The Pontiff and the Pride of the Yankees

I was on the treadmill in the fitness center while 9,000 people sang Happy Birthday to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, on the front lawn of the White House Wednesday morning under a brilliant blue sky. It was very cool, even for this jaded and faded FARC of a used-to-be-altar boy. Having lived elsewhere in the world where people regard the USA as the 'land of unlimited possibilities', I've gotten a little too used to circumscribed horizons in recent years. When you've watched people behind barbed wire and armed guards, whom you learn later are political prisoners, step on buried land mines on their side of the frontier rather than live one more day in a Worker's Paradise, you get confused when US voter turnout continues in free fall, as if nothing mattered and what if it did.

And then as if from another dimension, because in a very real sense the Bishop of Rome is from someplace else in every meaning of the word, the Pope comes to America and suddenly white hair and soutanes are incredibly hip. First visit in almost three decades to the Land of the Round Door Knobs and the Catholic Church he leads and the one we have here aren't always one and the same, and I don't just mean in terms of headlines in recent months and years. I suspect, to the Pope, the USA is the most secular of his churches-all we may be missing (because I don't know for sure that it doesn't exist) is a sacramental drive-thru where you can get Holy Communion and a small order of fries (talk about a Happy Meal, eh?) on Sundays while heading to that early morning tee-time. Adds a whole new meaning to Casual Sundays with Holy Mother Church.

Three days in Washington D.C. and three in the World's Capital, NYC, is an eye blink in eternity, I know, and forever for all of those who are making this happen. It looks like, from checking their website, Eternal Word Television Network is providing coverage of the visit as if we were tuning into The Real World or The Hills (Do viewers of MTV even realize the "M" originally stood for music? It makes me wonder….) .

And this is obviously a weekend that nobody on the Yankee Stadium grounds crew gets to call in sick. Two games to include tonight at home against the Red Sox and his Holiness celebrating Mass from the infield (I suspect) near second base (but closer to Jeter than farther away if you get my meaning) on Sunday afternoon. I'm wondering, as a Yankees fan, how thrilled I should feel that the Bishop of Rome chose the House that Ruth Built and Mantle Filled. I'd like to tease Red Sox fans that he's in the Bronx and NOT in Fenway, but since the Bosox took two of three from the Bombers over the weekend, he may have decided the Yankees needed the help more.

And with Jose Molina coming up a bit lame, as Jeter did (come to think of it), maybe Brian Cashman should consider offering the Pope one of those three-day minor league contracts, just to get Yanks through to Monday. I would concede wearing the vestments, asking him to drag bunt in the late innings is probably out of the question (what would the Latin for 'hit and run' be? That's right, the Pope is actually German). If he shows up early at the Stadium on Sunday, even though the team is on the road, would he be allowed to take BP and what would happen if, after he makes the Sign of the Cross to start Mass, the Pope were to lean into the mike and say "Heute ich halte mich für den glücklichsten Mann auf dem Gesicht der Masse." He's a regular Gary Cooper, that Benedict XVI.
Put that in your bloody sock and smoke it, Curt.
-bill kenny