Blood of the Savior

No shortage of allusions and comparisons of baseball and religion exists, from Annie Savoy's soliloquy ("The only church that truly feeds the soul day in and day out is the Church of Baseball") to calling ballparks Green Cathedrals to scholarly volumes (The Faith of 50 Million: Baseball, Religion, and American Culture). Love of the game literally saved my life so I am disinclined to easily dismiss such comparisions.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown is acknowledged as a shrine and the Hall proper resembles nothing so much as a classic church, from the materials from which it was built, marble, granite and oak, to the shape and layout with the soaring dome of the santuctuary at one end and the plaques serving as stations of the cross throughout the nave.

So it is no surprise that on my latest visit (apparently I cannot pass through Cooperstown without stopping in at the HOF) that I should find on display the Blood of the Savior. On the top floor where the current reigning World Series winning team is celebrated, one can see Curt Schilling's bloody sock, along side Manny's bat and Papi's jersey. Seeing the sock there, the iron rust colored blot fairly small, evoked a sense of delight, as memories of the Series and the incredible season that preceded it unfurled, and a sense of the absurd, that this soiled garment serves as the modern version of a reliquary.

In the grand scheme of things, it seems only fitting that I viewed this religious artifact on Good Friday.

Coffee-flavored wishes My Barista this morning made his Opening Day prediction: Boomer will give up a couple runs, be lifted in the fifth, and the Scuzziest Looking Man in Baseball will get lit up, final score 9 - 7 Red Sox.