In May 1920, tens of thousands of admirers flocked to farewell Archbishop Daniel Mannix, both in Melbourne and at the docks in Sydney, as he prepared to embark on an ad limina visit to Rome.
Mannix’s Australian farewell went on for days. The size and enthusiasm of the Melbourne crowds who converged on the Exhibition Building and later lined Collins Street to wish him bon voyage—singing, jostling, cheering and doing a brisk trade in souvenir portraits and lapel pins—were evidence of the intense affection and loyalty he inspired in many of his flock.
Rather than sailing directly to the Eternal City, a route that would have required the seasickness-prone Archbishop to spend more time at sea, and for him to sail on a British liner, Archbishop Mannix had arranged to sail first to the United States, where he would undertake a lecture tour on ‘the Irish question’—a tour that would, significantly, coincide with the US speaking and fundraising tour of prominent Irish Republican and future president of Ireland Éamon de Valera.
The plan was then for Mannix to visit his native Ireland before travelling on to Rome—a plan that would be notoriously thwarted when the British navy intercepted his ship off the Irish coast and prevented him from landing. The British feared what might happen if the fiery oratory of the Irish nationalist prelate were to be unleashed in his homeland right at the height of the Irish War of Independence—a fear that could only have been reinforced by the huge crowds and popular fervour that marked his tour of the United States.
Presented with the keys to the city, Mannix was feted and treated as a celebrity in New York, drawing large, placard-carrying crowds of mainly Irish Catholic admirers.
By 1920, Mannix would have been used to attracting large crowds in his own Archdiocese, but what he perhaps might not have expected was that he would receive a similarly rapturous welcome in the United States, and there was perhaps no warmer welcome than the one he received in New York City, where he arrived in July 2020.
Presented by Mayor JF Hylan with the keys to the city, Mannix was feted and treated as a celebrity, drawing large, placard-carrying crowds of mainly Irish Catholic admirers, and appearing, memorably, on the same platform as de Valera at Madison Square Garden.
In a less controversial appearance, he was also invited to the Polo Grounds—the New York Yankees’ home ground until the construction three years later of Yankee Stadium—by the Yankees’ owners, Colonels Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast Huston, to watch the home team play the Chicago White Sox on 20 July. Here he was given the honour of tossing the ball out in the second game of a ‘double-header’.
Under the headline ‘Dr Mannix Sees Baseball Game’, the Advocate reported on 21 July that the Archbishop had not reached the stadium until the second game. ‘So, without his ecclesiastical assistance, the Yankees lost the initial game. But after his Grace tossed out the ball to First Baseman Walter Pipp, at the opening of the second game, the Yankees had no difficulty, romping away with the second game.
Noticing the umpire, Mannix asked, ‘Who is that man with the mattress and the cage on his countenance?’
Mannix was accompanied at the game by Chancellor of the Archdiocese of New York Mgr John Dunn, Fr Stephen Donohue, assistant secretary to Archbishop Patrick Hayes of New York, and Fr Thomas Murphy, ‘chaplain of the Polo Grounds’, who explained the game to Mannix and his party.
Noticing the umpire, Mannix asked, ‘Who is that man with the mattress and the cage on his countenance?’, to which Mgr Dunn responded, ‘That’s Moriarty, the umpire, the man they will seek to destroy.’
It’s a grand game. It grows on a man. The marvel to me is that the batter is able to hit the ball at all.
When Mannix was told, after the game, that Pipp’s brother in Chicago was a Catholic priest, he joked, ‘Now, don’t try to take the credit for this game all the way to Chicago. New York won because I tossed out the ball. Mr Pipp helped a little not through his Chicago brother, but by welting that ball for a home run the first time it was pitched to him.’
As the game continued, Mannix reflected, ‘It’s a grand game. It grows on a man. The marvel to me is that the batter is able to hit the ball at all. I can scarcely see it as they fling it at the plate, and my eyes are good. A great game, truly, but, apparently, every man gets fair play except the umpire. They must pick people of fortitude and wit for that position.’
Indeed, as the Advocate reported, ‘the Archbishop’s sympathy was with the umpires rather than with either team. Twice he anticipated [the umpire’s] decision on a close base ruling, and protested mildly at the derision of the fans, for the rulings were against the home team.’
After the game, Colonel Ruppert introduced the Archbishop to Babe Ruth—a Catholic, and considered by many the greatest baseball player of all time—telling the Yankees’ star recruit, ‘Here’s a gentleman who never saw a ball game.’ According to the Advocate, ‘The Babe stared, wide-eyed and incredulous; then smiled as the Archbishop’s title and home were given, remarking: “I thought there was a catch in that somewhere.”’
As Buck O’Neill, a baseball expert, explained the finer points of the game, Mannix mischievously compared the American game with its British counterpart. ‘Beside baseball,’ he remarked, ‘cricket is surely a slow game, with little novelty.’
This year, on 4 March, we mark the 160th anniversary of the birth of Archbishop Daniel Mannix.
