As Heroes, Athletes Don’t Have a Prayer

Excerpts from a sermon on the mound:

Brothers and sisters of the Central Tower Fellowship and Home Loan, I have asked you here to the stadium to repent an evil that has rotted the minds of our children, corrupted their very souls, infested their hearts and undermined their morality.

I ask you to pray, my friends, for the modern-day American professional athlete.

Feel, ladies and gentleman, the pain that pierces my heart!

(Response: We feel it! We feel it!)

Yes, friends, our role models have vanished, sold their very souls to you-know-who in the fiery bowels of you-know-where.

(We know who! We know where!)

Yes, my generous parishioners, with every sweeping pitch I feel the wave of evil swelling. We’ve got trouble here. Big trouble!

(Trouble! trouble!)

The times they have a-changed, my friends.

It was 20 years ago today that I begged you to burn your Beatles albums in the streets. I stood on this very spot before a Buffalo Springfield concert and asked you to pray for the hippies. The Summer of Love was the Summer of Sin, my friends! Long hair was held together by the ugly barrette of Satan!

(Barrette! Barrette!)

I read you horror stories about Jim Morrison and the Doors, my friends, of the night in Miami he was possessed of a being not of this world. We knew of the drinking and the drugs and the orgies and the followers who worshiped him. We knew and repunged the name of Janis Joplin. We knew, my good people, that the Jimi Hendrix Experience was the worst experience. We needed our children to grow up like Keith Moon as much as we needed a liberal in the White House.

We knew of that repulsive life style and down which crooked road it ultimately led.

We spun in reverse the records of Led Zeppelin until our fingers bled, my friends, so sure of what we heard and what it meant.

(Zeppelin, Zeppelin!)

We begged for our children to tune in and turn on not to Timothy Leary, but to Wille Mays and Sandy Koufax. We wanted them to live the clean lives they lived, wear the clean clothes they wore, sing the clean songs they sang. We were extremely concerned with clean.

(Clean, clean!)

We counted on our athletes to lead us out of the wilderness of sin, my friends.

So why, in our darkest hour, have we been betrayed? Why have the tables turned?

Why must we hide the sports pages from our young ones? Why must I ask you to join with me in burning right here on this mound the baseball cards of Eddie Milner and Dwight Gooden and Vida Blue and John Candelaria?

Why, when we ask the Angels’ Candelaria to repent for his sins of an alleged drunken driving charge, does he brush the whole affair off with a response as shameful as “How many times have you driven under the influence?”

Are those the kind of answers we seek, my people?

(No! No!)

Why do we hear cheers and not boos when a great pitcher walks in the front door of a drug rehabilitation center?

Why, my dear friends, must I must beg you to listen to “Take Me Out To the Ballgame” at 45 r.p.m., to hear for yourself what I know to be references of an unpure nature?

Why must we ban from our doctrine of love the viewing of any game played by the Phoenix Suns? Why, my friends, must I ask you to return any NBA product ever endorsed by the Suns’ Walter Davis or Mitchell Wiggins and the Houston Rockets’ Lewis Lloyd?

(Why, why?)

Are we at the CTF (and Home Loan) the last bastion of morality? It is with great pain that I implore you to keep your children away from our batting cages and gymnasiums. Be wary of men with nicknames like “Pee-wee” and “Slugger” and “Stick.” Tell your children never to accept candy from a stranger or an autographed ball from a first baseman.

Resist the temptation of season tickets and the charm of 20-game winners. Repent, my friends, repent.

(Repent, repent!)

I do not profess to know always what is right and what is wrong. It pains me deeply to tell you that we are confused, that we at the CTF (and Home Loan) wonder how the heroes of yesterday could so fast become the enemies of today. It seems that we have come full circle, my friends, to a time when we are almost embarrassed to say that we may soon have to turn our spirits back to that instrument of evil, the devil’s very own music and lyrics!

I speak, my friends, of rock ‘n’ roll.

(Rock ‘n’ roll!)

We have humbly succumbed to the scourge of hypocrisy.

But I must ask you today to look into your hearts and decide which man takes better care of himself. Is it Bruce Springsteen or is it Dwight Gooden? It is for you to decide who is the better molder of minds. I wonder out loud, here today, which is the better role model.

I wonder, if given the choice, whom might we choose to speak to our children? Would it be Bob Geldof or LaMarr Hoyt?

And lastly, dear friends, which group would we choose to pass on the right messages to our children? Who would we rather have our children pay to see at the Sports Arena, the Suns of Phoenix or U2s of Ireland? Which group is more upstanding? More sincere? Which is better suited to sing about the evils of drug abuse?

I ask you, with pain in my heart, who should we turn to now? I vow not to descend from this pitching mound until I receive the answer.