Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 1, 1994                   TAG: 9404010160
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BASEBALL FAN? YOU CAN TAKE IT WITH YOU

And nearly from the moment children discover God, a question forms in the back of their minds about the permanence of their love affair with a bat and ball: Will there be baseball in heaven?

Stop worrying, say clergy, theologians, ex-ballplayers and others interviewed as an American rite of spring - Opening Day - beckons Sunday

For some, the discussion brings to mind the joke about two friends who have played baseball together all their lives. One day, Joe and Frank make a pact that whoever dies first will let the other know whether there is baseball in heaven.

Frank passes away, and several days later Joe hears his friend's voice. "Joe," Frank says, "I have some good news and bad news. The good news is the baseball here is the best, the sun always shines and the fields are glorious. The bad news: You're the starting pitcher tomorrow."

In religious circles, no one will claim a definitive knowledge of heaven. Eternal life is accepted as a matter of faith, and even theologians trust in God to work out the details later.

But there is something about baseball, not only America's favorite pastime but one of its most joyous, that easily evokes images of eternal bliss.

"Oh, I think absolutely there'll be baseball in heaven or it wouldn't be heaven," says broadcaster and former player Joe Garagiola.

Of all the nation's games, baseball is the most timeless, says Roman Catholic theologian Michael Novak. There are no clocks, and the game could go on forever until 27 outs are recorded.

Think back to when you were a child, he says, and you were almost unconscious of time during an afternoon playing baseball.

"A baseball game, in principle, is infinite," says Novak, who in March won the $1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. "It's one of our best images in life of eternity."

What will baseball be like behind the Golden Gates?

Wilmer "Vinegar Bend" Mizell, who pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960 World Series and went on to serve in Congress, says several things will be different.

"There won't be any liquor or beer in the stands. And I don't know where they're going to recruit the umpires from," Mizell says.

Shirl Hoffman, head of the department of exercise and sports science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, sees baseball returning to its roots before free agency, teams abandoning cities and the other exigencies of modern-day sport to a time when it was just a kid, a bat and a taped-up ball. "There would be pickup stickball games on the Golden Streets," he says.

Ah, don't sweat the details, longtime Detroit Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell says.

"What it's like is what you want it to be like," he says. "If you want grass, there will be grass. If you want AstroTurf, it will be AstroTurf."

But it can't stop the faithful fans of teams like the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox from wondering whether there is hope beyond this vale of tears on Earth for the joy of a world championship.

Will they finally see their teams win a World Series in heaven?

Yes, says the Rev. W. Laurence O'Neil of Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn.

"We Red Sox fans have suffered long enough," O'Neil says. "We've got to be rewarded for our long suffering."

No way, Garagiola says.

"That will take a miracle," he says. "And miracles will be over by then."