Something Like That for Baseball

In the course of the week, I have watched via YouTube three solemn liturgies carried out with fewer than fifteen persons in churches built to seat a thousand or so. Not counting the video and sound technicians, who remained out of sight, ordained clergy seemed to outnumber the laity each time. The experience of watching this on a screen brought to mind a story of my father's from fifty-odd years ago, probably apocryphal.

The story says that the manager of a baseball team, happening to be awake in a hotel room on Sunday morning in New York, turned on the television, and saw the end of a Mass for Shut-Ins such as was broadcast in those days. At the end, as usual, there appeared the notice stating that watching this program did not fulfill the Sunday obligation for those well enough to make it to a church. The manager said, "Gee, we need something like that in baseball."