We are wealthy beyond understanding. If we had everything taken away from us today and we lived another hundred years, we could never sufficiently thank God for all that he has given us to this point in time. It is mortifying to consider how often we complain about this discomfort or that inconvenience in our daily lives when we have so much to be thankful for. With umbrellas down, let us be overwhelmed with gratitude by recognizing the infinite blessings in our lives.
Consider Irish 1500 meters runner Ron Delaney who prior to the start of his Olympic race said, “I resigned myself quietly to the will of God and prayed not so much for victory but the grace to run up to my capabilities.” After winning the 1500 meters Gold Medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, Delaney knelt down in prayer of thanksgiving because, “I had to say, ‘Thank you,’ to God for the gift I was given.” It is worth noting that John Landy, legendary miler and man of virtue who lost to Delaney, came to his aid not realizing he was praying.
However, in recent years there seems to be less tolerance for athletes who publicly discuss their belief in God or engage in public displays of devotion. Tim Tebow rocked the NFL with his dramatic, unorthodox come-from-behind wins to lead the Denver Broncos to the playoffs but he was continually criticized for displaying signs of his faith on the sidelines or after a game. Commentators were leery of him, believing he must have some ulterior motive. No one in the NFL could actually be trying to live a good and moral life, right?
In the 2008 Beijing Olympics the Chinese government tried to discourage displays of faith by citing the recently modified Olympic Charter to prohibit “political, religious or racial propaganda.” Clearly this is not what the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, believed the Games were meant to do. During a 1935 radio broadcast on the sixtieth anniversary of the Games he said:
The first essential characteristic of the Modern Olympics is that, like the Olympics of ancient Greece, they constitute a religion… It is in this principle that all the religious observances which go to make up the ceremonial of the Modern Games have their origin. I have had to fight to render these observances acceptable to the world one by one, public opinion remaining for a considerable time antagonistic towards them, while seeing in them mere theatrical shows, purposeless spectacles quite out of keeping with the solemn dignity of international sporting competitions. The idea of the interdependence of religion and sport, this ‘religio athletae’, has taken a long time to achieve assimilation into the minds of the competitors and there are still many of them who do not put it into practice, except unconsciously; but they will gradually come round to it.
He would be happy to know that many athletes are living the example that he hoped they would. When asked about her genuflection and prayer of gratitude after an Olympic race, Sanya Richards said: “It’s important because I want people to know that I’m not the best because I’m Sanya Richards. I’m the best because of God. I truly believe we can’t will ourselves to win. I hope people see the same thing I see.” Perhaps more importantly, she expresses the same faith when facing difficult times. After a particularly disappointing finish in the Beijing Olympic Games she said, “I’ve learned that God is always on time! Sometimes things happen that we can’t understand, and we think that God has forgotten about us, but that is never true. We must go through different seasons to truly appreciate how God is working everything out for us. In the meantime, we must thank God in all things!”
Perhaps this reality is captured best in the greatest sports quote of all time which came from the most unlikely source imaginable, Pope Pius XII in an address to a group of male soccer coaches entitled Sport at the Service of the Spirit:
“Sport, properly directed, develops character, makes a man courageous, a generous loser, and a gracious victor; it refines the senses, gives intellectual penetration, and steels the will to endurance. It is not merely a physical development then. Sport, rightly understood, is an occupation of the whole man, and while perfecting the body as an instrument of the mind, it also makes the mind itself a more refined instrument for the search and communication of truth and helps man to achieve that end to which all others must be subservient, the service and praise of his Creator.”
For those who still believe we should banish all forms of faith from the playing fields, consider the wisdom of the Duke of Sutherland’s remarks concerning Eric Liddle who refused to run on Sunday at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games, “The ‘lad’ as you call him is a true man of principles and a true athlete. His speed is a mere extension of his life, its force. We sought to sever his running from himself.” Have we come to believe that you can sever one from the other? R. Emmett Tyrrel, founder and editor-in-chief of the American Spectator summed it up nicely when he wrote, “Thanking God for victory after an event, or asking for his help before an event, is not ‘propaganda’ as mentioned in the revised Olympic charter. It is prayer. Where prayer is viewed unfavorably no civilized person should want to be.”
On the other hand, if an athlete attributes his success to his lucky socks that he hasn’t washed in six years or an entire team turns their baseball caps inside out and upside down, it is considered cool, even worthy of imitation. If people come to a game in sub-freezing temperatures with their half naked bodies painted in team colors, they are seen as loyal and true fans. But if a player kneels down or blesses himself he is either a con artist or a religious fanatic.
We all want to believe in something beyond ourselves but it seems that we tend to fill the void with something less than the real thing or with some kind of counterfeit. Maybe it is more comfortable for some people to discuss and participate in rituals and superstitions than to think about God and their ultimate purpose in life. It somehow seems easier or less personal to attach our hopes to “lucky” objects or behaviors.
Interestingly the criticism about religion being a crutch seems odd since players come to completely depend on some fabricated ritual or object to help them perform well. The player who has to touch his leg, then his elbow, then his helmet, tap the plate, dig his shoes into the dirt exactly four times, in sequence, before every pitch, in order to hit well has made up his own religion.
The reason he does this is to try to ease the pressure that he is feeling to perform well. Instead of controlling the situation, he abdicates his responsibility and hands over his destiny to the object or the ritual. If he strikes out the first thing he does is to check to make sure that he is actually wearing his lucky socks. If he is, then he has to figure out why they didn’t work! If he gets a hit he says, “I knew it, these socks are golden. They can’t miss!” If he does well he is lucky. If something bad happens, “Why did God let that happen?” We should at least be fair and attribute either both to luck or to God.
The phrase “life is stranger than fiction,” is really an acknowledgement that Divine Providence is always at work and, more often than not, beyond our ability to predict or understand it. A couple of years ago I met Rich Donnelly when we were inducted into the Sports Faith International Hall of Fame and heard a remarkable story about his daughter Amy.
Rich’s life is a story of the prodigal son’s returned. From 1985 to 1996 he was the third base coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 1992 after a spring training workout in Bradenton, FL, Rich was sitting on the floor of his apartment when he received a call from his daughter Amy. With eight children this didn’t seem unusual because he was getting calls from them all the time. She said, “Hi Dad, I have something to tell you.” He thought, “At seventeen years of age this could be anything.” She said, “Dad… I have a brain tumor… and I am sorry.” He sat there momentarily stunned by the devastating news. Then he said, “What do you have to be sorry for?” But that was Amy, more concerned about her Dad, and always thinking about others first. A week later she had surgery. When the operation was over the surgeon came out and told Rich and his wife that they were not able to get all of the tumor and that she only had about nine months to live.
They were crushed
by the news but resolved to fight it. Amy immediately began the long and debilitating treatment at Children’s Hospital in Dallas. Rich continued working to support the family and provide for Amy’s needs and the rest of the family did all they could to be there for her. The Pirates were scheduled to play the Atlanta Braves for the National League pennant. Rich had a dear friend in Dallas who offered to fly Amy up to see the fifth game of the series. The chemo therapy was taking its toll on Amy. She had lost all of her hair and she was feeling very weak but she never showed it. She was just happy to be there with her Dad and away from the hospital for a couple of days. Rich was so happy that Amy was there and winning the game was like icing on the cake.
She and her Dad were driving home after the game, when Amy, who was in the back seat, leaned forward and asked, “Dad, when you have a man on second base and you get in that stance of yours, in the third base coaching box, and cup your hands around your mouth and yell out to him, what are you telling those guys, ‘The chicken runs at midnight’ or what?” Rich said, “What? Where the heck did you get that one?” Amy laughed, “I don’t know it just came out.”
The next day Amy headed back to Texas to continue her treatment. When Rich arrived in the dugout for the seventh game of the National League Championship Series, someone handed him a message that had come into the club house. It simply read, “The chicken runs at midnight. Love Amy.” While he was still staring at it and smiling, Pirates second baseman Jose Lind, who spoke very little English, came over to ask, “What’s that?” Rich, half talking and laughing to himself, said, “The chicken runs at midnight” Moments later, as Jose ran onto the field to start the game he yelled out for everyone to hear, “Okay, let’s go! The chicken runs at midnight!” Even though no one knew what it meant, it sounded funny and everyone on the team seemed to adopt it. Going into the ninth inning the Pirates were winning 2-0. Rich had told Amy before she left, “If we make it to the World Series, you are coming!” With one out to go, the Braves rallied from behind and ended up winning the game on an RBI single by Francisco Cabrera. Rich’s season was over. No World Series for Amy.
The next three months went all too fast for Rich and his family. Amy’s condition had gradually worsened and in early January, she slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness. On January 23, 1993 Amy passed away. Shortly after the funeral, the Donnellys all went to the cemetery to pick out the marker for Amy’s grave. Rich said, “The people at the cemetery wanted to put all of these flowery phrases on her tombstone. We said, ‘No, no, no! We are going to change things up. We want you to put The chicken runs at midnight on her gravestone.’”
It was extraordinarily difficult to cope with Amy’s death but the Donnellys did their best to go on. Rich continued as the third base coach with the Pirates for two more seasons before moving on to the Florida Marlins with team manager Jim Leyland. The Marlins had only been in existence since 1992, but by 1997 they found themselves in the playoffs against the Atlanta Braves. This time, Rich was on the winning side as the Marlins won the series 4-2.
The 1997 World Series was one of the most exciting ever played. The Marlins won the first game of the best-of-seven series. The Cleveland Indians battled back and took the second game. Back and forth they went, trading wins until they arrived at the decisive seventh game. The Indians had a big third inning to take a 2-0 lead. In the seventh inning, Marlins outfielder Bobby Bonilla sent one into the stands to make it 2-1. Cleveland’s star closer, Jose Mesa, was sent to the mound in the bottom of the ninth to close out the series. Moises Alou led off for the Marlins with a single to center field. Bonilla then struck out swinging for the first out. Catcher Charlie Johnson singled and moved Alou to third base. With men on first and third, Craig Counsell came to the plate and hit a towering shot that drove right fielder Mannny Ramirez back to the warning track for the second out. But it was deep enough bring Alou home and tie the game at 2-2.
Into extra innings they went but neither team could score in the tenth. In the bottom of the eleventh with the score still tied the Marlins came to bat. Bonilla led off with a single. Greg Zaun attempted to bunt him over to second, but popped it up to pitcher Charles Nagy for the first out. Counsell followed with what should have been an inning ending double play but second baseman Tony Fernandez misplayed the routine ground ball allowing Counsell to reach first and Bonilla to advance to third. With one out, the Indians decided to intentionally walk the next batter. With bases loaded, Devon White hit a ground ball and Bonilla was retired at home plate on a fielder’s choice for the second out. Shortstop Edgar Renteria then came to the plate and hit a high bouncing ground ball right towards the pitcher. Nagy threw up his glove and grazed the ball, but was unable to stop it from sailing into center field. A hit! Counsell ran home and the Marlins had won the World Series!
Seventh game of the World Series, tie score, bottom of the eleventh inning, two outs, and Rich Donnelly waves home Craig Counsell from third base to win the game. Counsell, also known as the “Chicken,” had been given the nickname by Rich’s son Tim Donnelly because he flapped his left elbow like a chicken before every pitch. When Counsell leaped into the air and landed on home plate, the euphoric fans and players went wild. Everyone was jumping up and down and yelling. Rich said, “I was running around grabbing people, kissing and hugging people, I didn’t know who’s who. All of a sudden I see my son, Tim and he’s running at me. Something is wrong. He’s crying. He’s screaming. Something’s wrong. I’m thinking he should be happy but he’s screaming and crying. I shout above the roar, ‘What’s wrong?’ He says, ‘Dad, look!’ ‘Look where,’ I say? He says, ‘Look behind you!’ I look around to see the stadium clock, it’s twelve o’clock! Tim said, ‘Dad, the chicken runs at midnight! The chicken runs at midnight!’
I went from complete joy to feeling like all the air had just been sucked out of my body.” The “Chicken,” Craig Counsell, had scored the winning run at midnight, just as Amy had said four years earlier. As Rich’s voices cracks, he says, “Amy knew how much it would mean to me to win a World Series. She had to be there with me, I have no doubt in my mind that she was.”
Amy’s death and her prophetic line, the chicken runs at midnight, forever changed Rich Donnelly. He had drifted away from God and had become self absorbed. He said, “Amy taught me that here are two kinds of people in the world, those who are humble, and those who are about to be. In my life, it was “about to be.” My ego had gotten out of hand and it’s a shame that it took her death to bring me down to where I could say, ‘Hey, you ain’t what you think you are. It’s not about you. It’s about everyone else. It’s about doing the right thing.” Somehow God brought good out of suffering. Rich’s faith has been renewed and strengthened and he found that Amy’s story has helped so many parents cope with the loss of their child. Amy, who wanted to be a teacher and lived everyday like it was her birthday, is still teaching and still giving.
After the celebration ended, Rich and his two sons, Tim and Mike, sat in the car thinking about Amy and wishing they could call her. Rich pulled out the note that he always carried in his pocket which read, “Dear Dad, The chicken runs at midnight, Love Amy.” They sat there a little longer wishing the moment of celebration with her would never end but it never really would. Rich still carries Amy’s note in his pocket to this day. She is with him night and day reminding him that there are no accidents, only Divine Providence.
There may be no one who knew that better than Job. In Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence, Father Jean Baptiste Saint Jure, S.J., wrote,
We have a celebrated example [of absolute faith and trust] in Job. He loses his children and his possessions; he falls from the height of fortune to the depths of poverty. And he says, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. As it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” “Note,” observes St. Augustine, “Job does not say, ‘The Lord gave and the devil hath taken away’ but says, wise that he is, ‘The Lord gave me my children and my posse
ssions, and it is He who has taken them away; it has been done as it pleased the Lord.’”
You may find it comforting to know that if you are struggling or suffering greatly, you are not alone. Like Job, there are countless men and women who accepted God’s will in all things and chose to use their suffering for the good of others.
Walter J. Ciszek, S.J. was just such a man. He endured more than twenty years of torture and hard labor in Soviet prisons and Siberian labor camps and survived to write about them in two books, He Leadeth Me and With God in Russia. These are must reads if you want to understand how someone can cope with physical, mental and spiritual pain while living through numerous near death experiences and still come out loving people.
Rick Strom a ten year NFL veteran and former back-up quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers said, “I read He Leadeth Me before every preseason training camp. I thought, ‘My God, if Walter Ciszek could shovel coal for twelve hours a day while living on bread crusts and still find God’s will, then certainly as a well paid professional athlete, I could go out on a hot practice field and perform at the very best of my ability without complaining or griping about it.’ ”
Each time Rick read He Leadeth Me it reminded him that no matter how hot, tired, and painful the two-a-day practices might be, they could not begin to approach the ordeal that Fr. Ciszek endured for twenty three years! As you are reading the book, with each paragraph, you will think, “How did he survive this, and then this, and this?” The only answer can be found in Fr. Ciszek’s own words,
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