A lot of prayers were going up this year from the Texas Rangers’ Globe Life Field this year as the team earned its first World Series championship. Father Daniel Kelley has been sending up prayers from inside the Major League Baseball stadium for eight years, performing Mass for the Sunday home games. 
“Catholic Athletes for Christ formed a number of years ago to provide Mass and the sacraments to players and coaches for college and professional teams,” Kelley said. “They talked to the teams to allow them to have Mass. They got a lot of professional athletes to support them.
“Bishop (Michael) Olson called me eight years ago,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about it. He asked if I would have Mass. I was very excited.”
Kelley, a Dallas native, has been a life-long baseball fan and has been following the Texas Rangers since the team moved to Texas in 1972.
“My dad was from outside St. Louis and he would sit in his car and listen to the Cardinals games,” he said. “When the Rangers came, he used to take us to the old stadium. He would have gotten a kick out of the Cardinals playing the Rangers in the World Series in 2011.”
Kelley played right field for Sunnyvale for two years when he was at Bishop Lynch High School. After high school, he joined the U.S. Air Force, followed by college and the seminary. He became a priest in December 1995, and has served at St. Jude Catholic Church in Mansfield for the past year and a half. Before that, he was the pastor at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Arlington for a dozen years.
Even with his prayers going up from inside the stadium, he doesn’t take any credit for the Rangers’ first World Series title. But he should probably get props for growing the attendance at Mass at the stadium.
“The first year I went, maybe five or six people would come,” Kelley said. “We met in a very small room. It was mainly coaches.”
Since then, attendance has grown to 15-30 people at the Sunday home game Masses, and the group has progressively moved to a larger rooms, he said.
Most of the attendees are from the visiting teams, Kelley said.
“The games are late enough in the day that the Rangers can attend Mass at their home churches and then come to the game,” he said. “Many of the visiting teams don’t have easy access to Catholic churches. Then they started letting anyone who worked at the stadium come.”
Signs are posted in both locker rooms, inviting the teams to Mass on Sundays.
“(Former Bally Sports television host) John Rhadigan would come and he would always do the readings,” Kelley said. “The teams that normally have the most are the Atlanta Braves and the California Angels. I get a lot of employees. The players usually come right before Mass.”
And, yes, he did get to see some games at Globe Life Field this year, but not any of the World Series games.
“My last time to have Mass was the last Sunday in the regular season,” he said. “I was saying goodbye and thinking we had a chance to get into the postseason. I never thought they’d win the World Series.”
The Rangers have made him a believer, though, and he thinks their chances to repeat next year are good. And he’ll be back at the stadium, holding Mass as long as the bishop asks, he said.
