It’s not often that a baseball star opens up and talks candidly, even movingly, about his Catholic faith. But that’s what Oakland A’s star Mike Piazza has done with this interview at Beliefnet.

The All Star says, among other things:

My personal opinion is to keep (prayer)broader, to get up in the morning and pray for the Lord’s blessings. Pray for the Lord to help me do my best at my job. To pray for health. Pray for guidance. Pray for all these things. And then all the little things kind of slide in.

But I’ve always found, too, that you have to take a step back in life and reconnect with the simpler things in life. For me, grabbing my wife and my baby, walking down the street and having coffee on the street in San Francisco, and just watching the beautiful things about the city. And just slowing it down a little bit, because we’re so high-paced in this country. We don’t take the time to just exhale, and breathe a little bit, and reconnect, and say a little prayer at times. I think about God and Jesus Christ and eternity–there isn’t an hour that goes by that I don’t think about it. And I think that that’s something that people can connect with.

Do you have a favorite prayer?

I love the rosary, and I say the Hail Mary a lot. The devotion, especially my devotion to the Holy Mother, is something that’s helped me a lot. And I love praying the rosary, so I say my Hail Marys all the time.

Hail Mary, Full of Grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of death. Amen.

Could you say a little more about what Mary means to you?

The fact that she was just so devoted and so special, that God chose her to bear his son. It’s, like, wow. It’s really a special thing. I love reading about her, and reading about some of the apparitions, or reported apparitions, throughout history. I wish I had so much grace that I would be privileged to see it. Because I think of the people in the past that have been chosen [to see visions of Mary] have certainly had to be very special to witness that.

Great stuff, all of it. Wander over to Beliefnet for more. You can also hear the interview at the site.

Photo: Mike Piazza, from Beliefnet