Only Catholic Priest Who Played in a Major League Baseball Game

Yes, in 1912, Allan Travers, who would become a Jesuit priest, pitched for one game for the Detroit Tigers against the Philadelphia Athletics. He was five years older than Father Feeney. Perhaps they knew each other. Both studied at Woodstock College in Maryland about the same time.

uCatholic, Billy Ryan: On May 15th, 1912, famous Tiger’s star Ty Cobb appeared in New York’s Hilltop Park for a regular-season game facing the New York Highlanders. At the end of the sixth inning, Cobb entered the stands and fought with fan Claude Lueker who had been taunting him with profanity and racial epithets the entire game. Lueker was missing one hand and only had three fingers on the other from an industrial accident, and when fans pled with Cobb to stop the fighting, he shouted back “I don’t care if he has no feet!”

That now-infamous game is how Allan Travers became the only Catholic priest ever to play in a Major League Baseball game. Here is the amazing story.