A cross scraped into the pitcher’s mound at St. Louis Cardinal’s Busch Stadium has one columnist screaming about the separation of Church and state. Huh?
David Brown, a sports columnist for Yahoo Sports actually wrote the following:
Religious references are not uncommon in a heavily Catholic city like St. Louis, but you won’t (or shouldn’t) find the cross on, say, the Arch. Of course, that’s public land. Busch Stadium might be privately owned, but it didn’t get built without tax breaks. Legally, as Vines points out, that gives the public “skin in the game.” And not everybody in the public is a Christian like Adam Wainwright and Mike Matheny.
Hypothetically going beyond the legal boundaries of church and state, it’s awfully presumptuous and ignorant of the Cardinals to draw any religious symbol on the mound. It’s not really their mound, or anybody’s mound, after all. Jews use that mound. Muslims (might) use that mound. Hindus and Sikhs. Hypothetically, Zoroastrians would use that mound. Diests use that mound. People with no god use that mound. Should the Cardinals really have to be reminded that not everyone is their religion?
Wear a cross around your neck. Hang one in the dugout — maybe — if nobody on the team objects. But the mound is neutral turf and should remain as such.
So now if an organization receives tax breaks that means they can no longer display their religion?
I haven’t heard anything so stupid since I read Jim Carrey’s tweets. David Brown should be less concerned with the separation of Church and state than with the separation of reason and thought.
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