In The Dugout Chaplains Doug Compton and Carlos Hidalgo's weekly Baseball Chapel provides players with a spiritual lift to get them through the week. Compton and Hidalgo are team Chaplains and for a few minutes each home Sunday they hold Baseball Chapel services. Compton conducts an English-speaking service at one end of the Whitecaps dugout while Hidalgo is at the other end conducting the service in Spanish. The same scenario is repeated 20 minutes later in the visitors dugout. The service at Old Kent Park is one of more than 100 Baseball Chapels going on simultaneously around the country each Sunday.
Chapels begin in spring training and end after the fall leagues.
Some 240 clubs in the Winter Leagues in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic are also included. Every major league and minor league club is covered in the Baseball Chapel program, with the exception of one team which plays late Sunday games, allowing players to attend church service on their own. In the early 1960's, players from the Cubs and Twins initiated Chapel services when they were on road trips. Services were usually held at the team hotel. In 1972, Spoelstra, now retired and living near Clearwater, FL, approached Commissioner Bowie Kuhn with the idea of organizing a program to provide chapel services for every major league team.