Most Reverend Jerome E. Listecki
Archbishop of Milwaukee
 

Post-Easter was always a significant moment in my early childhood. Currently because of allergies and stuffed up sinuses I can hardly smell even the most pungent odors. But as a boy, the smell of fresh spring grass heralded the baseball season and I would make my way to Russell Square Park for spring practice.

Oh, I know that spring starts on the calendar March 21, but spring doesn’t really occur until certain things happen. One was post-Easter celebration. It was time for little league baseball. You must remember that like television during the period of the sixties there were only three channels (CBS, NBC, ABC). This was also true for “kids” sports. There were no soccer clubs. There was football, basketball and occasionally hockey but never as organized as baseball.

Baseball was in the blood of almost every kid during my childhood days. If you weren’t playing organized ball, you would be playing softball (sixteen-inch variety) in the open lots surrounding your home or fast pitch where you drew a box on a wall and fired a rubber ball, and the box determined strikes and balls. You relied on the integrity of your opponent to tell the truth on those close pitches that is, unless the ball was wet and would leave a mark on the box. There was no doubt that baseball was king.

In preparation, I would pull out my baseball glove which was a Rawlings Tony Kubek (shortstop for the New York Yankees) that had been tucked away during the late fall and winter season. I would begin oiling the glove, removing the stiffness that happened during the long fall and winter months. There was also one more piece of apparatus in my baseball arsenal, and that was my trusted 29-inch Louisville slugger Eddie Mathews baseball bat. I loved that bat and took it everywhere a game was played. I used it so much that eventually it splintered, and I had to discard it. I was heartbroken, like I had lost a good friend.

I played for the Phillies and could always swing a bat. Baseball dominated my interest, until I went to the minor seminary where basketball was king and I became a loyal subject.

One of the activities after practice at Russell Square Park was making your way to confessions. St. Michael the Archangel Church was directly across from the park, and confessions took place there at 3 p.m. every Saturday. In some sense, it’s ironic that confessions and little league baseball in my mind would go together. Decades later St. Pope John Paul II would declare the Sunday after Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday. Reminding us of God’s Mercy and Love in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

So, if you are smelling the spring grass and thinking about the Brewers’ season, make your way to confession and examine how you followed Jesus’ command to LOVE ONE ANOTHER.   
 

Note: This blog originally appeared as the April 19, 2022 "Love One Another" email sent to Catholics throughout the Archdiocese of Milwaukee by Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki. If you are interested in signing up for these email messages, please click here.