In baseball we trust

Easter Sunday. Most people spend it in their Sunday best, singing hymns and listening to a priest drone on about the miracle of Christ's resurrection (I'm Catholic and we're famous for monotonous preaching; excuse me if I'm a little biased here)... I remember being a little kid on Easter Sunday, going to Mass in my new Easter dress and stiff patent leather shoes, wearing itchy white tights and a hat that never wanted to stay on. It was all ridiculously uncomfortable and unbelievably boring, but that was how I spent all my Easter Sundays for many, many years. As I grew up, I ditched the hat and tights and sometimes even wore a nice pantsuit instead (gasp! Pants in church!), but for all these years it's basically been the same ritual, over and over.

Until this year. This year, I made a pilgrimage to Arizona, where my fearless partner-in-blogging Char and I spent Easter Sunday worshiping at the church of baseball. There were no hymns (unless you count Take Me Out To the Ballgame, which I do), no robotic priest, no resurrection - the Dbacks were down by two in the third on some silly obscure baseball rule and never managed to recover - but I did have a brand new hat and my baseball Sunday best, by which, of course, I mean an awesome Dbacks hat and a Conor Jackson t-shirt. Instead of communion, there were hot dogs and cheese fries. Instead of a sermon, there was announcing and cheering and lots of boos for Manny Ramirez. No worship music, just entrance music. And upon the altar? None other than Char's baseball boyfriend himself, Dan "Pirate Hair" Haren. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday, really. Granted, Chase Field isn't a cathedral like, say, Fenway or Wrigley Field. In the world of baseball, Chase is more like one of those non-denominational mega-churches, the ones you drive by in town and go "really? That's a church? it's so...modern." Because really, what's more modern than a stadium with both a retractible roof and a pool in the outfield?

Going to Fenway is like going to Mass. You're a Sox fan, the guy next to you is a Sox fan, everyone around you is a Sox fan with the exception of the occasional out-of-town team fan who sits and looks awkward while everyone stands up for the last out - kind of like the few non-Catholics who get dragged to Mass by friends or spouses and look out of place sitting in the pew while everyone else gets up for Communion. That's Fenway. At Chase, though - again, it's a non-denominational mega-church. We had unbelievable seats - 12 rows behind the Dbacks dugout; we could see facial expressions and sweat and the ball as it crossed home plate. The people next to us were Dbacks fans, but the people in front of us? Dodgers fans. And they weren't the only ones, either. There was quite a bit of Dodger blue in the stands, something you'd never see at Fenway. In a way, though, it was a lot more comfortable. Chase is the kind of place where you go to see your favorite team play, be they the home team or the visiting team, and either way you have a great time because you got to see your boys on the field. It doesn't have the intensity of Fenway, where the seats are stuffed full of rabid Sox fans who want their team to win so much that every moment seems to be do or die. Chase was a lot more relaxed; all you have to do is kick back (literally; I was able to put my feet up on the seat in front of me and it was awesome), relax, and watch some baseball. Nobody really cares what team you're cheering for, because it's not about that so much as it is just enjoying a day at the ballpark. Sit in the sunshine, eat a hot dog, stare at Conor Jackson's ass when he's up to bat...good times.

Last year's trip to Fenway was like going to Mass at the Vatican. I'm glad I did it, but I don't know if I'd do it again. Going to Chase felt more like going to this Unitarian church I went to once - nobody really cared what you wore or how you expressed yourself; it was enough just to come together to worship - at the altar of baseball, that is.

PS: Thus lending further credibility to the theory that Josh Beckett and Dan Haren are really the same person, the Red Sox lost on Easter Sunday with Beckett on the mound. I'm just sayin'.