A Nun’s Lifetime Devotion To The Dodgers

A Nun’s Lifetime Devotion To The Dodgers
Sister Vincent Cecire (right) spoke to her friend Sister Catherine Garry (left) at StoryCorps in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
A Nun’s Lifetime Devotion To The Dodgers
Sister Vincent Cecire (right) spoke to her friend Sister Catherine Garry (left) at StoryCorps in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

A Nun’s Lifetime Devotion To The Dodgers

WBEZ brings you fact-based news and information. Sign up for our newsletters to stay up to date on the stories that matter.

As we head into the first weekend of the Major League Baseball season, many Americans will be tuning in to root for their favorite teams, including 94-year-old Sister Vincent Cecire.

Cecire entered the convent in 1934 and has been devoted to the Dodgers ever since they won their first World Series in 1955. She has lived in cities all over the country, working as an elementary school teacher, and with every move, she always brought her love of the baseball with her.

Cecire tells her friend Sister Catherine Garry how she became interested in baseball while teaching third-graders in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the 1950s.

“The boys would come in with their baseball cards and I’d say, ‘It’s not time for baseball. Now put them on my desk.’ And of course, while I gave them work to do, I would look at the baseball cards,” she says.

She says her love of the game endured a move to New Orleans with the help of a like-minded nun.

“I was a Dodger fan and Sister Archangel was a Yankee fan,” Cecire recalls. “Teams would come to play exhibition games and she and I would sneak in the Superdome. We never missed a game — and they called us the ‘Nuns of Summer.’ ”

From New Orleans, Cecire moved on to Philadelphia, where the Phillies helped Cecire get even closer to the Dodgers.

“I had a little boy whose father was a Phillie,” she says. “One day, it was the Phillies [against] the Dodgers so I asked this little boy to give his father the little notepad I had [and] go to the dugout for the Dodgers.”

When the boy’s father came back with a few Dodger autographs, Cecires says, “I thought I was going to heaven.”

Sister Vincent Cecire currently lives in the St. Cabrini Nursing Home in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

Audio produced for Morning Edition by Michael Garofalo. Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.