It’s in black and white
By the time you read this, the Chicago White Sox will be a couple of games into the World Series. But as it’s being written, the glow of the team’s pennant victory hasn’t dimmed.
Confession: I grew up a Brooklyn Dodger fan. When I was 14, they split for the coast and I abandoned them. But I stuck with the National League. I had no choice; the hated Yankees were in the AL.
So, when I migrated to Chicago decades ago, my baseball allegiance, such as it was, went to the North Side. But I couldn’t call myself a Chicagoan (even an adopted one) if I didn’t watch the Sox make it to the World Series. (And the Yankees didn’t; nah, nah, nah.)
Besides taking in a game or three at Sox Park (or whatever they’re calling it now), I have a soft spot in my heart for the team’s former owner, the late Bill Veeck.
Back in the late ’70s when I was writing a column for The Chicago Sun-Times, I was approached by a young man who said he’d be a great professional pitcher, but never played college ball to get a shot at proving it.
I smelled a good column and a little fun at the same time. I figured if I could hit the guy, he was a bozo. If I couldn’t, he might still be a bozo, but I could have a scout check him out.
My first call went (natch!) to the Cubbies. My game plan was to “borrow” Wrigley Field when the team was on the road and let the guy pitch to me with a coach watching. Hey, it sounded like good publicity all around but Cub management turned me down flat.
So I called Veeck who had a well-deserved reputation for showmanship and a fine nose for publicity.
Bill didn’t hesitate. I had the old Comiskey Park, a White Sox scout and a dugout full of equipment for an afternoon. The would-be pitcher got his tryout. He didn’t do so good; I got the pleasure of landing three long fly balls on the warning track in deep left-center field.
I also got my column and Veeck got his dollop of publicity.
What’s all this have to do with religion? Or faith?
Well, except that stealing isn’t a sin on the field, there are a lot of connections between religion and baseball. Beyond hope, that is. Just ask a die-hard Sox fan like Father Greg Sakowicz, my co-host on the Catholic Community of Faith radio show (9-10 a.m. Monday and Friday, WAIT, 820 AM). Sakowicz, pastor of St. Mary of the Woods, phoned me the morning after the final playoff game bragging he’d already written his letter for the parish bulletin—about the Sox.
Fans who struggled through 46 years of baseball Purgatory are finding salvation in the series bid. Not to mention that a lot of them are still convinced it’ll be a cold day in you-know-where before their North Side rivals get a shot.
But that’s just the obvious.
More important is something the free-wheeling Veeck understood better than the buttoned-down execs who ran the Cubs: baseball is too important to be taken seriously ALL the time.
And so is faith.
At its heart, baseball is a child’s game played by men. Winning is important, but so is enjoying the trip.
Just as no one should mistake the fact that salvation is serious business. At the heart of the journey of faith there should be joy. That’s what our celebrations acknowledge; that’s what we do when we gather as community, as people sharing the journey.
Besides, I can’t believe a God who gave us a sense of humor would be unwilling to smile now and then.
Go, Sox!
Tom Sheridan
Editor and General Manager
