Episodes

Paul Ferrante

He went from playing Little League baseball to 25-plus years of men’s league softball to playing into his 50s with two years of vintage baseball. Meanwhile, he had also played Pop Warner football and then continued in the sport in high school and college, including being the placekicker on the undefeated 1977 team that is enshrined in the Iona College Sports Hall of Fame.  He also spent a combined total of 15 seasons coaching high school and college football.  He has been a columnist for Sports Collectors Digest magazine since 1993, specializing in Baseball Ballpark History.  He is currently co-authoring his first nonfiction book, about the 1970s Oakland A’s baseball team, to be published in 2025.  And, having written other books, he says that his adult baseball novel “The Rovers: A Tale of Fenway” has the most overtly religious themes.

Notable guest quotes:

“We were really a very seriously Catholic household.  We were all baptized, partook of all the sacraments and I went to Immaculate Conception elementary school for grades K and one in the Bronx and then we moved to Pelham in New York, and I attended St. Catherine’s elementary from grades two through eight.”

“My uncle … was actually a really good pitcher and he pitched for NYU back in the late 40s and ended up actually being a practice pitcher for the Yankees.”

“My parents met through sports and between my uncle and my dad they kind of got me interested in baseball and then football came along later on.”

“I always played intramural basketball … church league basketball while I was in high school.  I played for Huguenot Church in Pelham Manor in New York.”

“We would have a pre-game Mass where we would come together and – especially if we were going up against a superior opponent on that given occasion – it was always a comforting thing for us to all be there together sharing our apprehension, if you will, or our fear, if you will.  But it made us stronger, and I think the bonds that we forged … really was something special.”

“At Iona College and growing up – lessons imparted by my parents – I came to understand the value of just certain tenets of life that I lived by that I wanted to adopt as my own: the power of love and faith, the need for understanding and empathy, the acceptance of people of all races and creeds, the value of being true to oneself, and looking for the best in others.”

“The (life) lessons that you impart to your players, I think, are just as important as any x’s and o’s you can teach them.  Whether I was at Cardinal Spellman or Iona College or Iona Prep or Mount Vernon High School, which is where I finished my coaching career, you realize that you become a part of their lives and these kids look to you for guidance.”

“A pair of seats from Sportsman Park in St. Louis ended up in a church in downtown St. Louis for many years.”

Related link:

Paul’s author website

(This episode contains a prayer from the National Catholic Coaches Association’s “The Leadership Papers,” although originally credited in there to The Coach’s Bible.)

Miguel Menendez

He has been the head baseball coach at Jesuit High School in Tampa since 2014.  He had spent many years coaching at Key West High School who, as a player, he had led to a state title back in 1995.  As a student-athlete at the collegiate level, he played for the University of Tampa, won an NCAA Division II national title in 1998, and was twice named All-Conference.  At Jesuit he has led the baseball team to such highlights as state champions, District titles, and even being ranked No. 1 nationally by several national baseball media outlets.  His faith story includes having grown apart from the church as a young adult and later finding his way back, which he talks about during this interview.

Notable guest quotes:

“We grew up going to church either Saturday night or Sunday mornings… I was an altar server growing up, for a time, in the Catholic church.”

“St Mary’s, the Academy of Holy Names here in Tampa, which my daughter graduated from, they started from the nuns in Key West in St Mary’s and came up here, so my dad and my daughter have that little connection of graduating from high school with the same kind of nuns and everything, so I think that’s a pretty unique connection as well.”

“I played a little bit of soccer when I was younger.  I played a couple years of football, but it was mostly baseball.  I was always a baseball guy, baseball junkie.”

“It’s easy to … lose sight of what your focus needs to be and should be.  And for me, it was like baseball, baseball, baseball.  And even more so than class and my faith, and just kind of lost my way during that time… and… it’s one of the things that I regret in my life.”

“I tell my kids all the time… I want you to appreciate your faith life for yourself and want to go do it for yourself because there’s going to come a point in time when I’m not there to make you go to church every Sunday.”

“You realize, there’s a greater purpose here and it can’t just be about baseball.”

“I love the game of baseball.  It’s great.  But I love the game of baseball for what it allows me to do now and the way that I’m able to help lead young men, to be proud of their faith life, to be good husbands, good community members, good fathers, that’s what I want.”

“Once you go back to God and you realize that all of a sudden that hole in your heart is gone, you’re like, ‘Man, why did I stray away’?”

“More importantly, just to be able to spend time and talk about their faith and we work a vacation Bible school in the morning… and then we can go around and they kind of send us out to different places to help elder people in the community to fix up their homes, do some yard work.  We’ve done things in the cemetery to help clean up the cemetery for them.  Whatever it is.”

“We don’t have to hide from our faith.  We get to use our faith for the strength that it should give us.”

“If we come here and all we’re worried about is winning a baseball game then we’re failing these young men.”

Related link:

Jesuit baseball program webpage

[This episode contains a prayer by Oldenburg Academy of the Immaculate Conception (Oldenburg, IN) Athletic Director Tim Boyle, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport]

Fabio Marino

He started playing tennis when he was eight years old and started teaching the sport at age 19.  Two years into his college years he started a tennis academy that became one of the biggest such schools in his hometown.  In 1990 he started at an exclusive resort in California, teaching the sport there for what would be 32 years.  Along the way, one of the kids he taught there not only became a #1 player in college but went on to become a pro athlete in the sport.  On the faith side, he pursued a master’s degree in theology from Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, even though he wasn’t baptized Catholic until age 27.  He emotionally shares his story of tragic loss in his family.

Notable guest quotes:

“I wasn’t a Catholic at all. My mother was what I call a baptized unbeliever, and my father was an agnostic, so we never went to church, we never prayed, we never read scripture, no, it was completely a pagan household.”

“I’m from Argentina, so … I played soccer until I was 15.  I was playing both tennis and soccer, and then just I had to decide, I couldn’t be playing both.  So, I chose tennis especially because in tennis, I win by myself, I lose by myself.  I take all the credit for losing or winning.  While in a sport like soccer, I might play the best game of my life, and we still can lose.  I might play the worst game of my life, and we still can win.  So, for me, it was more like, I’ll do it by myself.”

“I don’t know why I got the gift of faith, and my father never did.  And my mother got the gift of faith, but she didn’t do anything with it.  But somehow, I think God gave me the gift of faith.”

“That’s why I became Catholic.  It’s not me.  It’s just the grace of God.  I don’t know why I got it.”

“It was quite a shift in my life when I received the gift of grace and got baptized.”

“I have eight kids from (ages) 30 to 16, four boys and four girls.  And when Thomas, he’s my oldest, was born. I decided that I was going to have to have enough knowledge to answer the questions when he turned a teenager… And… I started doing a master’s in theology, which I stopped when my fifth child was born.”

“I always say that Americans are defined by two characters, two kinds of people.  In my opinion, one is the Marines and the second is the cowboy and I couldn’t be a Marine, so I became a cowboy.”

“I teach Bible study… I teach confirmation… And also I’m an altar server… And now I’ve been trained to be a Eucharistic minister, but the ones that go to the hospital and pray with the sick.”

“If you cannot pray a rosary, pray a decade.  If you cannot pray for ten minutes, just pray for one.  If you cannot read the scripture for a chapter, read half.  And if you cannot stop sinning, stop making excuses.”

Related link:

Guest post Fabio mentions having written for Catholic Answers

(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)

Deanne Miller

She competed in hockey, figure skating, gymnastics, soccer, and dance team as a young girl and teenager, and in her adult years moved into sports pursuits such as tennis/pickleball, receiving Pilates and TRX certifications, and creating a physical certification program under the banner of SoulCore, a Catholic fitness apostolate that she is co-founder of, with a mission to amplify the experience of prayer through physical movement. On the faith side, she has a conversion story to the Catholic faith, which she talks about during this interview.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was brought up Greek Orthodox… A lot of joy… a lot of family, fun and really faith and unity and gratitude, acceptance.  Really all those were just the cornerstone of our upbringing, a really beautiful, beautiful experience.”

“With having four brothers, I was thrown into a lot of sports that maybe most sisters may not be, including hockey… But I was so happy to be a part of it.”

“It really does glorify God in His just incredible healing graces.  We don’t necessarily feel that as we’re going through something, but the reality is His hand is always with us and He’s always working in us.”

“Faith has always been the cornerstone of our family and our upbringing.”

“I like to say God reorders what we disorder.”

“I think about the scripture in John when Jesus asked the paralytic, do you want to be well.  I was starting to kind of bring my suffering more to the Lord in just very, very minor ways.  But I remember almost audibly hearing, ‘Do you want to be well?’  And I screamed inside, ‘Yes, I do’.”

“God knew exactly what I needed and the time it was going to take.  But really in that journey, I just started to reestablish really a healthy respect and appreciation for caring for our body; again, this gift, this miracle that we’ve been given is our gift from God and how we care for it is our gift back to Him.  We’re called to be stewards of our bodies.”

“Something that’s, instead of running, it’s rooted in the rosary, it’s focused on prayer and the life of Christ and virtue, but involves more functional movement, core strengthening, stretching, that sort of thing.”

Related link:

SoulCore website

(This episode contains a prayer originally from catholic.org, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Deacon Michael Hill

He ran track in high school, competed in intramural sports, later taught himself golf, and coached youth league basketball and baseball, winning a regular season and a post-season title. In 2011 he was ordained to the Diaconate in the first class in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.  He has been a 4th degree member of the Knights of Columbus, and this year was awarded a Licentiate in Canon Law from St. Paul University in Ottawa, Ontario.  He is a Board member of Deacons Of Hope, a pro-life, non-profit ministry.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was actually born to an unwed mother, and she was in the hospital, they immediately baptized me because they didn’t think I was going to make it through the evening.  And eventually I was adopted out to a loving father and mother.”

“My mother is actually someone who was raised Protestant and then joined the Catholic faith after the marriage that they had.  So, they made sure that I went to Mass every Sunday and on all the holy days of obligation, taught me how to pray, taught me how to say the rosary, then made sure I went to a Catholic elementary school and went there all the way to sixth grade and then because of transportation issues, I went to a public junior high and high school but remained in what was back then called CCD and then eventually went to Rockhurst College, which is a Catholic Jesuit education university.”

“What I would do when I was coaching them, I would try to find maybe an area where they hadn’t received any training, where God had given them a gift to do and maybe somebody hadn’t seen it, or somebody hadn’t explored that yet.  And so, I would take my time and teach them to say, ‘Hey, you can do this really well.  You can do that really well.  That seems to be a gift from God’.”

“I’d be forgiving of errors especially at that age because sometimes they tried too hard, but it was always about trying to find a way where I could incorporate God and the gifts that God had given these young children to play and then give them encouragement.”

“He said, ‘Remember when he hit that free throw? … It’s great… when he went back to school, he stopped being picked on, he stopped being teased, his grades went up a full letter grade in every subject in his school, and he was quote unquote one of the guys…  He then believed in himself too’.”

“I didn’t care about the score it was all about… making sure the kids had a positive experience and the kids learned how to be better people, made sure they shook hands and always wished well to the other team because I said, ‘If you’ve played hard and you’ve used God’s talents to the best of your ability, you can look that other person in the eye and shake their hand and congratulate them, knowing you did the best you could to win the game’.”

“I went into his office, and he took the form, signed it, reached into his top drawer and picked out an already created letter of recommendation for me and then personally delivered it to the chancery and then six years later I was ordained.”

“I had doubts; you know, Satan picked on me all the time and as my spiritual advisor said, ‘Obviously there’s something great God wants you to do and Satan’s trying to thwart Him’.”

“If you do see a sign and you do really feel God’s calling you this way and doors open and everything happens then, for sure, you’re going that way and just abide.”

“I think that people understanding that there’s something bigger than the football game or the baseball game or the basketball game, there’s appreciating the talent that God has given these people to do these things to keep us entertained and distracted for an hour or two or three is really important, especially in the society we’re in right now.”

Related link:

Deacons of Hope website

Steven Thomas

He spent years playing basketball, including grade school, high school, and college, and then went on to coach basketball for close to 15 years.  Along the way he also coached football, including jobs at two Catholic high schools.  Two years ago, he walked with a group of guys in the form of a cross across the United States, covering approximately 4,500 miles. He spent five years in the seminary, has written a novel called, “Catholic Joe: Superhero,” and is working on another book to be called, “The Team,” which he talks about during this interview.

Notable guest quotes:

“I went to all Catholic school until I got kicked out of Catholic school in sixth grade, and then they sent me to the public school.  And then I went to Catholic high school, which was just a really, really great influence on me.  And we had Nashville Dominicans.  I think it was their first year teaching at that school, Providence Catholic High School.  And just had some great role models.  Had a priest who was a principal, Father Kaffer, and he was very instrumental in my life, as well as Father Lee Ryan.  He was another person who had great influence, as well as one of the Nashville Dominicans, Sister Philip Joseph.  She was probably the most influential because she had such a presence and such a sense of peace.”

“The principal would always have, for instance, when we played football, would always have confessions and then Mass… He was like a father figure.  He ended up becoming bishop in our diocese in Joliet.  And he was there for me in a lot of different ways.”

“Basketball, for me, was kind of my outlet.  It was kind of my God, because I would turn to basketball when, you know, you start feeling down and whatnot.”

“I think I was 16, 17 years old.  I read this story of Fatima, and it just changed my life.”

“I would go at lunchtime, there were a lot of girls that were going to pray the rosary during lunch.  I would go in and pray the rosary at lunchtime and these girls were looking at me like, ‘What the hell is he doing here?’  But it was really where I would say God just kind of infused me with His grace.”

“When you experience God’s goodness and His love and His mercy, you want to kind of reciprocate.  You want to do, ‘What’s the best I could do for God?’  And I thought the best that I could do for Him was to be a priest.”

“I was… praying; I’m saying, ‘Blessed Mother, what’s something I could do just for your Son, just for Jesus?’  And the whole idea of a national eucharistic procession was really given to me, very powerfully.”

“We decided to walk in the form of a cross.  We had a relic of the true cross.  So, the cross that Jesus shed his blood on, we had a little tiny sliver of that cross, and we, basically, we prayed as we walked.  So, I walked from the east coast to the center.  So, we walked from the shrine of the Immaculate Conception to the grotto at Notre Dame.  It was about 650 miles.”

“When you see these teams that don’t really have any, like, really great superstars but they play so well as a team, there’s something so selfless and something so beautiful and holy about that.  And so, to me that’s just so, that’s just, again, to see everybody executing for the sake of the team and not themselves is a really awesome, beautiful thing.”

Related link:

Website for Steve’s book

Mark Bruener

He is a College Scout with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was a first round draft pick in the 1995 NFL Draft and went on to play nine years with Pittsburgh and then five years with the Houston Texans.  In total he played in 188 regular season games and five in the playoffs.  He also served on the NFL Players Association Executive Committee.  Back in his days as a student-athlete he played college football for the Washington Huskies, earning All-American honors in 1993.  Five years ago, he was enshrined in the Pacific Northwest Hall of Fame.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was raised in a Catholic household… I actually went to the same Catholic grade school that my dad went to [St. Mary’s Catholic School].  And I would joke … that the same nuns that taught him were teaching me.”

“The number of times that my dad was like, ‘All right, we’re going to go to church,’ and I would drag my feet and dread to go.  And then once I would get there, I was happy that he ended up making us go and was able to learn from him and learn from the priest and the church that we grew up in.”

“I played sports as a youth: soccer, little league baseball, and then basketball and flag football.  My first year of contact football wasn’t until seventh grade.  That’s just what was the way things were back then.  So, flag football was what I played as a youth growing up and then contact football for seventh and eighth grade. But basketball was my first love.”

“I was able to catch a touchdown from Billy Joe Hobert and it was right in the back of the end zone and there was just inches between my foot and the end line.  And that was the score that actually put us up and kind of gave us that momentum that we never gave up.  And so many great things about that game.  Obviously, you know, we beat Michigan.  We were national champions that year as a result of that game.”

“We talked about my childhood and the importance of going to church in the Catholic faith and in my family growing up.  That was something that my parents continued to instill in me, and I was involved with … the team chaplain at University of Washington at the time and still involved in different Bible studies and things.  So, I was able to continue with my faith there at the University of Washington, which I felt very fortunate of.”

(on being drafted into the NFL) “I was very much giving praise to God and praying that I would be selected and hoped to go to the right team because you don’t know, there’s 32 teams and you don’t know who you were going to go to.”

“I’m one of those people that likes to tackle adversity head on.  I know that when we hide from adversity it’s always going to be there, and I think you show your true colors when you deal with adversity, and I use my faith every day and I try to walk the walk and talk the talk to be an example of what a godly person is like.”

“It’s extremely important that you have something to fall back on, you have something that’s going to allow you to persevere.  And your faith is truly tested when you are faced with adversity because when the going’s good, when everything is good it’s easy to say, ‘Oh yeah, praise God, God’s great, look what He’s doing for me, He’s doing all these great things.’  And then when you are faced with adversity … that’s when you’re really tested and you’re sitting there saying to yourself, ‘Okay God, like, what’s going on here?  I thought things were really good going last week.  What did I do wrong’?”

“I would lean upon my faith a lot and say, ‘Hey God, thank you for the day you’ve given me and help me to be a shining light in what you want me to be for the people that I interact with’.”

“Every day I pray for my kids and for their happiness and pray for the happiness of our entire family.”

Related link:

Mark’s career NFL stats

(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)