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David Phelps admits he didn’t often go to Mass on Sundays growing up. It wasn’t until he got to the University of Notre Dame that the New York Yankees pitcher started to realize its importance in his life.
It is a phenomenon Msgr. Leslie Ivers, pastor of Epiphany parish in Manhattan, has observed himself. A lot of kids who don’t attend Mass regularly on Sundays offer the same excuse—sports.
On Easter Sunday, April 20, Msgr. Ivers was handed a golden opportunity to do something about it. He noticed a pretty young woman, a regular at Mass, with her two daughters. Dad was not with them. He’d seen her there with her two daughters a couple of times before, minus dad. After Mass, he casually asked if her husband traveled a lot. “Yes,” she replied, “My husband works for the New York Yankees.”
The old sports excuse again? Not quite.
Because David Phelps does attend Mass when he’s on the road with the Yankees. One of the first things he does when the team gets to a new city is seek out the Catholic Church closest to the stadium. On Easter Sunday he and the Yankees were in Tampa Bay. That is how Msgr. Ivers, a huge Yankees fan himself, came to ask the young mother if she’d ask a favor of her famous husband. Would he mind coming to Epiphany parish school to tell the Upper School students that it is beneficial to fit weekly Mass into your busy sports and social calendar?
On May 14 the Yankees pitcher, then in the middle of the Subway Series, took time to address a rapt gymnasium of sixth- , seventh- and eighth-graders.
He didn’t make any excuses for his truancy from Mass as a youngster.
“I didn’t go to church on Sundays growing up,” he frankly admitted.
“I was raised Catholic,” he later told CNY. “Made my first Communion, was confirmed, I took all the steps but my faith was never something that was important in my life. And then I got to Notre Dame and every dorm on campus had a chapel that had (Mass) on Sunday. And I always felt kind of out of place because I didn’t go to church.”
A college roommate, the son of a Protestant pastor, got him interested in going back to church. “I realized that it was something I needed in my life,” he said. He started attending his friend’s church and going to Notre Dame’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings.
His future wife, Maria, brought him back to the Catholic faith. Both acknowledged their relationship did not get off to the best start. Brought together by happenstance, for a project in their political science class, David Phelps didn’t exactly impress the attractive coed he had the fortune to be teamed up with when he told her he hadn’t bothered to read the assignment the professor had given them.
“My education was definitely a priority to me so it made me a little bit skeptical,” she admitted. “It was a bad first impression.”
“For a full year she blew me off just about every month,” he said. Eventually Maria’s sister, who also attended Christian Athletes meetings, told her Phelps “was a nice guy.”
“His faith was important to him. He was part of Christian Athletes at Notre Dame with my sister and he was just always open to having conversations about everything so it was very natural and as we talked about our faith he realized he wanted to come back fully into the Catholic Church,” Mrs. Phelps recalled.
Phelps said that while he will always be thankful to his friend for bringing him back to Christ, he felt something was missing.
“Being with Maria and getting back into the Catholic faith I realized what was missing was the Eucharist,” he said.
Academics had always been important to Phelps, his one minor indiscretion not withstanding.
“You really have to take school seriously,” he told the Epiphany students, who hung on every word. “Because I wouldn’t have been able to play at Notre Dame had I not taken my academics seriously. It taught me how far I could push myself. And that just kind of carried over into athletics.”
Phelps, his wife Maria, and his two daughters, Adeline, 2 and Eloise, 5 months, seemed to thoroughly enjoy their visit to Epiphany School. They are parishioners at the East Side parish. Following David’s presentation, he and his wife stayed for approximately 45 more minutes fielding a torrent of questions from the thrilled students, posing for pictures and signing autographs.
“They were just really good questions,” he told CNY as he gathered up his daughters’ toys in the stairwell off the gym. “They were asking questions about my faith and about my baseball career. You want to take time to answer those.”
One girl for example, wanted to know if his faith impacted how he played baseball.
“Yes it does impact the way I play,” he responded. “Maybe not so much the way I play but the way I conduct myself on the field. The biggest thing for me is controlling my emotions when I’m on the mound. And a lot of times when I’m out there I’m thinking about people like you. If I freak out and slam stuff down and I’m out there cursing I think about what kind of role model I’m being by doing that, what kind of example I’m setting.”
He said his faith was about more than being a good role model. “I think one of the biggest things I can stress to you guys is that it’s incredibly important to make time for God in your everyday life,” he said. “We’ve all got so many things to do, whether it be homework, talking to your friends, watching TV whatever, we really have to take time out of every day to make time for God because what I realized through my life is that when I open my heart to his will that is when I really feel like I’m the most fulfilled. Our faith isn’t just some abstract thing that we’re only experiencing when we go to Church. It is something that we have to live, that we have to pursue.”
The message seemed to get through to the students.
“It really inspired me to work hard in school and keep up my religious studies,” said Michael Reardon, 12, a seventh-grader who is also a swimmer and basketball player.
“It was really motivating,” added Conor Mangon, an eighth-grade student and CYO basketball player, “Maybe I’ll start going to Mass more often.”
“It motivated me to go church on Sundays,” said seventh-grader Claire Barbraca. “I was really impressed. I couldn’t believe he stayed so long and he was taking pictures with everybody.”
That was just what Msgr. Ivers had hoped for.
“Well, if one student starts coming to church as a result of this talk then David Phelps hit a home run here today,” he said, “even though he’s a pitcher.”
