Episodes

Tommy Auger

He has been playing football for most of his life, including, as an adult, as a pro. He is an award-winning and record setting tight end who has been playing the last four years in Mexico, although last year he also played in Japan. In November 2022 he was drafted by the Orlando Guardians of the XFL. At the start of that calendar year he had played in the Fan Controlled Football League, with his team going to the championship game. In 2021 he had played American football professionally in Austria. Before all that, he played four years of college football at St. John’s University in Minnesota, where he also played baseball. He capped off his high school career by leading the state in receptions.

Notable guest quotes:

“Just going into the Vatican and the Vatican Museum. It’s mind-blowing that humans were able to create that… it is really a thing that you look at… and kind of motivates you to strive for more and to become a better version of yourself.”

“It’s kind of a great juxtaposition to see what the former ruins of the Roman Empire look like and then the fact that the Catholic Church is just still standing strong in such a perfect manner there.”

“I obviously stick out a little bit when I’m in a foreign country at a different Mass… In Japan, it’s a little bit harder to find a Catholic church.”

“When you drive from the airport to where we’re at, you see a lot of the parts that are not so good… So definitely, definitely some areas to be able to do charity in Monterey for sure.”

“Our team in Monterey… our main owners are Ryan Kalil and Blake Griffin. And then we also have owners that are a little bit less involved, but still part of the organization structure, like Christian McCaffrey and George Kittle.”

“In Mexico, we pray before the game, the Our Father. And there’s a lot more people before the game that’ll go down to the end zone, get on a knee and say a prayer.”

“My parents… sent me to a grade school … St. Peter, Paul, and Michael… we had theology class, even in grade school, or we called it religion class at the time, then in high school, I went to St. Cloud Cathedral, which is a Catholic school… And then by my own accord, choosing to go to St. Johns (University) also a Catholic school.”

“When you really believe what you believe, it’s the most important part. It’s more important than your job or your passion in sports. So, it’s always been something that you can’t put to the back burner just because you’re doing something that you love or you’re really busy.”

Related link:

Tommy Auger on Wikipedia

(This episode contains a prayer by Fort Worth Christian Football League parent Linda Fleshman, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Bobby Valentine

He was a first round draft pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers and went on to play ten years and well over 600 games with five different Major League Baseball teams before then going on to 16 years as a manager for three different MLB teams, including taking the New York Mets to the World Series in 2000. He also spent time as a broadcaster with both ESPN and SportsNet New York and even authored a memoir that came out a few years ago. He has been inducted into a number of Halls of Fame — including by the New York Mets a few months ago — and was even the first American manager to win Japan’s championship series. He established a sports academy bearing his name in Stamford, Connecticut, has served as an advisor to the general manager of the Los Angeles Angels, spent eight years as Executive Director of Athletics at Sacred Heart University, and even has his own restaurant and sports bar.

Notable guest quotes:

“I kept my faith from the time I was a young man through now that I’m an old man.”

“I just always thought that leadership revolved around knowing the difference between right and wrong, and making sure that when you saw wrong, it was told to people and when you saw right it was also amplified in the clubhouse.”

“I always lived by the motto that the greatest right that a person has is the right to change their mind. And I wanted everyone around me to also understand that our belief was evolving.”

“A baseball season and a championship year is kind of like religion; you don’t really know if you’re right until it’s all over… you have to believe and you have to get those who believe what you believe to be out there preaching your gospel.”

“I think if anything about my life says what I did, I was resilient. I adjusted and adapted and made sure that if I was going down the right street that I brought as many people with me as possible. And if I made a wrong turn that I got out of that situation as quickly as possible. And hopefully didn’t drag anyone down the wrong road with me.”

“When you have team sports, one of the greatest needs that you have is to get a group of guys who can enjoy other people’s successes so that when they’re not going as well as they’d like to and might be in a little slump, they can still have some enjoyment of their day’s work by appreciating the success of others. And I think great teams are built around people who appreciate other people’s success.”

“The reason you do things isn’t for the award.”

“Baseball was part of a big part of my life. It kind of defined me, but I really wish that it hadn’t… it’s really only part of what I’ve accomplished so far in my life.”

“When you’re in a big league dugout, your main focus is winning and making sure that there’s value added to the ownership and the fans’ investment in the team. At a university level, you’re not thinking about winning the game, you’re thinking about winning the four years that those student athletes are on campus. And the way that they win is by progressing through into their adult life.”

“The lessons that you learn through sports are a lot more valuable than the record that your team has at the end of the year.”

“A local priest would stop by and bring the Eucharist and find a place that guys could gather from both teams. We’d always invite the other team.”

Related links:

Bobby’s book “Valentine’s Way”

BobbyValentineCollection.com

(This episode contains a prayer from the South Bend Indiana Inner-City Catholic League, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

John Affleck

He is a lifelong runner, having competed in cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track in high school, earning six MVP awards, and later going on to six marathons, including a top 500 finish at the Boston Marathon. Other highlights include Masters All-American in middle distance events in track and field in his 40s, 50s and 60s as well as being faculty partner to track and field at Penn State for seven years. Between the Associated Press and Penn State, he has reported or edited on sports from every continent except Antarctica: six Super Bowls; five national (college) football title games; two Olympics; two Paralympics; two World Cups; the 2023 Women’s World Cup; Final Four; and Little League World Series.

Notable guest quotes:

“One of the things that, … is quite profound when your job is looking at news from religion for a global news agency as I was at the Associated Press, one thing you see very quickly is (that) people of all walks of life all over the planet have a desire to experience divinity, and they look for God’s presence in their lives.”

“I went to Easter Mass… And the pastor gave this moving sermon… that part of the anguish that we felt was our connection to the church. And that really grabbed me.”

“And I just said, if there was ever a time that a Catholic should be going to Mass and trying to just be part of the community and express their faith, now is a good time.”

“I once had a priest say to me, the reason people come back to the church is usually a reason that they’re embarrassed by or has something to do with a tough moment rather than a happy moment.”

“My wife and I found out that we were going to be unable to have children. And that was profoundly painful to us. And… I was thinking to myself, how in the world am I going to get through this?”

“I had gone to see a priest for counseling and to share my anguish and he said, ‘I don’t know why this happened to you, but I know that God’s with you in your suffering’.”

“In running … you can’t win without a great deal of work and effort and some discomfort going in. And you have to embrace it and feel joy in it.”

“A friend of mine convinced me to do a few sprint triathlons together… when we got to the line that day, he said, ‘Doing the triathlon is the celebration of training for the triathlon.’ And that’s really true. Like, racing is the moment that you got to celebrate all the great things you did in training… the sort of fidelity you need to the sport is not unlike any practice that you’re doing in other areas, including your faith.”

“If we just had a little bit of confidence, if we walked around being like, ‘You know what? I know that there is a loving God out there and that as bad as things can go, we’ll make it through this. We’ll be okay. It will be a lot better’.”

“I’d gone to Catholic high school and Catholic elementary school and so getting accepted to Notre Dame really meant a lot.”

“I’ve often been in interview situations where athletes credited God for their ability.”

Related link:

John’s LinkedIn profile

(This episode contains a prayer originally from prayers-and-poetry.blogspot.com, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Deacon Dan Cook

He has participated in fundraising events as a cyclist since the 1980s and was a member of a committee that started a cycling event called Elephant Rock in Castle Rock, Colorado. He later would participate in other events such as Ride the Rockies, the Copper Triangle, the Courage Classic and the Road Ramble. From October 4 – November 16 he and eleven other cyclists on Team Samaritan will take part in the Ride Across America, pedaling more than 2900 miles from California to Florida. On the faith side, he is a convert to Catholicism and has a story about being called to the diaconate in 2011.

Notable guest quotes:

“They took me to Protestant churches as a young child. I was in the typical Bible studies, in Sunday morning classes for the kids and they baptized me as a young child. But (my parents) themselves never really formally attended church.”

“I get to campus that first day of class… And as God’s Providence would have it, (my roommate) was also Catholic. I had several other Catholic men on my floor where I lived. And I noticed right from the start that they were a little different.”

“I noticed that Catholic men just had this more respect for women. And just a different idea about what dating was about.”

“I then didn’t know anything about the Catholic Church. I thought of it as pretty much like just another church. And I was blown away by the Mass and by the number of students who came on a Sunday morning when most students were sleeping in late with a hangover or whatever. And here is all these Catholics at Mass celebrating in a way I had not really seen before. And so, I was drawn to the faith and converted that year.”

“We’re standing there kind of bummed out, what else is there nearby because it’s already getting late in the day. And so, what can we do with our time since the Basilica (of Santa Clara) is obviously closed. And we’re standing there literally with hundreds of other tourists and we’re just kind of peering into our guidebook and this nun walks up to us – and with the full habit on and she walks up – and kind of gets the attention of my wife and I and she says, ‘Do you want to go inside’ and she kind of points over to the Basilica… And she said, ‘Follow me’.”

“And that’s when I heard a voice very clearly say to me, ‘I want you to work for my church’.”

“I think real well on my bike. And so, I remember the day I went out to do a bike ride, and I was going to think about it; okay, am I really being called to the diaconate? Is something I can really do?”

“This is the first time I really had stopped and had a conversation with anyone who was homeless. And I had a lot of preconceived notions that I still think are very prevalent, that they are drunks or drug addicts or criminals… And he comes up to me and he says, ‘Would you do my tax return’?”

“When he came back he was with his daughter again and he said, ‘She’s agreed to help me get things straightened out.’ And so, it was something that made a mark on my heart.”

“I look back on how providential that event was where I my first met this man who went from being a CEO to being homeless and went from being probably, more importantly, one of the most self-confident people in Denver to having shame – so much shame that he couldn’t even walk into my office that night because he was afraid I’d be offended by his appearance and his smell.”

“I’ve always tried to stay active, and I guess that’s one of the reasons I’ve been involved in charity cycling just to try and stay active and I get lots of benefits because I get the gift of being able to help out a charity and I also get to maintain some physical fitness.”

Related link:

Ride Across America

Tom Schwein

The founder and team captain of Team Samaritan Cycling as part of Ride Across America, a coast-to-coast cycling campaign from San Diego to St. Augustine. As a student athlete he played baseball at what was then called Regis College and later played four years of softball and eventually became a runner, including participating in multiple Boston Marathons. He turned to cycling in 2010 by way of Ride the Rockies, the marquee cycling event in the state of Colorado. And, he has had extensive involvement with Catholic Charities.

Notable guest quotes:

“It takes training and it takes resilience. It takes dedication. And it takes wanting to do something for a cause.”

“When I chose that we would raise money for the Samaritan House – because, it’s non-denominational. And I wanted to encompass not just Catholics, but just Christians, people that wanted to do something for a cause. And the Samaritan House is actually … owned by Catholic Charities, and they support it as they now do five different homeless shelters in Colorado. And we’re raising money on this ride for all of the five Samaritan houses.”

“We have an opportunity on this ride to actually go in and either serve dinner or meet the people that live there and get national awareness for the crisis of homelessness… along the route.”

“We’re launching a program here in Colorado today and it’s called Miles for Hope and it’s to engage all of the Catholic parishes in Colorado, all the Catholic schools in Colorado, to help us raise money for the crisis of homelessness in Colorado.”

“With about 50 yards to go, I hit a divot in the pavement and my wheel turned 90 degrees and I went right over the top of my bike at about 30 miles an hour.”

“When I look at those pictures I just break down in tears because it was really, not just painful but, it was really a day where I didn’t realize what God was calling me to do.”

“I really started to like running and that led to winning a couple of 5Ks in Colorado and … actually I qualified for the Boston Marathon, and I went back and ran two consecutive Boston Marathons.”

“My tagline is, if you are what you’re meant to be, you’ll set the world on fire. And that’s from St. Catherine of Siena.”

“I got rejected from everybody, so I walked on (at Regis College) and by about the third day of practice the (baseball) coach came up and said, ‘I’d like you to be one of our four starters’.”

Related link:

Ride Across America

(This episode contains a prayer by Gregg Easterbrook from the NFL.com and ESPN.com column “Monday Morning Quarterback,” as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Eric Schon

He was the top-ranked offensive lineman and the fourth-ranked player among all positions heading into last year’s CFL Draft. Following last year’s Gator Bowl, in which he played for Duke University, he stepped away from the game due to a neck injury. He had started playing football at a young age and went on to award-filled years in high school, and then at both The College of the Holy Cross and then at Duke. Along the way he also competed in wrestling and track & field. On the faith side, he had only attended Catholic schools until he got to Duke, and is about to head off on a very special trip that will resonate with brothers and sisters in Christ.

Notable guest quotes:

“It was a huge blessing to potentially have an opportunity to go back home and pursue every child’s dream of playing professional sports.”

“Everything happens for a reason. Now I’m blessed with a great career, living an amazing lifestyle here in Boston, surrounded by people that I love.”

“Candidly, I had gone into (the Gator Bowl) having already made up my mind. Mentally I was going into that game knowing that that was going to be my last time stepping on the football field.”

“I really gave the game all I had; all I could give it. And it gave me back in return something tenfold. It gave me back not just the lessons in resiliency and the good habits of waking up early in the morning and understanding (that) if you want to accomplish something, you have to work hard to actually achieve it. But just the friendships and the camaraderie that it gave me is just something that you can’t put a dollar value on.”

“That decision to step away from the game is something that took a lot of prayer. I knew that physically I wasn’t necessarily in it anymore. I knew that my body couldn’t really take it. And I think it took a lot of relinquishing myself from an expectation, right? Removing my attachment at least to an expected outcome and kind of just submitting to the will of the Lord and submitting to what God had in place for me. And being content with that and trusting that.”

“I really want to emphasize the word faith here, having faith that God our Father had the perfect plan in place for me. And no matter how hard I tried to push against it or how hard I tried to make my own plan work or do everything in my human power or my human desire to make a certain outcome come to reality, it just wasn’t in the cards for me. And it’s not what God had in store for me. And trusting in that and having faith in that, I think is incredibly liberating, or at least it was for me. But to come to that conclusion took a lot of prayer and took a lot of conversations with God for sure.”

“There was also the questioning of, ‘Why is this happening to me,’ right? Anybody that goes through a certain, some sort of adversity, I guess you could say, there’s a tendency, I think, in the human psyche, to question things, ‘What did I do to deserve this’?”

“Somewhere along the way, you have to… just let go and look up at God and say, ‘You know what, God, I don’t fully understand why this is happening to me, and maybe I never will understand that, and that’s okay, that’s fine, that’s fine with me. As long as I have faith in Your plan for me, and as long as I have faith for what You have in store for me, my life, and my family, then I’m content with whatever happens’.”

“The most important relationship in my life is my relationship with God and Jesus Christ and really leaning into that relationship.”

“I think that those were the most formative years of my entire life. The most growth that I ever underwent were during those four years.”

“When you walk into our front door, there’s a statue of St. Francis there and the Catholic faith is a huge pillar of my family life.”

“I’ve always had the mindset or had the temperament to understand that football is just really one piece of my identity and one sliver of who I am as a young man and really just trying to remain humble in that and understanding that the physical talents that I’m blessed with are much less a product of my own doing and much more a product of God’s blessing to me.”

“St. Francis is a saint that we hold very, very close to our hearts in my family and he has shown up in our lives in some very big, big, big moments throughout our lives and throughout some pretty tough times that we’ve had as a family.”

Related link:

Pre-CFL Draft article on Eric’s retirement announcement

(This episode contains a prayer originally excerpted and adapted from Day By Day: The Notre Dame Prayerbook for Students by Thomas McNally, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Dick Vitale

He had a successful coaching career that included leading the NBA’s Detroit Pistons as Head Coach, before joining ESPN in 1979. During his broadcasting career he has called more than a thousand games and even covered events such as the NBA Finals and the 1992 Summer Olympics for ABC Radio. In 2008 he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. He has authored more than a dozen books and is a champion for fighting pediatric cancer. He has been fighting his own personal cancer battle since a diagnosis five years ago.

Notable guest quotes:

“I’m doing immunotherapy treatments now to battle the cancer. They found cancer on my lungs and liver and I’m hoping it wipes it out.”

“I always remind people out there if you’re battling something like cancer or whatever it may be, I think there’s two things you must do; you must think positive and have faith.”

“My parents were uneducated, but they had a doctorate of love, and they utilized that love on our family and it rubbed off on me big time.”

“The prayer I take, when things are tough you go to St. Jude. A lot of good things can happen. St. Jude and St. Anthony are special to me, very special.”

“To be able to have something like this (house) … has never changed my values, it never changed my beliefs, it never changed my attitude toward people. It’s who I am, and the house is just a materialistic thing.”

“Treat people how you want to be treated. Be good to people and people are gonna be good to you. We don’t see that. We don’t have enough love in this country right now; too much hate, there’s too much hate in our nation, and I think if we all treated each other like we would want to be treated, we would all be such a better, better group of people of more love in the nation.”

“You take care of what you have to take care of and if you’re successful all that stuff is going to happen in a positive way and lead to so many other things.”

“I’ve never turned down anybody asking for an autograph or coming for a picture. To me I’m flattered they would do that, flattered that they would approach me like that.”

“How many times I take pictures and all the people and they’ll come back to me, someone will come back to me and say, ‘Hey my friend said that you were so nice to them.’ You know, I laugh at it because I just think you’re supposed to be that way. I don’t think it’s special.”

Related link:

Dick’s official website