World Series Stars Share How God and the Virgin Mary Sustain Their Careers
The Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays are competing for their first World Series championship, with players from both teams speaking about how faith sustains them. Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio says he credits God for his career and regularly prays to Our Lady of the Rosary of Chiquinquirá, a beloved devotion in his hometown of Maracaibo, Venezuela. Brewers catcher William Contreras has prayed for health throughout the playoffs and publicly thanked God after Milwaukee swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series.
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Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays players preparing to meet in the World Series spoke about how faith shapes their lives and careers. Several Brewers described prayer and devotion to the Virgin Mary as sources of gratitude, guidance, and support, while Tampa Bay outfielder Víctor Mesa Jr. reflected on becoming more religious after leaving Cuba. 1 2
Venezuelan outfielder Jackson Chourio said he credits God for his success and the blessings in his life. From Maracaibo, where devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary of Chiquinquirá—known locally as “la Chinita”—is prominent, he said he keeps the Virgin in his prayers and asks her for health and blessings. 1 3
Catcher William Contreras said he prayed during the playoffs for health and for God’s guidance as he pursued a major goal for himself and his family. He also described devotion to Our Lady of Coromoto, Venezuela’s patroness, and expressed happiness about Pope Leo XIV’s recovery from surgery. 1 2
Pitcher Antonio Senzatela said his parents raised him in the Church and that he thanks God for his career and family. He spoke of the loss of his parents alongside his gratitude for his wife and children, and said faith helps him through difficult times. 1 3
Brewers coach Néstor Corredor said he once called himself an atheist and did not have what he considered complete faith. In recent years, he has sought to understand God’s presence in his life; he described beginning each day with words of thanks and said he felt blessed in 2026. 1 2
Tampa Bay outfielder Víctor Mesa Jr., who grew up in Cuba, said faith was not typically instilled there and that he believes more since arriving in the United States. He said he sees his presence in the World Series as a reason to give thanks. 1 3
Chourio, Contreras, Senzatela, and Corredor were members of Venezuela’s national team that won the World Baseball Classic in March, defeating a U.S. team featuring star players. The World Series matchup is between Milwaukee and Tampa Bay, with both franchises seeking their first championship. 1 2
Religious faith, Marian devotion, and meaning in professional sport
Religious faith can give professional sport a meaning deeper than victory, fame, or commercial success: it can help athletes understand discipline, teamwork, beauty, limits, and failure as parts of a human life lived before God and with others. Marian devotion can fit within that vision when it draws the believer toward Christ and a trusting, humble way of life—not when it becomes a charm for winning or a substitute for effort. The available sources offer a strong Catholic account of sport and a theological account of Mary’s faith, but they do not document a particular professional athlete’s Marian devotion.
The Church’s account of sport begins with the person, not the scoreboard. Sport brings together strength and vulnerability: athletes develop real abilities, yet face injury, uncertainty, defeat, and the limits of their bodies. It also places freedom within shared rules, and individual talent within relationships with teammates, opponents, coaches, and supporters. For these reasons, sport can reveal the unity of body and soul and prompt questions about what gives life lasting meaning.
That does not mean every sporting contest is automatically spiritually profound. The point is that sport can become a setting in which people encounter important human realities. Pope Leo XIV’s letter for the Winter Olympics highlights the joy people can find in giving themselves fully to a demanding activity, improving through challenge, and acting as part of a team. He also notes that concentration in sport can loosen self-absorption, while shared effort can foster solidarity.
For a professional athlete, faith can interpret these experiences without pretending that sporting achievement is the highest good. Training and competition may be genuine goods, and excellence may be worth pursuing; yet the Church’s guidance cautions that sport, however passionately enjoyed, is not the most important thing in life. Faith can therefore help an athlete receive success gratefully and face failure honestly, without making either result the measure of personal worth.
Professional sport makes the cost of excellence unusually visible. It demands disciplined practice, focus, self-denial, and perseverance through frustration and failure. The Church’s document on sport observes that these demands can form courage, humility, perseverance, and fortitude, and that the sacrifices involved may help believers understand their vocation as children of God.
That comparison needs care. Athletic sacrifice is not identical to Christian sacrifice, and hardship is not automatically holy simply because it serves performance. Its human and spiritual value depends in part on what it serves: love of the sport, growth in virtue, service to a team, or the good of others. The same discipline can be distorted if an athlete is treated only as a commodity, if health is recklessly sacrificed, or if achievement becomes an idol. The Church’s concern is not to reject professional competition, but to keep the person and the common good at its center. The Vatican’s guidance specifically calls for pastoral accompaniment in elite sport and warns that professional demands should not displace sport’s more generous, relational meaning.
Faith also matters when a career ends. The loss of a sporting role can expose how much identity has been bound to competition. The Church’s document urges pastoral care beyond an athlete’s active career and grounds a person’s fundamental worth in being created in God’s image, not in continuing to perform. This is one way faith gives sport perspective: it can affirm an athlete’s gifts while also affirming that the athlete is more than those gifts.
A specifically Marian perspective begins not with sports rituals but with Mary’s relation to Christ. The theological study in the supplied material describes Mary as an “icon of faith” whose meaning is illuminated by Christ and whose example directs believers to him and to the Church. It presents her faith as trusting assent to God and highlights her scriptural words at Cana: “Do whatever he tells you.”
Applied to sport, this suggests a Marian spirituality of receptivity, humility, and faithful action. An athlete might seek Mary’s intercession, entrust anxieties to God, or draw inspiration from her faithful response. But Marian devotion should not imply that Mary guarantees victory, that a particular medal or prayer mechanically changes a result, or that the athlete’s faith can be judged by wins and losses. The sources support Mary’s Christ-centred example and the human significance of sport; they do not establish any special link between Marian devotion and athletic success.
This distinction also protects faith from superstition. Prayer can accompany preparation, competition, injury, and disappointment, but it does not replace training, medical care, sound judgment, or the uncertainty inherent in sport. A Catholic interpretation would treat prayer not as a means of controlling the result but as a way of placing one’s effort, hopes, and fears in a larger relationship with God.
Professional sport reaches far beyond the athlete. Teams, fans, media, sponsors, and sporting organizations all help create its culture. The Church’s guidance identifies elite and professional sport as an influential environment and recommends trained chaplains or counsellors to accompany athletes and coaches. It also stresses that pastoral care should help athletes remain connected to the intrinsic meaning of sport and to their responsibilities toward others.
Pope Leo XIV likewise presents sport as a possible space for dialogue between people of different religions and those with no religious affiliation. He emphasizes the importance of team cultures that encourage each person to give their best for the good of the group. In that setting, a professional athlete’s religious practice need not become public performance. Its credibility is more clearly seen in qualities such as respect, perseverance, generosity, solidarity, and the ability to accept both achievement and limitation—virtues the Church associates with sport’s formative potential.
The Catholic vision, then, does not ask sport to bear the weight of ultimate meaning by itself. Sport can disclose beauty, community, discipline, and human finitude; faith can interpret these as dimensions of a life oriented toward God. Marian devotion can deepen that orientation when it leads the athlete toward Christ and a humble, faithful response to the demands of life. Neither religious belief nor Marian prayer makes professional sport immune to commercial pressure, injury, injustice, or defeat. Their significance lies instead in helping athletes and communities keep sport in its proper place: a real good capable of serving human growth, but never the measure of a person’s ultimate worth.