Prayer services and talk of religious values are common on some teams. Read a Sept. 18, 2005, Washington Post story about a ministry called Baseball Chapel and the practice of players praying before games.

Some baseball teams – including the Colorado Rockies and Atlanta Braves – have held “Faith Days,” in which players share their Christian faith with fans after the final out. It’s optional – fans buy a separate ticket for the “Faith Day” event after the game. But post-game Christian fellowship has become a big money-maker in the minor […]

Christopher H. Evans is professor of history of Christianity and Methodist studies at Boston University School of Theology. He is co-editor of The Faith of 50 Million: Baseball, Religion and American Culture, a collection of essays on religious motifs in baseball.

Tony Ladd is athletic director at Trinity International University and co-author of Muscular Christianity: Evangelical Protestants and the Development of American Sport (Baker Books, 1999).

Allen E. Hye is the author of The Great God Baseball: Religion in Modern Baseball Fiction (Mercer University Press, 2004). He was a professor of Danish and German at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and the Popular Culture Association.

Robert J. Higgs is the author of God in the Stadium: Sports and Religion in America (University Press of Kentucky, 1995) and co-author of An Unholy Alliance: The Sacred and Modern Sports (Mercer University Press, 2004). Contact via Mercer University Press.

Allen Bodner is a boxing historian and the author of When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport. His father was a professional boxer. Bodner is an attorney in New York City.

William Baker is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Maine in Orono. He has written about Christ and the Olympics. His books include If Christ Came to the Olympics and Playing With God: Religion and Modern Sport. He argues that religion and sport have made peace with each other.

Rebecca T. Alpert is a rabbi and an associate professor of religion and women’s studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Penn. She writes on baseball, queer culture and religion.