The greatest of all, the incomparable “Mike” Murphy, has passed on, but (to speak of leading Eastern universities only) Moakley of Cornell, Fitzpatrick of Princeton, Mack of Yale, Donovan of Harvard are still there; and a good thing it is for our American schools that these wholesome Catholic athletic coaches are put in charge. In his intimate contact with them the athletic coach can do much to mold the character of the boys in his charge.

St. John’s College was founded in 1841 at Rose Hill in the Fordham section of the Bronx. The baseball team is seen here in the 1870’s. The letters “RH” on their uniforms stand for ‘Rose Hill.”

The conclusion would seem to be that for the supreme champion a Catholic birth and training is almost a prerequisite. Students of world history have noted before that a Catholic had by far the best chance of becoming the great, supreme master painter, sculptor, poet, scientist or what not. Dante, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael— these four lived and died within on short cycle of one small Catholic nation’s history.

The University of Notre Dame was founded in Indiana by the Holy Cross Fathers in 1842. While the university had its own baseball team, so did the Holy Cross seminarians who studied there. They are seen here in 1910.

Abounding vitality, good health and spiritual fortitude will make an athletic contender of almost anybody who is not a cripple; and abounding vitality, good health and spiritual fortitude are the birth-gifts of parents who live according to God’s laws; and God’s laws (many people seem to forget this) are good hygiene, good for the body as well as the soul. The Catholic Church may not be alone in preaching God’s laws, but certainly more than any other Church she is successful in enforcing the regular practice of her preachments. The ancient traditions of her Church, her clearly-defined moral code, her rigorously trained priesthood,— these things all make (to use a work-a-day, handy phrase) for efficiency; she gets results!

Christian Brothers University was founded in Memphis by the De La Salle Christian Brothers in 1871. The baseball team is seen here in 1897.

If our Catholic boys are leaders in athletics out of all proportion to their numbers, there must be a reason for it. These boys are born of Catholic mothers, and the Catholic standard of motherhood is proverbial. The habit of regular examination of conscience, Confession and Communion enjoined on Catholic boys and girls, does more to keep them from acquiring vicious habits, up to and through the years of adolescence, than all the non-Catholic agencies in the world combined. Any old practicing physician or boarding-school teacher will attest that all the class-room and gymnasium drill in the world will not take the place of wholesome habits in boyhood for the making of mental and physical vigor later.

In 1878, the Holy Ghost Fathers (now known as the Spiritans) founded Pittsburgh Catholic College, now known as Duquesne University. The baseball team is seen here in 1916.

It is in the blood and training of our Catholic boys to be not merely American, but enthusiastically American. Our Catholic youth enlisted in the Big War, also out of proportion to their numbers, and who left a death-list record out of all proportion to their numbers, is but another proof of this American spirit.

SS. Cyril & Methodius Seminary, Orchard Lake,Michigan, was founded in 1885 for Polish seminarians. Seen here is a member of the seminary’s 1915 baseball team. The letters “PS” on his shirt stand for “Polish Seminary.”

And it may be doing the country another service to point out here that these Catholic youth, patriots and athletes out of all proportion to their numbers, are mostly such because of good Catholic motherhood and a wholesome childhood; and again to point out that a high moral standard for its women and a high moral training for its children is the best (possibly the only) safeguard that a nation can have against premature decay.

James B. Connolly, “Catholic Leadership in American Sport,” in C.E. McGuire, ed., Catholic Builders of the Nation (Five Volumes), Volume III (1923).