When Religion Is Involved, a Game Is Just That

This is a most wonderful gesture, having the Yankees and the Red Sox play at 1 p.m. on Sunday. It could even be the start of something better.

Instead of putting the game at 8 p.m. — prime time, as the networks call it — ESPN and Major League Baseball are accommodating thousands of fans who at sundown will be observing Yom Kippur, the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar.

Not only that, but the N.F.L. has allowed both New York teams to play at 1 on Sunday — Jets at home, Giants on the road — just to get the tackling and selling and screaming over before sundown.

These admirable tweaks in the schedule raise the vestigial memory of simpler times, when there was a break in the action, when people stayed home, turned down the tempo.

Nowadays, there is always action on the tube, somebody hurtling into somebody else, kick-boxing in Asia, soccer in Europe, dunking in America. When exactly is that day of rest, that hour of peace?

One of the most beautiful sights in my neighborhood is on High Holy Days when people walk to temple. Not only does this bring the traditional legendary weather, but it gives off a psychic signal to slow down.

I felt the same way during Ramadan when I watched a Pakistani tennis player who felt he could not fast during the United States Open but respected his friends who were going without water during daylight. Piety can be contagious.

How far can contemporary big-bucks sports go toward a simpler time? A century ago, Christy Mathewson would not pitch on the Christian Sabbath. In Philadelphia, major league ball was banned on Sundays until 1934, but blue laws are not coming back. Besides, moving up Sunday sports events to 1 only raises the temptation to skip church.

Everybody knows that in a complicated, diverse, secular nation, observance is ultimately a personal decision. If Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg did not play in the World Series on Yom Kippur, fans could afford to skip one Yankees-Red Sox game, which just may be a prelude to a championship series in a few weeks.

And at the rate these blokes play, with three minutes of commercials every half-inning, what is the guarantee that the Yankees and the Red Sox will be done by sundown?

But these adjustments by baseball and football are serious statements. Last April, the Jets’ owner, Woody Johnson, requested that his team’s home game Sunday against the Tennessee Titans be moved to 1 from 4:15. Commissioner Roger Goodell and Howard Katz, the league’s senior vice president for broadcasting, moved up the game, even though it conflicted with the Giants’ game at Tampa Bay.

Katz thinks this is the first time the Jets and the Giants have been on at the same time since 1984. He also had to move the Steelers-Bengals game back to 4:15, and is well aware there are Jewish fans in those cities, too. He is grateful Yom Kippur falls on Sunday irregularly.

Baseball also revised its schedule. Last December, when the 2009 schedule was released, ESPN executives put a big circle around the Yankees-Red Sox game. But this summer, Representative Anthony D. Weiner, the Democrat whose district covers parts of Brooklyn and Queens, reminded the powers of the overlap.

“I was upset about it,” said Commissioner Bud Selig, who recalled conflicts with other networks when he was the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. This time, he had a nice conversation with George Bodenheimer, the president of ESPN and ABC Sports.

“Leaders in the Jewish community contacted us,” said Len DeLuca, the senior vice president for programming and acquisitions at ESPN. DeLuca noted that Yankees-Red Sox games had put up some of the highest ratings for the network but added, “This is the most solemn holiday in a religion.” So ESPN moved the game.

“Does it cost us money? No,” DeLuca said. “Does it hurt us in the ratings? Yes. But look at it this way, table tennis is thrilled to have the Yankees and Red Sox as a lead-in.” DeLuca added that in the future, “you can be sure, baseball teams will be looking at all the holidays.”

Baseball cannot avoid conflicts. Games are played on Good Friday, the most solemn day on the Christian calendar. On Oct. 2, 1978, they played on Rosh Hashana, and Bucky Dent hit one into the screen at Fenway Park. Supply your own moral.

One year, baseball did get a message from on high. In 1986, the geniuses scheduled two Mets-Astros postseason games, for the night and next afternoon of Yom Kippur. Yours truly predicted a downpour of Biblical proportions, which in fact occurred, postponing the afternoon game. They got what they deserved.

Last year, the Tampa Bay Rays made it into the postseason for the first time, but a potential fifth and deciding game was scheduled for Yom Kippur.

“The way I run my life, there was no decision to be made,” the team owner, Stuart Sternberg, said the other day. He was prepared to attend services, but the Rays won in four games, on their sweet run to the World Series.

“We’re not going to be able to do this all the time,” Sternberg said the other day, acknowledging that baseball may accommodate Jewish fans in the Northeast but not Jewish fans in Chicago or Los Angeles.

For fans who may have to miss a game because of religious conflicts, Sternberg offered some advice, “It’s not the end of the world.”

There is only one word to add to that: Amen. Source www.nytimes.com