I really love baseball. One time I screamed “GET OUT” so loudly in reaction to a close play on television that my housemate, who was outside of the house, heard me and thought a burglar was attacking me! The game I was watching wasn’t even a playoff game; it was a low-stakes, regular-season game in June.

Lunatic baseball fan that I am, you can only imagine my surprise when my love of the sport recently increased . . . dramatically.

Such was my reaction to reading The Glory of Their Times, a book of stories from the early days of baseball told by those who played the game. The death of Ty Cobb in 1961 directly inspired the writing of this book. After all, Cobb was one of the sport’s greatest hitters. Compare him to the other baseball players in the Hall of Fame, which has a .303 career batting average. Cobb’s? A staggering .366! He also did this over twenty-four years. It’s no wonder Cobb came up in pretty much every single interview unprompted. Cobb’s death signaled that an era of greatness was passing away, so a pressing question arose: Who would tell the stories of these men? Who would pass along the treasure trove of history and greatness they experienced? Who would proclaim the glory of their times? That’s why the death of Ty Cobb inspired the journalist Lawrence S. Ritter to travel 75,000 miles to interview 26 old-time ball players and hear their stories about America’s favorite pastime.

The desire to tell stories and pass them along to the next generation is a distinctively human inclination. The psalms express the deep gratitude we experience in hearing these consoling stories: “O God, we have heard with our own ears; our ancestors have told us the deeds you did in their days, with your own hand in days of old” (Ps 44:2). God’s glory shines forth when we tell the tales of his marvelous works, the tales of how his grace has transformed us and how his divine love has made us a new creation.

One of the great blessings of religious life is that I am the recipient of many great stories of my Dominican brothers and sisters who have gone before me: Saint Dominic, who received the Rosary from Our Lady; Blessed Jordan, who preached the Dominican vocation so powerfully that towns would run out of wool for making new religious habits; Saint Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologiae reaches out to the heights of heavenly doctrine; Blessed Imelda, who had such a great love of Jesus in the Eucharist that it was enough for her to receive Our Lord once to go straight to Heaven; and Saint Pius V, whose call to prayer warded off the entire Ottoman Empire, saving not only Christendom but all of Western Civilization. More recently, a member of our Province and the first bishop of Nashville, Bishop Richard Pius Miles, gave to his flock generously on the American frontier. His body was found incorrupt after 112 years of burial.

All these men and women shared God’s greatness with the world through their preaching and acts of charity. The stories of these saints merit being told to the ends of the earth because they all cared about the most important thing: God. Ty Cobb could hit a baseball better than anyone on the planet, and his career is justly remembered as one of the best. But if Cobb should be remembered for hitting a baseball with regularity, how much more should the lives of the saints be remembered for their love of God. By remembering those holy men and women who have gone before us, they will serve as an inspiration for us to be holy.

Cobb was remembered in The Glory of Their Times, but it is only the saints who will be remembered for all time, giving glory to God forever in the joy of the beatific vision.

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Image: National Photo Company, Ty Cobb Sliding into Third Base