A nun, a priest and two of the best managers in baseball wander into the same story. This story.
And then what happens? Seriously -- what happens next? Where do you go with a story like that, a story that includes stoic Joe Torre of the New York Yankees, deathly serious Jim Leyland of the Detroit Tigers, and their sacrosanct siblings, Sister Marguerite Torre and Father Tom Leyland?
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| Does Joe Torre hear whispers from the big man upstairs? (Getty Images) |
Whimsical doesn't seem like the way to go. Not after you've spent an hour at Saint Rose with Father Leyland, who looks a lot like his famous brother, minus the moustache and weather-beaten skin. Saint Rose has roughly 8,000 parishioners, a staggering number considering the population of Perrysburg is less than 17,000. Anyway, Father Leyland isn't the whimsical sort.
Father Leyland is gentle, meek. He peers through glasses as he makes small talk about growing up in Perrysburg, about getting called to the priesthood as a college student, about being ordained for 41 years and hitting retirement age yet staying at Saint Rose "because the bishop doesn't want me to retire, and it's his choice."
Perrysburg is 70 miles south of Detroit, where Jim Leyland came out of retirement this season to lead the improbable Tigers to the best record in baseball. Father Leyland took in his first game at Comerica Park last week, sitting next to Jim's son, Patrick, who is 14 but hits a baseball like a grown man. Father Leyland had hoped to see one of his brother's home games before August, but with 8,000 parishioners, well, Jim Leyland understands.
"He's busy," the manager tells me. "He's got his parish."
Jim Leyland isn't thrilled with this story idea, by the way, because Jim Leyland is an old-school baseball guy who wonders why anyone -- you, for example -- would be interested in a story about a manager and his priest brother.
"Nobody cares," he says.
I tell Leyland about the Joe Torre angle, about the potential for a playoff meeting with the Yankees, about God's choice between Father Leyland and Sister Marguerite.
"That's ridiculous," Leyland says, then gestures toward the field, where the Tigers will play Minnesota in three hours. "Let me tell you something. If we win tonight, it won't be because of God. It'll be because of Jeremy Bonderman."
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| Jim Leyland's 1997 World Series title had brother Tom all emotional. (Getty Images) |
"That's none of your business," he says.
He's right. Still, the next morning I ask Father Leyland the same question. The answer is the same, though delivered with more gentility. Father Leyland doesn't mix much baseball and religion. He performed Jim and Katie Leyland's marriage in 1987, and he baptized their two kids, but he doesn't get involved with the baseball. A Tigers coach once asked if he'd come into the clubhouse before a game and pray, and Father Leyland declined, saying, "If you lose, I'd get blamed."
Father Leyland watches the Tigers on television, and when he can't he listens on the radio, and says his "stomach is in knots" all the way. Father Leyland says he's intense like his brother, and while that doesn't jibe with his soft voice and gentle mannerisms, it starts to fit when the conversation turns to 1997. Jim Leyland, managing the Florida Marlins, got his World Series ring. That came after a string of heartbreak in Pittsburgh, the worst in 1992, when the Pirates were one out from reaching the World Series. Father Leyland describes that night in 1992 as "awful ... I was physically sick for weeks. The whole family was devastated."
Now Father Leyland is talking about 1997, about the World Series victory lap Jim took around the Marlins' stadium. Now he's not talking. Now Father Leyland is sniffling. He's softly crying.
"I'm sorry," he says. "That was just such an emotional night."
In Queens, Sister Marguerite Torre keeps a higher profile than Father Leyland. She speaks for the Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation, which fights domestic violence, and she turns every school where she has taught into a Yankees fan club. When she urges students over the P.A. system, she implores them to focus like their favorite Yankee.
Sister Marguerite hasn't always been able to keep such a profile. When another brother, Frank Torre, was playing in the World Series in 1957 and '58 for the Milwaukee Braves, she couldn't watch. In those days, her Ursuline order was semi-cloistered. Cloistered no more, Sister Marguerite stood beside Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1999 when he declared June 16 as Ursuline Day. She goes to Yankees games. She tells me that she not only hopes the Yankees win the World Series, but adds, "I pray for them every day."
Which brings us back to an earlier issue. What happens in October, if the Tigers and Yankees meet in the AL playoffs? Joe Torre and Jim Leyland will be working their mojo. Father Leyland and Sister Marguerite will be working theirs, too.
Solution? I've got the solution. Detroit wins, of course. The day God sides with the Yankees is the day He needs to be fired.
