Baseball is often rhapsodized as a religion in America. It makes sense then that Yankee Stadium is a stamping ground for popes.
The only two who have set foot on U.S. soil have celebrated Mass in the Bronx, in the most famous sports arena this side of the Colosseum.
On April 20, Pope Benedict XVI will be the third.
Pope Paul VI was there in 1965, Pope John Paul II in 1979. Benedict is expected to pack the place with at least 60,000 people.
And if Benedict's stadium visit is like those of his predecessors, it will be remembered less for the homily than for the spectacle of the successor to Peter presiding where Joe DiMaggio once chased down fly balls. And, of course, just for a chance to see a pope in person.
Joe Dougherty was there Oct. 2, 1979. He and his wife expected the stadium to be in a state of quiet reverence, a la St. Patrick's Cathedral, when he arrived early at his upper-deck seats on the third-base side.
“The atmosphere,” recalled Dougherty, a former Queens resident who now lives in a suburb of Jacksonville, Fla., “was almost like a concert or a sporting event, not that it was a rowdy kind of atmosphere. But there was this buzz, an electricity in the air, a lot of excitement.”
When John Paul arrived – an hour late – he electrified the crowd, Dougherty remembered.
“You got a sense of the exuberance that this man had,” Dougherty said. “You got the sense that people saw him and felt different about him than they had about past pontiffs.”
Indeed, on that entire trip to the United States, made just a year after he became pope at 58, John Paul captivated Americans with his joyful, vibrant personality.
John Paul, who also visited poor neighborhoods in the South Bronx not far from the stadium, made his homily on the importance of serving the poor.
Paul VI's visit to Yankee Stadium was the first papal Mass in the United States, coming on the first day a pope – any pope – had visited this country. That same day, he made a celebrated anti-war plea in French at the United Nations: “Jamais plus la guerre! Jamais plus la guerre!” (“Never again war! Never again war!”)
In his Yankee Stadium homily that day, which was mainly about peace, Paul also praised “the day which, for the first time, sees the pope setting foot on this young and glorious continent! A historic day, for it recalls and crowns the long years of the evangelization of America, and the magnificent development of the Church in the United States!”
If tradition continues, the Knights of Columbus will dedicate a plaque commemorating Benedict's visit as they have done for the previous two papal Masses. (Trivia: The Knights owned land under Yankee Stadium from 1953 to around the mid-1970s.) The Yankees plan to transfer the plaques to the new Yankee Stadium when it opens in 2009.
The papal Masses haven't been the only significant “sermons on the mound” at Yankee Stadium. In 1958, a Jehovah's Witness Convention drew 123,707, the stadium's largest crowd. In 1957, the Rev. Billy Graham drew 100,000.
Stadiums are quite common venues for popes. John Paul also preached at Shea Stadium, Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, and Mile High Stadium in Denver. Benedict, in April, is scheduled to preside at Mass at the new Nationals baseball stadium in Washington.
“It simply means these are the biggest public facilities available,” said George Weigel, whose book “Witness to Hope” is considered the most thorough biography of John Paul. “Nobody's suggesting that Benedict approves the re-signing of A-Rod by going to Yankee Stadium.”
