Anyone who loves Jesus and baseball will love Father Burke Masters’ book, A Grand Slam for God, an unlikely story of passion, piety and providence. From no religious background, with his eyes locked on professional baseball, Masters became a Catholic priest, diocesan vocation director and Chicago Cubs chaplain. But while the journey is happy, Father Burke does not shy from the painful realities of his life’s purgative struggles.

Father Burke’s childhood is familiar to many young Americans: baseball, baseball and more baseball. Growing up in Joliet, IL, Masters was a baseball prodigy, and the game consumed his life. But A Grand Slam for God’s baseball-to-priest narrative actually begins in medias res, as he describes a key game while playing for Mississippi State University (MSU).

In the 1990 NCAA baseball tournament, Burke stood in the batter’s box with MSU down by one run in the top of the ninth inning and the bases loaded. He describes the experience when he lined the ball over the left field fence for a go-ahead grand slam to defeat number one ranked Florida State. That game, he writes, “sealed [his] decision to make baseball [his] career.” But God had other plans.

Five years to the day before that hit, Burke was baptized. Five years before his baptism, he was a religiously unaffiliated eighth-grader whose parents enrolled him in a Catholic high school. While confused by this decision, Burke embraced this opportunity to further his academics.

Excited about the baseball team and academics, he quickly faced the reality that he had virtually no theological or religious knowledge. After a particularly challenging theology class, a caring and attentive nun approached Burke and gave him a Bible, encouraging him to read the Gospel of Matthew.

Slowly but surely, he read the Gospel, and learned about his own sins and the pain Jesus bore for them. God was tilling the soil of Burke’s heart.

From these decisive moments, the book describes the fears, joys of a talented, persevering young man who came to recognize the beckoning grace of the Holy Spirit. A moving Mass experience, a Kairos retreat and holy friendships led Burke to baptism. After being received into the Church, he looked forward to a life of baseball and family. Yet, week after week he adored Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament with his girlfriend, and week after week he felt a terrifying tug toward priesthood. After enough people approached him with the same suggestion, Burke laid down his arms and reached out to his vocation director to join the seminary.

With an arduous journey ahead of him, Burke kept asking and learning why God did not allow him to play Major League Baseball, accept his dream job offer, marry his dream girl and work in professional baseball management. By the end of the book, you’ll see how God gave him back everything he “took” but in a more beautiful way than Father Burke could have imagined.

The story of Father Burke Masters is one of great grace, providence, hardship, joy and trial. For anyone who loves Jesus and baseball, this story is a raw, honest and beautiful look at the joys and challenges of following Christ.

Harris Craycraft is a 2022 graduate of Boston College and a first-year seminarian at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology in Cincinnati.

Father Burke Masters, A Grand Slam for God: A Journey from Baseball Star to Catholic Priest; Word on Fire, 2023; 192 pages; $29.95

This article appeared in the January 2024 edition of The Catholic Telegraph Magazine. For your complimentary subscription, click here.