The Sisters of Notre Dame have a date in "Hardball Heaven" after winning 18 tickets to watch the Red Sox play the Detroit Tigers at Fenway Park.
The nuns beat long odds when they bought a single ticket to a raffle benefitting Lazarus House in Lawrence and won the grand prize. It includes limousine transportation to the Aug. 1 game and a $1,200 allowance for hot dogs and other refreshments, along with the 18 luxury seats by first base and the Sox dugout.
"People think it's divine intervention," said Sister Judy Cooper.
"Or it's part of someone's plan," interjected Sister Lorraine Connell.
The raffle held at Dylan's Bar and Grill in Andover raised more than $50,000 for Lazarus House, which runs a homeless shelter, food pantry, soup kitchen and thrift shop.
"I was super excited that they won," said Bridget Sheehy, coordinator of the event for Lazarus House. "They have given their whole lives to working with the poor and this is an opportunity that they would have never gotten."
Sister Cooper, a huge Red Sox fan who lives in Lawrence, started the ball rolling when she saw the raffle advertised in the bulletin at St. Robert Bellarmine Church in Andover.
Tickets were out of her range at $100 each. So Sister Cooper invited fellow nuns to chip in $10 each to buy a ticket.
It was a 750-to-1 shot (750 tickets were sold).
But the nuns had an edge: They made a novena, praying for nine straight days before the drawing.
"We couldn't believe it, but now we're looking forward to it," said Sister Connell. "We're going to have a lot of fun and enjoy it, but we did it for Lazarus House."
Sister Connell and four other nuns share a house and a television in Peabody and are glued to the set whenever there's a Sox game.
Sister Connell has been a Red Sox fan since 1967, when she was a student at Girls Latin in Boston and could buy a Sox ticket for $1.25.
She was at Game 6 of the World Series when Rico Petrocelli slugged the two home runs and the Red Sox rallied for an 8-4 win over the St. Louis Cardinals.
"The people went wild and everybody ran onto the field," Sister Connell said.
But the curse was still active then, and the Sox lost Game 7.
"They absolutely broke my heart," said Sister Connell.
Sister Cooper, associate director of the Notre Dame Spirituality Center in Ipswich, remembers going to Sox games with her late father and listening to other games on the radio with him. Her love for the game did not wane when she made her profession as a woman religious.
"We're just like people who enjoy many different things, from arts to sports," she said.
Sister Connell's and Sister Cooper's eight co-winners were Sisters Ellen Dabrieo and Leonore Coan of Peabody, Sisters Juana McCarthy and Marie McDonald of Beverly, Sisters Margaret McCarthy and Julie McDonough of Ipswich and Sister Andrea Walsh of Stoneham, as well as Betty Armstrong of Peabody, a laywoman who is the sister of Sister Dabrieo.
They'll invite eight others to share their day at Fenway.
