His dad, "Spud" Ryan, was a knock-around catcher in the Chicago Cubs' farm system, trying to catch a break and make the major leagues. That's how come the minor leaguer and his new wife Charlotte from Salt Lake City had the good fortune of winding up on Santa Catalina Island in the spring of 1930 to practice with players from the big club.

While Spud's field of dreams didn't work out, with his World War I Marine background he landed a job as a cop on the Avalon Police Department, and the Ryans' son, Sylvester, was born in early September of that year.

Some 26 1/2 years later, that only child would be ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He would minister in parishes and become the pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Tujunga, be named the principal of two Catholic high schools, serve as rector and president of St. John's Seminary College, be appointed auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles by Pope John Paul II in 1990 and two years later Bishop of Monterey.

Bishop Sylvester Ryan retired from that last clerical post in January 2007. This summer, as he has for many years, the 77-year-old prelate returned to his boyhood duplex home in Avalon, three houses down the street on the corner from St. Catherine of Alexandria Church. It was at St. Catherine's, where he was an altar boy, that inspiring priests, especially Msgr. John Brennan, caught his eye and planted the seed for his own vocation.

"The parish was always a very big part of my life," he told an island interloper recently. "We've had extraordinary pastors. Father Brennan was a remarkable man. A good preacher, and he was charismatic with people. The way he touched people's lives in all kinds of situations was just remarkable."

Still, Sylvester went off to Long Beach City College with his own dreams of playing basketball or at least coaching. But he couldn't shake the idea of serving God and his people. And by the end of that school year, he had decided to at least give the seminary a try.

An island boyhood
"Growing up here was a remarkable kind of thing," Bishop Ryan recalls with a ready grin. "First of all, there were only a thousand people approximately in Avalon. We had the whole island to ourselves, you know, as junior Coast Guard members, Cub and Boy Scouts. I mean, we were all over this island. We spent time exploring the bays on the other side of the isthmus, and there was lots of camping out, lots of barbecues.

"It was just incredible. You had all summer long around the water. We went fishing. In the winter time it was hiking, kites. The friendships that were formed going through kindergarten to high school together here were just marvelous friendships, and some have remained right to today."

In his 1948 graduating class, there were only 17 islanders. So everybody played everything: basketball, baseball, track and golf. With a wry expression, the amiable bishop explains how you could letter in four sports, even if you didn't have any talent.

During World War II, he remembers how Merchant Marines took over Catalina, along with the Army Signal Corps, while the Coast Guard patrolled the shores. Meanwhile, the Marines used a private boys' school for R & R duty. And the Chicago Cubs held their spring training there from 1921 to 1951, with natives usually putting on a grand parade for the players and coaches when they arrived at the Steamer Pier.

And then there were the fabulous big bands that came to the island's famous round Casino before and after the war. "During the summer, I used to rent my bicycle to Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Kay Kayser, because my father was a policeman and he had duty up at the Casino and would get to know these guys," he says. "My mother and I would go up and just sit there and listen 'cause he would let us in. The big bands brought lots and lots of people."

Bishop Ryan, who still lives in the Diocese of Monterey, plans on continuing his summer hiatuses to Catalina, helping out St. Catherine of Alexandria's current pastor, Father Paul Siebenand, by celebrating Mass, hearing confessions and doing other ministerial tasks.

"St. Catherine's is different pastorally because it's lonely - I mean, it's a lonely situation," he points out. "We've just been blessed with priests who have loved it, but you'd better be someone who has other interests. Like Paul is a historian. He loves to read. He has a doctorate in communications and film, plus a degree in journalism. Other priests loved golf. We had one priest here who would go fishing three or four times a week.

"And being the only priest, everything falls on your shoulder," notes the bishop, who is the only Catalina native to become a priest. "So it's a difficult task. You're it, and you're on an island."