The Rev. Canon Greg Larkin at last year’s Episcopal Dodger Night. Photo: Bob Williams.
The Rev. Canon Greg Larkin was born in the Diocese of Los Angeles, and has been a baseball fan a good amount of the time since. Larkin was born at Good Samaritan Hospital, and his father was a priest of the diocese. “You don’t get any more Episcopal than that,” Larkin said.
As a child, living for six years in central New York state, he would go to sleep listening to the baseball games that the local station broadcast, the only station his radio could pick up.
It wasn’t until the early ’70s, back in Los Angeles that Larkin started rooting for the Dodgers, when his math teacher assigned the whole some unconventional homework: cheer for the Dodgers that night as they played the Giants to get into the playoffs.
At a Dodgers game in the early 1990s, when Larkin was serving as rector of St. Thomas’, Long Beach, and was a Dodgers season ticket holder, he happened to be at a game on Methodist night. He talked to then Bishop Fred Borsch, who signed off on the idea of an Episcopal Dodgers Night; then he wrote to the Dodgers, and in 1993 Episcopal Dodgers night was born. Larkin has been organizing the event ever since, and is known affectionately as “Canon Baseball.”
(From left) Larkin, Dodgers Relief Pitcher Jim Gott, and Bishop Frederick Borsch at Dodger Stadium in 1993.
Through the years, attendance has ranged from around 800 to more than 1,200, and with the exception of a couple off years during the pandemic and the players strike, dodger night has continued as a yearly tradition. Episcopal Dodger night this year is Aug. 29, with the Dodger’s playing the Arizona Diamondbacks.
“We tend to lose more than we win, but it’s still fun,” said Larkin, who retired in 2022 after 22 years as rector of St. Columba’s, Camarillo. “It’s always great to have people from all over the diocese.”
Larkin and his wife, Nancy, enjoy the event is as a chance to see old friends and Episcopalians from around the diocese in addition to watching the game.
After a 2007 fire at Camp Stevens, the Episcopal outdoors camp in Julian, Larkin asked if some of the excess funds that had accumulated from years of Dodger’s Night could go to restoring the chapel at Camp Stevens, where Larkin served as a chaplain for a number of years. Now in the Camp Stevens chapel, a plaque thanks those who helped in the restoration, including all those who attended Episcopal Dodger Night.
In 2018, the 25th anniversary of Episcopal Dodgers Night, Larkin was honored with throwing the ceremonial first pitch. It had been years since he’d actually played, but with a little practice beforehand, and an effort to ignore the thousands of people watching him, it got to home base, caught by Canon Steve Nishibayashi, Secretary of Diocesan Convention and a fellow Dodgers fan, without at hitch.
In recent years, the event has become Episcopal-Lutheran Dodger Night, in partnership with the Southern California Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This year, more than 1,000 are expected from the Lutheran and Episcopal churches.