Writers have waxed poetic about the game of baseball almost since the game was invented.
The green of the grass, the crack of the bat, the smell of roasted peanuts and grilled onions … and, of course, the emphasis on failure. Who can forget “But there is no joy in Mudville — Mighty Casey has struck out”?
Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s classic “Casey at the Bat” was published in 1888, less than 20 years after the Cincinnati Reds became the first professional baseball team, and already it sounded nostalgic.
Yet none of the poetry and nostalgia about baseball ever considered the idea of more than 38,000 fans wearing White Sox-branded felt “pope hats” — a costume version of a bishop’s miter — turning to one another to offer a sign of peace in the middle of the fifth inning at the invitation of Father Tom Hurley, pastor of the South Side’s Most Holy Redeemer Parish, or Nancy Faust interspersing hymns with pop classics on the organ at Rate Field on Aug. 8.
Springfield Dominican Sister Mary Jo Sobieck, formerly a teacher at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights, reprised her 2018 first pitch, which went viral when video of her bumping the ball off her bicep hit the internet.
She warmed up along the foul line with Southpaw, the “green furry guy” who is the Sox , who was dressed in a pope costume for the occasion, and her pitch sailed past Sox infielder Chase Meidroth, who was not in the lineup because of a sore wrist.
Children from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy joined the White Sox players at their positions when they took the field, and White Sox Charities also donated a $14,000 check to the Midwest Augustinians in honor of Pope Leo XIV.
Leo — the former Robert Prevost, a member of the Midwest Augustinian province who mostly ministered as a priest and bishop in Peru and as head of the worldwide Augustinian order and member of the curia in Rome — was the man of the hour, as he has been for the White Sox since his election on May 8, 2025.
In the hours immediately following his appearance in St. Peter’s Square, he was reported to be a Cubs fan, but his brother soon corrected that, and footage was soon found of the future pope at a White Sox World Series game in 2005.
The team capitalized by putting a plaque on the seat the pope occupied and adding a photo mural at the top of that section, and partnered with the Archdiocese of Chicago to host a Mass celebrating Leo XIV’s election in June 2025.
Now fans, many decked out in Pope Leo jerseys and T-shirts as well as the give-away hats, openly speculate on whether divine intervention has anything to do with a team that set the record for losses in Major League Baseball in 2024 and finished second-to-last in the league in 2025 leading their division in August.
If so, it didn’t work on pope hat day; the game started like a dream with the Sox taking a 4-0 lead before losing 5-4 in 10 innings. The loss probably had more to do with shaky relief pitching and poor late-inning hitting.
But even that did not dampen the spirits of a crowd who came to have fun at the intersection of Catholicism and baseball. When, in the bottom of the 10th, Sam Antonacci had an epic 14-pitch at-bat, the crowd cheered louder with each successive ground ball before groaning just as loud when he finally struck out.
Contrary to the poem, there was still joy in Chicago.