The Mother’s Day celebrations in my large, Catholic family always kicked off at Holy Cross Church on the Mesa in Santa Barbara.
Mom insisted upon it.
She wouldn’t let us pig out on the breakfast feast she’d just cooked — or even accept the cheesy picture I’d drawn for her or the flowers I’d plucked from her garden — until we’d completed our weekly 9:30 a.m. pilgrimage.
She led the choir with operatic zeal. She volunteered Dad as an usher and my older brother, Greg, as an altar boy with just as much enthusiasm.
Poor old me was conscripted into keeping the rest of our restless herd — two younger brothers and three little sisters — from straying from the pews that served as a cattle pen.
I once urged Mom to smell the roses and the sizzling bacon and just cut to the chase of our Mother’s Day party.
She just frowned while trying to mat down the shocks of unruly hair that sprouted from my noggin in all directions.
“You really do need to learn how to pray,” Mom replied. “Use this time in church to practice that because there is nothing greater than the power of prayer.”
She said this at around the time I was becoming serious about sports.
Crossing a Bridge
I considered it providential when the city Parks & Recreation Department assigned me to play youth baseball in that summer of 1965 for a team called the Saints.
Maybe it was a sign that I should put this “power of prayer” into play.
I started making the sign of the cross every time I came to bat or took my position at shortstop.
The Saints wound up winning that summer’s City Pee Wee League championship at Laguna Park … and God had won a new believer.
Praise the Lord and pass the ball bag!
I reached a crossroads with all that crossing, however, during my sophomore baseball season of 1970 with the Bishop Diego High School Cardinals.
A pitcher for the St. Bonaventure High Seraphs — a rival Catholic school in Ventura, no less — took exception to my ritual.
He stared me down with his best stink-eye glare and then crossed himself right back.
I had to wonder. “Does a Seraph outrank a Cardinal in the Catholic hierarchy?”
An epic at-bat ensued as we each competed for divine intervention, crossing ourselves before every pitch.
I fouled off about a half-dozen of his offerings before he finally crossed me up. He drilled me right on my left butt cheek with his hardest fastball.
I wondered, while staggering to first base, which of us had actually won that battle.
I got a free base … but the pitcher got the satisfaction of delivering baseball’s version of a kick in the rear.
Maybe it was God who had won, making us both pay for pestering Him with our silly little game.
There were, after all, a few other things that might’ve been occupying His attention during that month of April in 1970.
Like the shooting death of a UC Santa Barbara student during Vietnam War protests in nearby Isla Vista.
Or the explosion of a liquid oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 that crippled the spacecraft as it hurtled toward the moon.
Or the invasion of Cambodia by U.S. and South Vietnamese troops, which had been secretly ordered by President Richard Nixon.
Or the breakup of The Beatles.
Maybe we should just “Let It Be” when it comes to games of sport.
Sister of Invention
This all came flashing back to me during the spring of 2018.
A 98-year-old nun named Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt was making international headlines as the chaplain of the Loyola-Chicago men’s basketball team.
The unranked Ramblers had shocked the world by upsetting four straight NCAA Tournament opponents — the first three by two points or less — to advance to the Final Four in San Antonio.
Many in the media wondered if their basketball version of Hail Mary plays had been the heavenly orchestration of that sweet, old nun.
A Miracle on Nice, you might call it.
Sister Jean, who is still with us at age 104, said she was simply supporting her boys.
“I feel what I’m called to do is to minister,” she told reporters in San Antonio. “I want to do that. I talk very honestly with the young men on the team.”
I confess that I’ve often, very quietly, rooted for the teams I’ve covered the last 46 years for the Santa Barbara News-Press and now Noozhawk.
But I did stop praying for athletic success — my own or anybody else’s — six years ago.
While Sister Jean was ministering to her Ramblers during those weeks of 2018, my prayers were directed with a March Madness fervor toward a more life-and-death matter.
My newly born grandson, Levi Patrick Goebel, underwent open heart surgery just five days after he was delivered by my daughter, Caitlyn, at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood.
Her 20-week ultrasound in October had diagnosed a rare, congenital heart condition known as Shone’s Syndrome.
Caitlyn cried all the way home after getting the grim news: Little Levi would need many surgeries before his 1st birthday and might not make it past five years.
She and her husband, Tim, however, chose to turn those tears into prayers. The doctors were shocked by what they produced.
One of them emerged from the operating room on March 19 and declared, “It is by the grace of God that Levi’s surgery went so well!”
Little Leaguer with Heart
Several scares did follow, including one the very next day when a nurse summoned Caitlyn back to the hospital.
“She told me, ‘We’ve tried everything and can’t get his heartbeat back into rhythm — it’s all over the place!’” she said. “‘Can you try talking to him?’”
Caitlyn put her hand on his head and whispered, “Mama’s here, Levi … You’re not alone … I love you and you are so precious to me … Mama’s with you.”
The expression of a mother’s love, which millions of us celebrated Sunday, is one of the most powerful prayers on God’s green earth.
Within seconds, Levi’s heartbeat returned to normal.
More than a month later, he was rushed back to Los Angeles when a deep infection was diagnosed at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
A surgical team awaited his return to UCLA Medical Center.
Caitlyn prayed over Levi during the entire ambulance ride … and the infection, like the irregular heartbeat of a month earlier, disappeared.
She and Tim picked a special verse — Joshua 1:9 — which Caitlyn recites to him every night when she tucks him into bed:
“Be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
Levi made it past that 5th-birthday milestone last year.
His enormous love of family — and of life in general — amazes me with each passing day. He asks questions about every subject under the sun and is constantly testing my ability as a storyteller.
“Tell me about the time you almost fell out of a helicopter, Pop Pop!” he’ll ask.
We’ll occasionally compare our scars while swimming together.
The thick one that goes from the top of his chest to just above his belly button reminds me that I have more praying to do.
Little Levi turned 6 on March 14, a day after the third game of his first season of Little League baseball. He plays for the Giants in the coach-pitch division.
He didn’t have a game this Saturday, but he still wore his uniform proudly to cheer for his older brother, Graham.
A big crowd of Levi’s fans — Mom and Dad; brothers Graham and Noah, sister Olive, and of course grandma and grandpa — will root him on this week at his final two games of the season.
And I’m guessing the coach who pitches to him won’t mind when I cross myself before every swing.