Perhaps you saw the mention in Sunday’s Sports section about the Christian iconography on the mound at Busch Stadium. Apparently, somebody on the grounds crew etches a cross into the dirt. Perhaps that’s appropriate. This is a Christian team, and the Christianity leans toward the evangelical side.
...Still, I look at the photos of that cross etched on the mound and I get an uneasy feeling ... Now there’s a cross etched on to the mound at Busch Stadium. Certainly, the players don’t seem bothered by it. Adam Wainwright told the Post-Dispatch’s Derrick Goold that the cross, and a looping figure said to represent Stan Musial’s number 6, had been there for all his starts. The tribute to Musial seems harmless. Not so the cross. Does religion need to be that prominent in a baseball game? I’m not pretending it’s a big deal. But still, I have an uneasy feeling about a cross etched on the mound.
Look, I’m a godless, lefty, agnostic, pinko degenerate (or so I’m told) but I’m really struggling to see how this is a problem. I also fail to see how this is even remotely related to national security and NSA spying and the Patriot Act and all of that, but McLellan goes there too.
The Cardinals aren’t the government. In most places of work employees are allowed to put up some sort of token or symbol of their religion, and the pitchers mound is the pitchers’ cubicle for all practical purposes. I’m not sure what the problem is here. I believe in the Constitution’s anti-establishment clause. But the notion, which is implicit in McClellan’s piece, that it or allied concerns extend to some sort of problem with the public expression of religion is pretty insane.
I get mad when the government sanctions religion or passes laws which are based in some particular religion’s morality. But if I’m a Cardinals fan I’m cool with this. I’m cool with them giving burnt offerings to pagan gods or pouring out rum for Jobu if it makes Cardinals pitchers work fast and throw strikes. How this is even a thing is beyond me.
