The Baseball Chaplain

Latinos typically arrive to the minor league as teenagers. Full of hope, many possess a drive, a hunger even, to make it to the big leagues. Yet they face pressure unlike that of their teammates from the States. Often, there is family back home financially dependent on these young Latinos; many players send money home regularly.

Whether these prospects come from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Cuba, or even Puerto Rico, they often come from impoverished beginnings. Their families are usually a vital support system who have invested their futures in the youngster making it as a professional ballplayer.

Life in the United States is hard for these young Latinos. It’s full of adjustments. Learning English. Cultural lessons to be grasped. All this occurring as they mature from teenagers into young men, in a foreign land.

If they make it to the major leagues, have enough success to become regulars or even All-Stars, they will earn million-dollar contracts, a wealth unknown to their families. But who is there to guide them during their time in the U.S.? To attend their spiritual needs?

The baseball chaplain.

That is the calling Noel Castellanos fulfilled for six years as chaplain for the Chicago Cubs.

From the Border to the Ballfield

Noel Castellanos had childhood dreams, but those dreams did not necessarily involve Castellanos ending up at Comiskey Park or Wrigley Field. He spent more time on the football field than a baseball diamond. But that would change.

Sports figured prominently in his California upbringing. His Texas-born parents migrated west in the mid-1960s, fleeing a hurricane that devastated the Texas border town of Weslaco, 45 miles west of Brownsville.

“Like many people during that hurricane, we lost everything,” Castellanos recalls. “The house was flooded, and so right then my dad decided we’re going to move to California, start over.”

The trip to California was its own adventure. The Castellanos family loaded up a Dodge Rambler station wagon, driving directly behind a Greyhound bus that parted the waters for them to get to dry land.

The Castellanos settled in the Bay Area town of Milpitas. From a hometown where nearly everyone was of Mexican descent, Castellano found himself in a new neighborhood that featured a diversity he had not experienced previously.

“It was Latino, African American, Filipino, but all of us were kind of in that same economic class. … Many of my friends had all the same issues and problems that I had dealing with mostly family, poverty, and the cultural challenge of integrating.”

Coming from different backgrounds, they were forced to find common ground.

“Sports became one of the places we came together and really began to find that a lot of those barriers were broken down.”

Nueva Vida (New Life)

As a young adult, Castellanos found comfort in bringing religion to his sporting activities. Church had long been a part of his family tradition, Sunday services providing fellowship with others. This was part of their Latino culture, one that Noel wanted to share. As he began working in full-time ministry to Latino and urban communities in 1982, he made sure sports were part of how he served.

“We tried to bring religion into that whole mix and I think with most cultures, and particularly with the Latino culture, the connection between our life, even if it’s hard, and our faith is really strong. And so always trying to integrate both that cultural perspective and now kind of a new perspective on what it means to follow God.”

Arriving in Chicago in the mid-1980s, Castellanos helped found Nueva Vida de la Villita Community Church in the Little Village neighborhood. As part of its youth outreach, the church joined two other parishes  to run a Little League baseball program in the largely Mexican neighborhood, known in Spanish as La Villita.

Baseball would take an even bigger role in Castellanos’ life a few years later, as he was invited to speak at chapel services at Comiskey Park in the mid-1990s.

“One of the staff people at the church was also the chaplain of the Chicago White Sox. And so when he began to recognize how many Latino ballplayers were on the team, he reached out to me as a pastor here in the Latino community, and he said, ‘Hey, could you come and help me do chapel every now and then?’ ”

Those were interesting times for Latino followers of the White Sox. Ozzie Guillén anchored the infield. Alex Fernández and Wilson Alvarez were key starting pitchers, and Roberto Hernández was the closer.

“I got to know a number of really nice guys who were really trying to put their faith together with their baseball careers. And so I did that for a number of years,” recalled Castellanos.

Then Castellanos got his own version of the callup to the bigs. His came from the organization that runs all of the chapel work in MLB. They invited him to become the Chicago Cubs chaplain.

Un Buen Amigo (A Good Friend)

A team’s chaplain performs a valuable service attending to players’ spiritual needs.

“It’s really important work that’s going on,” Castellanos notes. “It’s important because these ballplayers, they’re working every Sunday. If there wasn’t an organization like this, that would come in alongside and help to provide some spiritual grounding and input into their lives, they wouldn’t have a chance to do that very often.”

So how does one minister to ballplayers, men whose full-time work is on the ballfield, involves constant travel, even temptation? For Castellanos, the personal approach is the right approach.

“You build a relationship. You begin to just care for folks and you become present in their lives. And so being around and getting an opportunity to do that with ballplayers, sometimes with wives and girlfriends and other family members.”

Want the scoop on what players talked about during his six years as Cubs chaplain? You’re not going to hear that from Castellanos.

“We rarely talk about specific ballplayers and what their issues are, who they are. What I found in my six years I was chaplain for the Cubs, there were a lot of ballplayers that were coming to chapel every Sunday and I was able to really build some solid relationships. And I saw a very deep hunger spiritually for a lot of these ballplayers.”

Attending Cubs spring training every year was a personal highlight for Castellanos. Among the things he enjoyed most were meeting rookie league players, almost all of whom came from the Caribbean and Latin America. As a fellow Latino and great-grandson of Mexican immigrants, Castellanos empathized with these ballplayers.

“These kids were young, teens, and most of them spoke almost no English at all. So if you can imagine, they’re away from home and they’re in this brand new situation. … And I didn’t spend much time with that group of ballplayers, but enough to know that it was appreciated when somebody came and said “Hey, how you doing?” and “Cómo está tu familia?” You know, how’s your family?”

The ability to identify with the Latino players’ journey made Castellanos a good counselor to these young men.

“They’re like anybody else,” he said. “What you realize when you get to know a person a little bit is they do have challenges beyond what’s going on in the field and that it’s not without a tremendous amount of pressure.”

“One of the things we’ve got to remember,” Castellanos continued, “especially for a lot of the Latino ballplayers that come from countries that have experienced a lot of turmoil, whether it’s disasters like [in] Puerto Rico, or political like situations in Venezuela with all of the political unrest and all, that’s not something you can just turn off.”

That is where the baseball chaplain steps in, to attend to their spiritual needs. It’s a role where “you have to go from being a little bit star struck to say the real reason that we’re here is to serve and to be available and to do the work that you’re called to do.”

Building Better Tomorrows

In serving as a baseball chaplain, Castellanos sought to inspire them to good works. This has meant aiding players who seek to engage in philanthropy, community involvement or social activism. In Castellanos’ case, this has meant advocating for Dreamers and immigration reform: “Trying to find a way to aid, support, and to legalize young men and women that we call Dreamers, kids that were brought into this country, not just from Latin American but from all over the world.”

Baseball provides a unique platform for Latinos to advocate for immigrant rights, Castellanos believes.

“Baseball and the role of Latino ballplayers seem to be a great opportunity for those who can speak out and just talk about how fortunate they have been to receive the opportunity to become legally able to work in this country through Major League Baseball.”

“These ballplayers have the ability to bring a voice of influence and to say we need to rethink how we villainize immigrants, and if you are willing to accept me — all these other folks, they want the same opportunity.”

There are those who agree with him, then and now.

Roberto Clemente was outspoken about the treatment of Latino immigrants in the United States, whether they were citizens or not. Felipe Alou wrote powerfully about the plight of Latino players as immigrants in a strange land in his 1963 article, “Latin American Players Need a Bill of Rights.”

Castellanos finds inspiration in the Bible to advocate for Latino immigrants and reform.

“I do what I do with Dreamers because of my faith. Because what the Bible says is that every human being is created in the image of God and that the vulnerable and the most needy and, as the Bible names it, the stranger, ought to be treated in a way that reflects the love of God. And there’s nothing that does that more than taking somebody in when they’re in a really bad situation. So whether it’s refugees or immigrants, I think our nation has a lot of responsibility to live up to its creed of being a nation of immigrants.”

Featured Image: Noel Castellanos

Inset Images: Noel Castellanos