Jeff Manto
Episode 357
8 DEC 2025
(LISTEN FOR HIS REVERSION STORY NEAR THE END!) He played nine seasons in Major League Baseball, playing for eight teams and being a part of three teams that reached the World Series. He also played in the league in Japan that is the highest level of baseball there. He is a member of eight Halls of Fame and was a manager in the MLB Draft League. After serving as hitting coach and manager for a team in the Philadelphia Phillies system, he went on to become the Pittsburgh Pirates hitting coordinator and then their hitting coach and later became the hitting coach for the Chicago White Sox and after that the minor league hitting coordinator for the Baltimore Orioles. He currently is the head coach of the Conwell-Egan Catholic High School baseball team in Pennsylvania, having been named 2024 Courier Times/Intell Baseball Coach of the Year.
Notable guest quotes:
“All of us went to Catholic school… we were … obviously Catholic all through and through.”
“My mother… she actually literally grew up next – in the church parking lot, what we call it today – she actually grew up in the house next to St. Anne Church.”
“It was just a tremendous, tremendous upbringing for me. Every day we played a different sport. I played three sports in high school. I was selected all-state in three sports – basketball, football, baseball – had offers in three sports.”
“I certainly didn’t think I would play baseball and when Temple offered a full scholarship that’s where I went.”
“I had a guy, a priest, Father Tom Cerrullo, who came to St. Anne parish, and we met each other when I was in seventh grade and he was going to be ordained in a couple of years and we hit it off fairly well. I feel like he would be what had been my mentor at the time (in college). He always kept me close to the cross.”
“The Yankees took a chance that I might sign a contract just because I would be in awe of signing with the Yankees.”
“We want to Athens and ended up in Turkey, (got to) see where Mary was living with the apostles, with John and things like that, and … we had Mass every day, our own little group. We had two priests traveling with us.”
“Yes, it was holy. Yes, it was inspiring. Yes, it was everything I thought I’d get out of it prayerfully, but most important, now … I could picture exactly what was happening because now I got more of a history as to what the gospel was speaking, not just read the gospel and figure it out myself. So, now I certainly have a better idea as to what was happening.”
“We spent about a week at the Vatican in Rome.”
“When you go to major cities there is major cathedral, you can find a church, and I made an effort to find a church even in the Major League Draft League towns.”
“Oftentimes I would turn my morning exercise into walking two miles or three miles to church and that would be my exercise physically and spiritually.”
“I felt a calling to get that daily strength and what that Eucharist meant to me is the strength, the bread, the nutrition that I need to show up every day … being a sinner, I need that bread of life.”
“A (baseball) clubhouse is a different dynamic. It’s a sacred place, if you will, for men and people love talking about their religion.”
“We have a rosary every Wednesday in the chapel at school and it’s for the baseball team, but we invite the school, we invite the other athletes. I tell these guys that they got to keep their eyes on the cross.”
Related link:
Manto Player Development Center