(spectator speaks indistinctly) (baseball bat thumps) (crowd cheers and applauds) - [Annie] I've tried them all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul day in, day out is the Church of Baseball.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - [Narrator] Baseball and religion, two things that we don't usually connect in any significant way, but there are similarities, surprising similarities between them that are many and varied.

(bright music continues) Every religion and every culture has traditions and experiences that are beyond description that bring the devout to another more spiritual dimension.

The same is true in baseball.

- [Commentator] Oh my!

Are you serious?

(bright music continues) (bright music continues) - It's my hope that people, maybe because they're interested in baseball and they devour everything or maybe because they're interested in religion and they devour everything, but it's my hope that they will be surprised how baseball operates in the same way religion does.

(baseball bat thumps) - [Commentator] (indistinct) High into right field.

That ball is still going!

It's way back, high up in there!

He did it!

Hobbs did it!

(electricity crackling) (bright music) - And they will begin to experience things much more richly.

(electricity crackling) (bright music continues) (bright music) (bright music continues) (sprinklers sloshing) (bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (car horns honking) For over two decades, I've taught a course at NYU titled Baseball as a Road to God.

At the foundation of that course is a single word.

Ineffable, ineffable.

The ineffable is that which is real to us, but which we can't put into words or thoughts.

The ineffable is experienced.

If you wanna know about ineffability in your lives, think of love.

(bright music) Try to put love into words.

Poets do, musicians do, artists do, but you never really can capture love in those words.

I've been blessed with a love affair in my life with my Lisa.

But I didn't come to know that Lisa loved me, she didn't come to know that I loved her by some conversation.

We just came to know it with a certitude because we experienced it.

It's the ineffable.

(bright music continues) Both baseball and religion have sacred times and sacred places, and, of course, what's sacred for one person may be nothing special for another.

Think here Uluru, the magnificent place in Australia where as you're walking through the outback and all of that wilderness, suddenly on the horizon and then closer and closer emerges this huge mound, this beautiful geological phenomena in bright orange in the bright sun.

That to the native Australians, the longest continuous civilization in the world, that is sacred.

Now, I'm a Catholic.

If I were walking through the outback towards Uluru, and my native Australian guide, he would be seeing a sacred place.

I would be seeing a beautiful manifestation of geology.

On the other hand, if I took out the bread and the wine of the Eucharist, he would think I was eating lunch.

(bright music continues) - [Narrator] A sacred place is revered in a way that elevates it beyond just rock, concrete, wood, and steel.

- Every religion has its sacred space and one enters into that space in order to be blessed.

And the baseball diamond is that place.

Entering the stands is passing into the sacred domain, and that's a vision that you never forget.

This is a vision of the sacred, and then the whole field is revealed to you, and that becomes the domain in in which you find meaning.

- Wrigley Field.

The ivy.

Yankee Stadium with the balustrade.

Fenway Park with the monster in left field.

Each of these is a sacred place.

- Dodger Stadium might be a sacred place depending on how much you have to pay for parking.

- The ballpark itself becomes a cathedral.

When you think about some of these other great stadiums, they mean something to people.

People go on pilgrimages to get there.

The cathedrals themselves become the location of this kind of devotion.

And therefore, what was once maybe ordinary becomes extraordinary.

(bright music) - [Narrator] There is something special about being in such a sacred space to worship your team with other fans.

(crowd cheers and applauds) The sights and sounds of a day at the ballpark are magical.

But there is far more going on at the ballpark than just keeping an eye on the ball.

This experience doesn't happen for everyone in every ballpark every time, but it can happen to anyone in any ballpark at any time.

A sacred time is marked by tradition, ceremony, and spiritual significance.

For people of faith, it is Christmas, Easter, the High Holy Days, the Festival of Lights, the Buddhist New Year, and Ramadan.

- What are the Passovers, the Christmases, the Ramadans, the Saturnalias of baseball?

Well, it's opening day.

(bright music) - I have friends that go to opening day.

Their father went with their father.

They take their kids for opening day.

Been three or four generations of being with your kid and buying some hot dogs and some soda and sitting there and rooting for your team.

- It's like a flower blooming.

You know, all of a sudden it's, "Here we go."

Everybody starts fresh.

Everybody has the same record, and now let's see how good we are.

(bright music continues) - Opening day in St.

Louis is a tradition like no other.

They bring the Cardinals Hall of Famers out in their red jackets and they're introduced one by one and they meet at home plate.

And then they bring out the Clydesdales.

43,000 people are standing, clapping, filming, and crying.

(bright music continues) It's rebirth, it's renewal, it's hope, it's optimism, it's a new start, it's a fresh year, and this is gonna be our year.

- My first ever Major League opening day is 2006.

And mind you, it's Kansas City in late March, early April.

The sun is out, but it is still cold.

And I'm leading off for the Detroit Tigers that day.

So I'm out there.

They're doing the anthem and the stealth bomber just flies over.

I felt like it took over the whole stadium like an eclipse.

And then all of a sudden, my eyes start watering.

I go, "What's going on?

Like, is it windy?

Is it that cold?"

And I can't say I was crying, but it definitely wasn't the elements.

I just remembered that moment, like, "Wow, you know, you fought to be in this moment.

You dreamt of these moments."

I never thought that that reality would come, but here it was.

(bright music) - [Narrator] The World Series is another sacred time.

- The World Series is the reason you play.

It is to get to the Promised Land I guess you could say.

- [Narrator] Making it to the World Series means that one's hope and faith have been rewarded.

Winning the World Series means that one's dreams have come true.

(bright music continues) - I grew up in Brooklyn and anybody will tell you if you grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s, your religion was the Brooklyn Dodgers.

- [Vendor] Hot dogs!

Hot dogs!

- [Narrator] Starting in 1947, the Brooklyn Dodgers emerged as one of the better teams in baseball.

They faced the New York Yankees in the World Series four times, losing each of them.

And yet faith, hope, and optimism for the team remained constant.

- So it comes to 1955 and the Dodgers and Yankees were playing each other in the World Series, and as you build towards the high holy days of the World Series, that was almost a religion in Brooklyn.

It's game seven.

The nuns that taught us would allow us to listen to the radio.

Unfortunately, this day, our eighth grade class had done something to irritate Sister St.

James, and she said, "No World Series."

So we were in agony.

My best friend Dougy and I ran to my home, and we went down into the basement.

We took down a metal crucifix from the wall, and we knelt down on the ground next to the radio.

As the ninth inning came, it was still two to nothing.

The Dodgers were winning, and we held that crucifix in dynamic tension between the two of us, and we prayed out loud between each pitch.

- [Commentator] Bill Skowron bounces to Podres, and Johnny finally makes the throw to first.

- One out.

(baseball bat thuds) - [Commentator] Bob Cerv sends an easy fly to Zimmer.

(crowd cheers) - Two outs.

Ground ball to Pee Wee Reese.

Throws it to Gil Hodges.

The Dodgers have won the World Series, October the 4th, 1955!

The most sacred day in the history of baseball for sure, and probably one of the 12 most, I do 12 for the Apostles, sacred days in the history of the world!

(bright music) (crowd cheers and applauds) (bright music) - [Narrator] It was one short phrase, possibly uttered in jest.

- I came to the ballpark that day all fired up.

I was in an extremely good mood.

And I was out here in the outfield during batting practice hollering to the different players on the club and to the fans that, "You gotta believe," you know?

"You gotta believe."

(bright music) (crowd cheers and applauds) - [Narrator] In July of 1973, the New York Mets are a mediocre team at the bottom of a mediocre division.

But Tug McGraw's declaration becomes a rallying cry, first for the team, then for all of New York.

- "You gotta believe.

You gotta believe."

This was his way of expressing faith.

And from that July moment, with no real basis in the record or the talent of the team, the team began to believe.

It wasn't the miracle year for the Mets, that was 1969, but it was a year that they went from that deep spot in the standings to win the National League title and get into the World Series.

(bright music) (crowd cheers and applauds) Faith is ineffable.

- Faith is about more than facts.

Faith is about the way one looks at the world, engages others, where hope and confidence coincide, where faith emerges as more than a concept, it becomes a way of life.

- [Narrator] The Italian philosopher Thomas Aquinas said it best.

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary.

To one without faith, no explanation is possible."

Faith, true faith, deals with that which is not knowable in any scientific sense but which devout believers know is absolutely true.

(train tracks clacking) - It's 2003.

Game seven of the American League Championship Series.

We're at Yankee Stadium.

It's the eleventh inning.

Game is tied.

The intensity is building.

This is the seventh game.

This is the deciding game.

Whoever wins an inning is going to win the series.

And the Yankees, the home team, are coming to bat, and in the on deck circle is a man named Aaron Boone.

- He was so pumped up.

If you threw the rosin bag up there, he was gonna swing hard.

Tim Wakefield's in the game, who has given us problems all year because he's a knuckleball pitcher, and, you know, we didn't do very well against him.

So I just tried to think of what I could tell Boonie to sort of slow him down.

(crowd cheers and applauds) We always felt that we had an advantage at Yankee Stadium because of the ghosts of days past and that still haunt the opposition.

- And the captain Derek Jeter goes over to Boone, and he says, "The ghosts are coming."

(dramatic music) (crowd cheers and applauds) He didn't name the ghosts, but "the ghosts are coming."

There are monuments out there in Monument Park behind the center field fence.

The names of the great saints of the Yankees.

Jeter's conjuring up that he's having faith.

He's not saying, "You gotta believe," like Tug McGraw, but he's having faith, and Boone, who is perhaps the weakest hitter in the Yankee lineup, goes to the plate.

(crowd cheers and applauds) (dramatic music continues) - [Commentator] I tell you, they were five outs away in the eighth inning, leading by three as Boone hits it to deep left.

That might send the Yankees to the World Series.

Boone, the hero in game seven!

(bright music) (crowd cheers and applauds) - It's unbelievable.

And like Derek told me, the ghosts will show up eventually, and they did, man.

This is stupid.

(bright music continues) - The ghosts came.

(bright music) - I grew up here in New York City.

My parents abandoned me.

I was homeless.

I lived in a cardboard box for several years.

I was a heroin addict for a lot of years.

If it had not been for my walk with the Lord, I'd probably be dead or dying of AIDS or doing life in jail.

(bright music continues) Here I am, the chaplain to the New York Yankees.

We do chapel service on Sunday.

I get to Yankee Stadium and we bring a message to them.

And then from there, we run down to the other side and do chapel with the opponent team.

And in my case, I do chapel in English and then I do chapel in Spanish.

But chapel's just a very small part of it.

Really, the meat of it is relational.

People see all the glamour of baseball players, but it's a lot to being a ball player and the pressures that come with it.

When they're having a problem, I just wanna be there.

I want to listen.

Sometimes you're better off listening than opening up your mouth.

I pray to God that I have the wisdom to say proper words to them to help them get through it.

That's my job.

Oh, man, how much more spiritual do you want it to be, brother?

(chuckles) - I think having beliefs, having faith, is so crucial in life, but in baseball as well.

I always identified strongly as a Jewish kid.

As a player, it became such a big part of my identity as I traveled around North America and I was proud of it and embraced it.

One season, it was the first time that Yom Kippur conflicted with a game, which is kind of bizarre after my sixth or seventh season and it never conflicted.

But now, this year it had, and I had been debating what to do.

Sandy Koufax was someone I got to know as soon as I became a Dodger and went to spring training.

He would come out there for a number of days, lending his advice and hanging out and just being a good former Dodger.

I talked to him about his decision to sit out on Yom Kippur.

He told me, "You gotta do what's most consistent with your beliefs."

If I play the game, I felt that was a disserve to all the Jewish kids that were looking up to me as a Jewish role model.

So I decided I'm gonna sit the game out, just acknowledge, like, hey, I'm a Jewish player, and I identify strongly as a Jewish player, and I respect my faith.

For me, it was the right decision.

(bright music) - Faith is being a Mets fan (chuckles).

- Oh, faith?

Chicago Cubs fans.

Just the belief that if we keep going and we hope and pray and wait long enough, good things will happen.

- Faith is believing that no matter what happened last year, you know, April brings a new day and October can also bring a new day once you've gotten through the playoffs.

- One of the leading sports psychologists in the world studying this topic told me very bluntly, you know, "If sports fans weren't optimistic, there would be no sports fans," right?

You know, 'cause baseball in particular, you're hanging on the next pitch, the next inning, the next game, the next month, and, ultimately, the next season.

(bright music continues) - [Narrator] Faith is the total giving of oneself to an idea, to a group, to a higher power.

But there can be no faith without its eternal companion.

- Doubt is a central component of faith.

The more we doubt, the more we can grow in our faith.

Every cleric I've ever met in my life, every imam, every priest, every nun, every monk, every spiritual figure, when you get in a closed conversation with them, will talk about doubt as being something that drives them.

- In baseball, doubt is a part of every inning.

You doubt that you will get the third out.

You doubt that your pitcher will strike out the cleanup hitter.

You doubt that the manager will pull the right string in terms of the pinch hitter at the next inning.

- I experienced a lot of doubt as a player.

And I know that every player experienced tons of doubt.

- There's a lot of doubt always around us.

There's people writing stories that are saying that you can't, you won't, you never will.

You hear it, you read it.

- There's no question your mind rules your body.

I don't think there's any question.

And if you want to go on smaller, you know, more individual terms, I mean, you're in a slump.

And then once you start thinking about, "What am I doing wrong," you're doing too much thinking.

- It can consume, it can make you forget how great you are.

But we also can't let it snowball and take over.

- You only get so much time at this stuff and you don't want to be your own worst enemy.

I think you become a better player when you learn how to deal with setbacks and failure.

And it goes for people who aren't in the game too.

It makes you stronger, being able to bounce back, 'cause that's what separates the great from the good.

(bright music) - To get rid of the doubts was having experience and going through it enough times.

So I think that's what wisdom is as a baseball player and I think a lot in life is to have been through enough times where you have to pick yourself back up, knowing that everything's gonna be okay and it's gonna turn around.

(bright music) - Yeah, life is full of doubts, man.

You know, the goal is not to doubt, but to trust.

- I think doubt is very important to keeping ourselves in check and to being realistic about situations.

But doubt can also be obviously very damaging, mentally damaging.

Doubt is imposter syndrome.

Doubt is believing you don't deserve to be there, everything that you've accomplished up until that point has either been luck or someone helping you.

(bright music continues) I did have one thing I wanted to talk about if that's okay.

So I have a Yankees tattoo (chuckles).

It seems like it's just one of those, like, kind of obnoxious fan things, but 2009 was a really hard year for me.

(gentle music) Three years earlier, I was sexually assaulted in college and then PTSD really started to hit me in 2009.

So I withdrew from regular school and I went into inpatient treatment and I did intensive therapy and all of that.

All of these big ambitions I had, all of these things that I thought I was going to accomplish were completely off the table now.

And you doubt yourself, you doubt your circumstances, you doubt every decision you've ever made.

(crowd cheers) - [Narrator] To the second baseman, Cano.

The Yankees are back on top!

World Champions for the 27th time.

- And the Yankees winning the World Series in 2009 felt like a win for me, and I can't explain that.

I know it's super irrational, but it felt like this was something that was given to me to show me that something good could happen in my life and that good things could still happen in my life after that.

So when I got the Yankees tattoo, it was a reminder of that, and to me it's a symbol of victory, obviously, victory for the Yankees winning the World Series, victory for me as a fan, but victory for me over what had happened to me, and it's reinforcing for me who I am and who I will always be, and that's why I got that tattoo.

(gentle music continues) (bright music) - [Narrator] We all have them, a fixed set of actions that are done the same way every time.

Rituals motivate and move us.

They help us cope with the unknown.

They help orient us in time and space.

- For a spiritual community, there are an incredible number of rituals.

Rituals pervade the services of a congregation.

The opening prayers to the reverence accorded to the reading of texts.

There is comfort in knowing that the ancestors who have gone before have struggled and wrestled and resolved in ways that we can continue to find meaningful.

- Rituals in Judaism are really key.

People who don't believe in God at all have a Passover Seder every year.

They'll go to synagogue on Yom Kippur even if they never go to synagogue in any other time of the year.

These are touchstones that become part of who we are.

- A ritual is a way for us to organize our world.

Like, I can't control the chaos of the world and the universe, but I can control that I wake up every day and do something at eight in the morning.

I walk my dog at the same time or I have breakfast at the same time or I meditate at the same time.

- [Joe] The ballpark is filled with rituals.

♪ Were so gallantly streaming - From the singing of the national anthem before the game, which kind of gives it a national consecration, to the throwing out of the first pitch (bright music) to the seventh inning stretch when everyone stands and sings, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

(bright music) - Baseball players, more so than most other athletes, are extremely superstitious.

Partly because if you change one tiny thing, everything changes in your delivery or your movement or your swing or something like that.

Partly because some weird stuff happens in baseball and sometimes there's not an explanation other than the baseball gods, right?

- I had a lot of rituals.

Kind of tapped my toes once as I walked up to home plate.

And then once in the batter's box, it's always the same.

You know, I would touch the bat to the end of the plate and kinda have the same amount of movements of the bat.

- As a manager, what I did when we were home, my wife Ali and I would stop in our favorite Italian restaurant and we'd have lunch.

- I was a sugar-free bubble gum guy.

But if I got an out, so I ground out, struck out, fly out, whatever that at-bat was, I got rid of that piece and got another piece in.

(bright music) - What baseball and religion do really well is they really name and frame those rituals.

Those are technologies, spiritual technologies, that have been developed over centuries that help us think about what it means to be human.

- [Narrator] Whether it's morning routines, religion or baseball, rituals are not rational and, in some cases, are actually irrational.

Rituals are not a magic potion, but they can provide a feeling of control and order in a world that is filled with chance and uncertainty.

(bright music) - One of the things that religion offers is an opportunity to see the supernatural within the natural world.

And a lot of our religious traditions are traditions that talk about miracles as a way of saying, "Well, the God is looking down upon us," or, "The divine is here on earth,' or that things happen that you might not expect that science can't even explain.

- [Narrator] In the world's great religions, miracles are most often acts of divine intervention.

Moses parting the Red Sea.

Joshua stopping the sun in the sky.

The Resurrection.

Muhammad splitting the moon to show that he was a prophet sent to his people by Allah.

The Buddha performing 15 miracles in 15 days to instill faith in his followers.

Lord Krishna curing people of serious illness.

These miracles are part of religious traditions that have been passed down among followers for thousands of years.

- You don't need to have lived 2,000 years ago.

You don't need to read a dusty old text in a dead language.

You can just go to the park.

Baseball offers miracles in real time.

- [Commentator] There's a long drive way back in center field, way back.

It is, oh, Willle Mays.

Willie Mays just brought this crowd to its feet.

(bright music) - [Joe] Miracle in baseball certainly can be identified with the miracle of the Mets winning the World Series in 1969.

(crowd cheers and applauds) Carlton Fisk's waving the home run fair would be a miracle.

(bright music) (crowd cheers and applauds) - The miracle is experienced.

It brings us to this sudden awareness of specialness.

- [Narrator] In game one of the 1988 World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers are trailing the Oakland Athletics four to three with two out in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Manager Tommy Lasorda sends an injured Kirk Gibson to pinch hit.

- [Commentator] He was physically unable to start tonight with two bad legs.

The bad left hamstring and the swollen right knee.

Fouled away.

He was, you know, complaining about the fact that with the left knee bothering him, he can't push off.

Well, now he can't push off and he can't land.

(crowd cheers) Little nubber.

Foul.

And it had to be an effort to run that far.

Gibson was so banged up, he was not introduced.

He did not come out onto the field before the game.

Sax waiting on deck, but the game right now is at the plate.

High fly ball into right field.

She is gone!

(crowd cheers and applauds) In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.

(crowd cheers and applauds) - Kirk Gibson's miraculous home run was an ineffable experience.

It cannot be articulated in easy ways.

Miracles can't be expected and defy reality.

(bright music) (crowd cheers and applauds) (bright music) - [Narrator] Every religion has its own way of identifying individuals that embody everything that is good.

Sometimes they are called saints.

Other times, prophet, friends of Allah, miracle worker, and Mahatma.

(bright music) - We can identify a number of classic saints, biblical, church, various religious traditions.

But the saints are really those who are unknown, doing the work of God in ordinary ways.

(bright music continues) - Jews don't have saints.

We have holy people.

We have people that we venerate, that we think are important.

They're the ones who do the good deeds that keep the world going.

(bright music) - [Joe] It's easy to identify the saints of baseball.

Ernie Banks, Mickey Mantle, Roberto Clemente, Babe Ruth, Sandy Koufax, Hank Aaron.

- For me, a saint is someone who puts other people above themselves, and not just occasionally, but the majority of the time.

In terms of players that I played with that fit that saint category, I would say Adrian Beltre, who's now a Hall of Famer.

There's a lot of guys who go out there and they care more about their own personal stats, but a guy like Beltre cared about his teammates so much, wanted to lift you up as a teammate, and he wanted to win games.

He wanted to have fun.

He wanted you to have fun as his teammate, and he wanted you to succeed.

And he was just such a good man, such a good mentor, as a young player coming up.

- Saints in baseball, I would be remiss if I did not mention April the 15th, which to the crass among you is tax day.

(students laugh) But that is the day in 1947 that Jackie Robinson broke into baseball.

And that is the day that is set apart as Jackie Robinson Day, the same way Easter is set apart, the same way Passover is set apart.

(bright music) - Martin Luther King said Jackie Robinson was the civil rights movement before there was a civil rights movement.

President Obama said there would be no first Black president without Jackie Robinson.

- The Buddha talks a lot about suffering.

He has his famous four noble truths, and the first of those four noble truths is that life is suffering.

Jackie Robinson suffered.

What he had to go through in those early years and really throughout his career is a kind of suffering that should never have been inflicted on any player.

- And you have to think of the hell he went through, even when he made it in baseball.

There's certain places he couldn't sleep.

There were certain places he couldn't eat.

And yet he stood strong 'cause he knew that God was using him.

God was using him as the catalyst to break this barrier.

- Jews suffer.

It's part of who we are.

We sort of see ourselves as a people who have suffered.

Jews took on Jackie Robinson as their hero.

In post World War II, Jews were in the process of assimilating, but I don't think that generation felt very comfortable still in the United States.

So for them, if Jackie Robinson could be a Brooklyn Dodger, maybe Jews could be acceptable too.

(bright music) - If Jackie comes in to Major League Baseball and doesn't succeed, who knows what the story would've looked like moving forward.

And, again, not just for me.

People forget that Latinos played in the Negro leagues.

There weren't Asians playing in the Major Leagues.

There weren't Mexicans playing in the Major Leagues.

So I can't say thank you enough to what Jackie means to me.

That's why April 15th is one of my favorite days of the year.

It's the reason when I retired, I retired on Jackie Robinson's birthday.

- That Dave Roberts?

- Yes indeed.

- My man.

- David Robinson.

- Hey.

- How are you, David?

How you doing?

- Good, good, good.

- Great seeing you.

- Great to see you as well.

It was a privilege and a blessing to be Jack and Rachel's son.

They both gave me a conceptual attitude about self which was prideful and empowering and never fearful, but recognizing social realities because that was the home that we grew up in, where social issues were discussed all of the time.

(bright music) I know that fatherhood was an important responsibility and role that he wanted to perform in his life, but he wasn't a person to lecture.

He had his concepts.

He would present them, as I say, in a few words.

And then live a life that one could both see as a model and one could also see as an obligation to follow.

One of the clear stories that reflect my father's attitude was we had chores as kids.

Saturday was my job to cut the grass, and that was supposed to happen early.

And I'm in bed at eight or nine o'clock and I hear the lawnmower and I look out the window and there my father is cutting the grass.

And naturally, you know, I got on my jeans as quick as possible and got out there and apologized.

But that's an example of leading with action.

- Jackie Robinson, yes, handled it with incredible grace.

It was somewhat Christ-like.

Think about the abuse that he took, the things he had to endure.

Could you imagine someone of this generation going through that today?

I don't see it.

People cry when they get a bad tweet.

And Jackie Robinson was threatened with just about every possible bit of violence you could imagine and yet persevered and was one of the great players of all time.

Yeah, no question.

Definitely a saint, maybe numero uno.

- So, that goodness, you can call it sainthood, although my father would, I think, absolutely refuse that term, but he was striving to lead a good life.

(bright music) - Humans seem to crave the incarnation of virtue or vice in individuals 'cause it makes it a little bit easier to comprehend the experience of goodness or evil.

So the saints are those we venerate.

The sinners are those we fear and condemn.

(bright music) - Sinners in baseball would be whoever struck out my favorite player.

(lightning cracks) - Whether you're of faith or not, we all have a code that we live by.

And in baseball, it's fair or foul.

You're safe or out.

It's a home run or it's not.

I mean, it's a pretty simple code by which to live.

But have there been guys who have kind of broken that moral code?

Yeah, absolutely.

And many of them are and have been ostracized.

(crowd cheers) - [Commentator] There's a high drive deep into right center field to the big part of the ballpark.

(crowd cheers and applauds) And Barry Bonds is now the home run king, number 71, and it was impressive.

- Those hit us hard because your sinner was once a saint.

These are folks who were on a pedestal and then kind of stumbled off of it.

(gentle music) - Then there are sinners like Pete Rose, who even has gotten several second chances.

You're like, "There's no contrition whatsoever."

- Pete Rose betting on the game itself, that's blasphemy.

- Say it ain't so, Joe.

Say it ain't so.

- [Joe] The Chicago Black Sox in 1919, they're considered sinners.

The players were paid to change the outcome of the game in whatever manner they could do it, and a small number of them did.

Fans wanna know if they're paying their hard-earned money, they're going to come see a real contest.

They wanna know that the game's not fixed.

(gentle music continues) - There has been a problem with steroid use in baseball.

- Steroids, you know, certainly the darkest era since, like, the Black Sox scandal.

Absolutely the darkest baseball era of my lifetime.

- From what I'm hearing, more or less, I was the only individual in Major League Baseball who used steroids, so (scoffs) that's hard to believe.

- [Narrator] There's an old saying, "All saints have a past, and all sinners have a future."

Whether in religion or baseball, we all have much to learn about how to live our best lives from those we revere and revile.

(bright music) The vast majority of Christians are born Christian.

The vast majority of Muslims are born Muslim.

The vast majority of Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists are also born into their faiths.

Practicing one's religion is passed on from one generation to the next.

But what if that path is no longer relevant for an individual?

What if that individual wants to find a new road that makes more sense for who they are now?

- Religion has a function in society and its function is, I like to call it the three Bs, right?

It's what you believe, how you behave, and where you belong.

- Conversion is in some ways an opportunity to be born again.

When you convert, you are born again.

You tell your story of your life.

It's not the story that you inherited from your parents or grandparents.

And for a lot of people, that story may be helpful when you're growing up, but when you encounter the world, you realize that doesn't work for you and you need to find a new story.

(bright music) - We understand that people do convert from one religion to another.

It's not for the faint of heart.

It's not for the common person.

But people do convert.

Frequently when there's an inter-religious marriage, there's an agreement that one or the other will convert so that the children can have a single religion.

(crowd cheers) (baseball bat thumps) And people do convert from one baseball team to another.

(bright music) (crowd cheers and applauds) I am frequently confronted, sometimes with great anger, sometimes with threats of violence, with the sentence, "How could you have been such a devoted Brooklyn Dodger fan and now root for the Yankees?"

And, of course, this is for me a deep philosophical question.

I grew up in Brooklyn.

(bright music) The Dodgers were the heart and soul and were a spiritual center for many of us in Brooklyn.

And yet in 1958, they moved.

In 1969, I was blessed with the advent of Jed, our son, and I took seriously giving him a religion.

He was baptized.

But I considered very carefully which baseball team I would give him.

The Dodgers were in Los Angeles.

The Yankees were the hated team of my youth.

The Mets were on the scene.

1969 was their miracle year, but the Mets, they didn't have any of the- ♪ Tradition ♪ Tradition ♪ Tradition - That word tradition, if it applies to any baseball team, it applies to the Yankees.

You genuflect before the names of the greats of the team and heroic characters.

So I decided to make Jed a Yankee fan.

He took to it quickly.

I was still a Dodger fan.

So he's now eight, nine years old, and the World Series comes, and it's the Yankees against the Dodgers.

So I confronted a stark reality.

Was I gonna continue to root for the Dodgers and root against my son's team?

Was I gonna allow that dynamic to infect our relationship?

Or I was gonna join him?

Was I gonna convert to this formerly impossible to love team, in fact, this hated team, the Yankees?

(baseball bat thumps) (crowd cheers and applauds) And that was the moment where out of a father's love for a son, I became a Yankee fan.

(bright music) (bright music) (bright music) Blessings and curses are right at the heart of the conventional understanding of religion.

So I want to talk about the blessing and the curse as connected in the same way that faith and doubt are connected.

The kind of blessing I'm gonna discuss with you is not when a great pitcher says, "I thank God for the blessing of my great arm that I can throw a curve ball," as if God had intervened to create that capacity.

I don't mean blessing in that sense.

I mean the blessing that follows a sense of accursedness.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Perhaps the greatest story ever told in this regard is the deep accursedness suffered by Jesus when he was crucified on Good Friday and the ecstatic release from that accursedness that became a blessing with the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Equally well-known are the Hebrew scripture stories in which the Israelites suffered deeply as slaves in ancient Egypt and the release from deep accursedness when they are finally blessed to enter the Promised Land.

- We all have to honor, affirm, and acknowledge the blessings in our own life, and those are things that give us a sense of who we are, a mission in our life, and bring us into a community of people that we love.

And if baseball does that, then baseball's a blessing.

We assume that we're blessed or we're not blessed, but blessing is a mindset.

It's what we choose to see or feel or honor, and we can make that choice everyday in our life.

- This life is all full of choices, and if we make wrong choices, we sometimes curse ourself.

(bright music) - [Reporter] And now it's on to Chicago.

- [Narrator] The Cubs returned to Wrigley Field leading two games to one.

Fate, however, throws them a foul-smelling curve.

(bright music) Billy Sianis buys two tickets to the fourth game of the 1945 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Detroit Tigers.

As a publicity stunt, he brings his goat, Murphy.

According to legend, when they are not allowed inside Wrigley Field because of the animal's stench, (goat bleats) Sianis puts a curse on the Cubs, declaring that the team will never win another World Series.

- The people of Chicago, as they responded to this curse, they didn't respond with hope, they didn't respond with despair.

It was resignation.

I remember coming across a great t-shirt, "What did Jesus say to the Cubs as He rose into heaven?"

And the answer was, "Don't do anything till I get back."

(bright music) - I don't believe in curses, but I do believe in the impact that believing in curses has on a team and on a city, like Chicago, like Boston, that hadn't won in so many years.

And the expectation sort of dictates what happens on the field.

- [Narrator] The great baseball curses are associated with painful, prolonged championship droughts, booted ground balls, dropped third strikes, and gut-wrenching defeats.

The story behind the curse is of enduring interest.

(bright music) But equally fascinating is how the team and its fans cope with it.

Chicagoans truly seem to take delight in their status as baseball's lovable losers.

- And when we look at franchises like the Cubs, then we begin to see maybe those curses are real because they have real time, they have real distance, like, there's real struggle there, there's real pain.

And then eventually there's real joy.

(crowd cheers) - There's the 0-1.

Bryant.

The Cubs win the World Series!

(crowd cheers and applauds) (bright music) It's over, and the Cubs have finally won it all!

(bright music) (crowd cheers and applauds) - I was seeing Cub fans crying.

They've had family members who've lived their whole life wondering would the Cubs ever get to the World Series, much less win a World series.

- Being in Chicago, my hometown, when the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, I had a friend said that he went to his grandmother's grave site to tell her that the Cubs won.

- People were bringing their relatives' ashes into the stadium and dumping them over the basket onto the warning track.

The Curse of the Billy Goat was gone forever.

- [Commentator] Oh my gosh!

Yes!

- And, of course, one of the great curses is the Curse of the Bambino.

That's more than just a sports curse in some ways.

That's become a national mythology about what happens when you wrong someone.

When you wrong Babe, oh, then you're gonna wait 86 years to win that next championship.

(bright music) - [Narrator] In 1920, Red Sox fans are outraged when the team owner, strapped for cash, sells superstar Babe Ruth to their arch rivals, the New York Yankees, for $125,000.

What follows is a nearly century-long saga of ineptitude, struggle, and lousy luck.

- This curse became a kind of way of life for those Red Sox fans.

They responded with one of the seven cardinal sins: despair.

(students laugh) (crowd cheers and applauds) - [Narrator] It is a series for the ages.

The Yankees are leading three games to none in the 2004 American League Championship Series.

In the fourth game, they are ahead four to three in the bottom of the ninth.

On the mound for the Yankees is the greatest relief pitcher of all time, Mariano Rivera.

Overwhelmed by doubt, many Red Sox fans feel that, once again, they are doomed.

(crowd cheers and applauds) - When you talk about the Red Sox, you don't want to be the team that, you know, is gonna reverse the curse for them.

(crowd cheers and applauds) But we took care of the Red Sox curse.

I guess it's appropriate.

Who else should it have been?

- [Narrator] The Red Sox become the only team in Major League history to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win the pennant.

They meet the Cardinals in the World Series.

(bright music) (crowd cheers and applauds) - [Commentator] Back to Foulke.

Red Sox fans have longed to hear it.

The Boston Red Sox are World Champions.

(crowd cheers and applauds) (bright music continues) - When you're talking about the Boston Red Sox to win a championship, either as a fan or as a player, the experience of being in the moment is ineffable.

It is beyond words.

It is beyond description.

You won't find a single word that encapsulates everything you're feeling at that moment.

It makes it hard to talk about, but it makes it more powerful to experience.

(players cheering) (bright music) - Let me hear you.

A-one, a-two, a-three.

♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ Buy me some peanuts and ♪ Cracker Jack ♪ I don't care if I ♪ Never get back ♪ Let me root, root, root for the home team ♪ ♪ If they don't win, it's a shame ♪ ♪ For it's one ♪ Two ♪ Three strikes, you're out ♪ At the old ball game Hey!

(crowd cheers and applauds) (bright music) - I've seen "Bull Durham" a half a dozen times, and that Church of Baseball line is really terrific, but if you think of church as an idea of community, I think baseball does really create community and a sense of belonging and connection.

(bright music) - [Narrator] In a religious place of worship, people come together to share an experience with a community of like-minded individuals.

In essence, religious people and fans of a baseball team share a common faith.

- The reverend Dr.

Martin Luther King famously said the most segregated hour in America was Sunday mornings.

That's because we don't worship together.

But when we go to the Church of Baseball, we worship together.

When we go to the Church of Baseball, we're sitting with intergenerational communities that are multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multiracial, that represent every part of the socioeconomic spectrum that may not gather in any other space now in American society as we become more segregated into our silos, both online and in the physical world.

- Sports and religion have been the two biggest social structures in the United States for people to feel like they belong to a community.

And that sense of community in turn makes us happy.

It's not just at the game, because the wearing of sports logos and gear is so pervasive.

It's a unique phenomenon to the way we express ourselves.

I talked to a professional sports executive who said, "In the industry, we call it the head nod."

You're walking down the supermarket aisle and you've got your Dodgers hat and you see somebody with a Dodgers shirt and you look at each other and there's a recognition.

We're connected.

You don't say anything, but you make eye contact.

It's the head nod.

We're part of this community.

- Part of it has to do with being able to identify with a group larger than oneself.

That's really what religion is about.

It's about a community that gathers and celebrates and works together.

(bright music) - I was an immigrant to this country.

My parents are from India.

I was born in India as well.

And for me, one of the things that made me feel American was playing baseball.

As part of the outsider experience, when you're going to a game or when you're on the field with your friends, suddenly you feel like an insider.

(bright music continues) - In my lifetime, I've never seen this much polarity and, you know, we're so divided.

I think sports like baseball are able to guide us.

Baseball is one of the things that everyone can agree upon.

You don't agree upon who you want to win, who your favorite team is, who your favorite players are.

But everyone could dive into something and say, "We all love this."

We're all Americans and we all want our country to succeed.

So the best way to do it is to have a much more collaborative debate than an angry, divisive approach to politics and life.

(bright music) (crowd cheers and applauds) - And there are all kinds of moments when that experience of being at the game as a community is the dominant experience.

But it is always the fact that something has called them to the game.

In the same way one is called to a religion, one is called to the game.

(sirens blaring) (witnesses murmur indistinctly) There are moments when the ability of baseball, in a way that is sacred, to bring us together across divisions is so palpable.

You have to put it in the highest threshold of experiences that drive deep to a better sense of humanity.

- [Narrator] After 9/11, Americans sought comfort in their churches, temples, synagogues, and baseball.

- My dad, Skip Caray, was a broadcaster with the Braves and the first game they played was in New York.

Dad said he'll never forget flying into LaGuardia.

And as they went to the ballpark that first day, they saw acres of relief supplies stacked up.

They saw all the police and the security people around the ballpark, again, don't know if it's still, we didn't know anything.

- [Announcer] Tonight we come together for the first regular season professional sporting event in New York City since Tuesday, September 11th.

We return to our national pastime.

♪ God bless America ♪ Land that I love ♪ Stand beside her ♪ And guide her ♪ Through the night with a light from above ♪ - I'm so thankful that baseball provided an occasion for the city of New York to come together and to see the incredible efforts, to mourn those who had lost their lives, to celebrate the work of those who were trying to recover the torn-apart city.

(crowd cheers and applauds) - I've interviewed people who were at that game and one of them said to me, you know, "It was the moment it was okay to smile again.

It was the moment it was okay to laugh again, to clap again."

(crowd cheers and applauds) - [Commentator] Lopez wants it away.

And it's hit deep to left center.

This one has a chance.

Home run!

Mike Piazza and the Mets lead three to two.

(crowd cheers and applauds) - Chipper Jones of the Braves, as Mike Piazza's winning home run went over his head, went to his outfield colleagues and says, "That's as it should've been."

That New York came back to win.

(crowd cheers and applauds) It was not just another baseball game.

- Dad said that was as spine chilling and electric a game that he ever did because there was so much weight and enormity to it beyond just the outcome of a baseball game.

New York needed something good to happen, and luckily for us, our sport was able to provide that for them for at least one shining night.

(gentle music) - When the Yankees played in the 9/11 World Series, people just came together, man, and for just that moment forgot what happened and were able just to do life.

- It was very emotional, very powerful.

I told my players, I said, "The NY on your cap represents the city, not the Yankees."

(crowd cheers and applauds) - [Announcer] Please welcome the president of the United States.

(crowd cheers and applauds) - For a lot of us who grew up in New York, 2001 will always hurt, but it was the first and only time that it felt like the whole country was actually rallying for us.

That was so beautiful to see, especially after how much we had gone through obviously as a nation.

But New Yorkers went through it in a way that a lot of other people won't be able to quite understand.

And if there was supposed to be some kind of supernatural or meant-to-be feeling of healing, this would be the time where that would happen.

(crowd cheers and applauds) - [Commentator] 3-2 pitch.

Swung on a drill to right field.

Going back Sanders on the track, at the wall!

See ya, see ya, see ya!

A home run by Derek Jeter, and what a big hit!

(crowd cheers and applauds) - To this day, a lot of people I talk to think that the Yankees won that World Series, and they didn't.

They lost.

Probably no fans in history have ever been more willing, satisfied, happy to lose a World Series than the Yankees fans after 9/11.

- The whole world saw something special in that moment, a moment of resilience, of redemption, of coming together, of recognizing our central, common humanity, of understanding that we struggle together and that, ultimately, we celebrate together.

(crowd cheers and applauds) (bright music) That's community.

(bright music) - The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.

America's rolled by like an army of steamrollers.

It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again.

But baseball has marked the time.

This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray.

It reminds of us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

(bright music continues) - The notion of nostalgia is right at the surface of both religion and baseball.

(bright music) What's happening is a yearning for that time.

That time that might be a time of innocence, that time that might be a time of hope.

But there's something special about that time that evokes the need that we call nostalgia.

- [Narrator] In religion, it is often evoked by ceremony.

There is something warm and comforting about doing things the same way they have been done for years, decades, even centuries.

In baseball, for many people, nostalgia is a yearning for the simpler, easier time of our childhood.

(bright music) - First game that I saw was at old Busch Stadium in St.

Louis Sportsman's Park.

It was a birthday present from my parents.

I was in another world.

When I was at the ballpark, I was experiencing that joy, the ecstasy.

It was the fulfillment of dreams.

- Hi, I'm Chip Caray, Major League Baseball announcer.

- And I'm Skip Caray, Major League Baseball announcer.

- And I'm Harry Caray, Major League Baseball announcer.

- [Announcer] Will the real Major League broadcasting Caray please stand up?

(upbeat music) (gentle music) - Baseball's given me everything.

It's given my family everything.

My grandfather was a broadcaster.

- Long drive, way back!

It might be.

It could be.

And it is.

Holy cow.

- [Chip] My dad followed in his footsteps.

- [Skip] There's a fly ball deep right field.

Back goes O'Neill.

He's at the wall.

Braves lead!

Braves lead!

Braves lead!

- [Chip] Baseball's generational.

I stand on the shoulders of giants in my job.

I love it.

- Do you play baseball?

Do you manage baseball?

You know, when you get to think about it, especially in your later years, you realize you live baseball.

I just feel very blessed that I had the ability to play baseball and I never really had to work a day in my life.

- Dad, you wanna have a catch?

(bright music) - I'd like that.

- At the end of "Field of Dreams" when the father and son play catch, there's something magical about it.

Playing catch to me is something, of course, I did so much with my father.

We played catch last when he was 80.

And so that relationship of father and son is so quintessential to the game and to my own identity.

There's something magical about the baseball field, unlike any other playing field in any sport.

Whether you were playing baseball in 1880 or 1920 or 2020, the game remains the same.

And then there's home.

(crowd cheers and applauds) - [Commentator] He's going home!

The throw!

He stole home!

(crowd cheers and applauds) - I'm 70 years old.

I know the grave is not far.

I want to get to heaven.

And so the goal in baseball is to make it home.

The goal in my walk with the Lord is to make it home.

(gentle music) - Bart Giamatti, the revered president of Yale and later commissioner of baseball, wrote a wonderful song of praise to the game of baseball, which he called "The Great Glorious Game."

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Baseball is about homecoming.

It's a journey by theft and strength, by guile and speed, how to round first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper.

Then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language, and a third to proceed no longer by paths indirect, by straight line to home.

Baseball is about going home and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need.

(gentle music continues) It tells us how good home is.

Its wisdom says, "You can go home again, but you cannot stay."

(gentle music continues) The journey must always start once more, the bat an ore over the shoulder, until there is an end to journeying.

(gentle music) (bright music) - Baseball does the work of religion, not because it just looks like or resembles religion.

It has myths, it has pilgrimages, it has rituals, it has saints and sinners, it has texts and relics and traditions.

It brings people together around shared values.

It offers them a place in the world.

It makes them realize that there is a reality that's bigger than you.

(bright music continues) - Baseball resonates with reality itself.

It has moments that bring ecstasy.

It has moments that bring frustration and tragic loss.

Basically, it has the prospect of educating us about life itself.

- In high school, I started reading a lot of Eastern philosophies and I got really into it and I was doing it with the purpose of trying to help myself as a baseball player to be in the moment, to be able to get into more of a focused state.

- [Commentator] Three and two, hit to deep right field!

Forget it, that ball's outta here!

And the Mets win it!

(crowd cheers and applauds) - [Shawn] And then as I got older and started playing professionally and getting to the Major Leagues, I started to kinda look at it almost from the reverse where I was learning all these lessons about myself through baseball.

- [Donald] If you use those moments between pitches not to look at your phone.

(crowd cheers) - [Commentator] Look at that.

- [Commentator] That's a heck of a catch.

- Not to look at the jumbotron or the people dressed up like hot dogs running around the field, but to reflect on the teachings of the game, I think there's enlightenment found by the bottom of the ninth.

- Small things like just the way a pitcher's grip is gonna completely change the movement of a ball and it's physics and it's beautiful.

When you zoom out and you see defensive positioning and you see how they change with every batter and how much of a difference that can make in a game, that's a really good metaphor for life as well.

That when you're so singularly focused on either your own experience or one aspect of a situation or what's going on, you're going to miss the whole picture.

(bright music) - I think what's happening now is people are getting turned on by going to the ballpark and experiencing the experience.

Baseball, yeah, it's the fiber of who we are.

- I always felt that baseball was a game of life.

Baseball's every day.

You sit in the stands and you visit with the person in the seat next to you and you root for a team.

Your team's always gonna be there.

The player you like most may not be there, but your team is gonna be there for you.

Baseball is something you live.

(bright music) - I think I have five or six dozen of these t-shirts in maybe eight, 10 or 12 different colors.

This one's one of my favorites.

And people will shout out to me as I ride by them on a bike, "Love your t-shirt!"

And to those I get to talk, I say it's an aspiration.

It's not a statement of achievement.

It's certainly not an order.

It's a hope.

(bright music) - There's so much going on and we're so looking forward to the next thing or to tomorrow or the next year.

If I do these things, in a year from now, I'll be here.

In five years from now, I'll be here.

Even in goal setting, one year, five year, 10-year goal, long-term contracts, graduating college, graduating high school.

It's all at the end.

So live slow is, "Let's just enjoy where we're at.

We'll get there."

(bright music) - Living slow in the 21st century is not easy.

In fact, it's quite hard.

It's sailing against the wind.

It's trying to row upstream.

Everything bombards us from every side.

These devices are never far away and never off.

(bright music continues) Part of the connection of baseball and the essence of religion is to really slow down the pace and begin to notice life.

(bright music continues) Baseball, if studied carefully, can profoundly transform not only our understanding of baseball, but also our understanding of ourselves and our place in this universe.

(bright music continues) - [Narrator] Understanding the mystical connection between baseball and religion can awaken us to a dimension of life often missing in our cynical, polarized world.

It can help us to experience aspects of our lives more deeply and to understand the importance of hope, faith, and optimism in a way that is beyond belief.

(bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues)