As you know, we on the Lead news team find a deep theological connection in baseball. Our belief is confirmed by stories in the Boston Globe on cardinals, bishops and baseball.
Michael Paulson writes that while Cardinal O’Connell, whose tenure saw them win 4 World Series, was not a fan,
His successor, Cardinal Richard J. Cushing, was more of an enthusiast, periodically buying blocks of seats at Fenway and bringing hundreds of nuns, in full habit, to games.
Cardinal Humberto S. Medeiros was a real fan, so much so that, on his way into a papal conclave in Rome, he famously asked how the Red Sox were doing. (That was in 1978, a grim year for the Vatican, when two popes died, and for the Red Sox, who lost the American League East division in a one-game playoff with the New York Yankees.)
Now comes Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, a Capuchin Franciscan friar better known for his affection for foreign films, Spanish literature, and “A Prairie Home Companion,” but who showed up at Fenway Park with a group of priests and church officials to watch the Red Sox clinch a wild card berth on Sept. 23.
“Since I have been the archbishop of Boston, the team has won two championships,” O’Malley blogged afterward. “Only one other archbishop in the history of the diocese can make that claim. Cardinal O’Connell saw the victories of 1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918 . . . but, I have just gotten started!”
In a followup story Paulson reports on an Episcopal Church connection:
In response to the story, I got this e-mail from David Clark:
“My dad, Rt. Rev. William H. Clark was the Episcopal Bishop of Delaware from 1975 to 1985. After retiring from that post, he and mom moved to Cape Cod, and he acted as an assisting bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. He was often asked to visit parishes to perform confirmation services. Dad was very much “low church” and had never bothered to order, much less wear, the mytre, a pointed “bishop’s hat”. However during a visit to a “high church” parish in suburban Boston during October 1986, the local priest was very concerned about having a hatless bishop confirm the new candidates. The matter was easily settled when a parishioner, agog with Red Sox fever because of the Mets-Sox world series going on at the time, kindly donated the Red Sox cap he had worn to church that day so that dad could wear it during the service. A long time Red Sox fan himself from his time as a parish priest at Trinity Church in Concord, and Saint Andrew’s Church in Wellesley, dad was happy to oblige.”
The Lead team has determined in light of this past Sunday’s gospel, the reason the Cubs did not win this year is because their “garments” were all wrong! NPR, however, believes it is because of Cheap Grace. Their fans love them too much.