Joe McIlvaine
Episode 186
22 AUG 2022
He spent parts of six decades in baseball, starting with the first of five seasons that he played as a pitcher in the Detroit Tigers organization. He went on to become a scout in the Baltimore Orioles, California Angels, and Milwaukee Brewers organizations, before becoming the scouting director for the New York Mets, who eventually promoted him to assistant general manager. He would then become the general manager of the San Diego Padres before returning to New York to take that same position with the Mets. He then went on to positions as special assistant to the general manager, first with the Minnesota Twins and then the Seattle Mariners, before joining the Baltimore Orioles in a senior advisory position.
Notable guest quotes:
“I decided to enter St. Charles Seminary, which was the local seminary for Philadelphia Archdiocese and also for the Diocese of Allentown.”
“I’d played Mass all the time. We made vestments as we were growing up.”
“As much as I wanted to be a priest, I could not NOT find out whether or not I had enough to be a Major League pitcher, ‘cause I felt like I could always come back to the seminary if I had to.”
“I was actually the head altar boy in the seventh and eighth grade and we did all the ceremonies and everything. And I was the master at funerals and at weddings… I loved it… It kind of brought an early sense of responsibility to ya’ and I felt like that was really good training for the seminary.”
“I felt like God was saying to me, ‘Okay, you’ve answered your question, now let’s go on with your life’.”
“When you’re in a situation where you’re hiring people, firing people, trading people, changing their lives, it has to be done with love.”
“Every Sunday when we were home we had Father Danny Murphy, who was an avid (New York) Met fan, he would come and say Mass… before the players went out on the field… and he did a wonderful job for us, and he would even do it in spring training… We did not want to start the Sunday without Mass.”
“The Knights of the Immaculata are dedicated to (St. Maximilian Kolbe’s) devotion to the Blessed Mother and it’s a group of men trying to emulate St. Maximilian by prayer, devotion, and we have an annual weekend retreat in November.”
“All of a sudden there’s a guy at my window with a gun, pointing it right at me, saying, ‘I need money.’ … I started talking to the guy and I said, ‘Why are you doing something like this? What would the Pope do in a situation like this’?”
“Between seasons I was teaching the fourth grade at Our Mother of Good Counsel in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.”
