If Pope Leo XIV is truly from Chicago, he celebrated the news of his election by firing down a Malört with an Old Style chaser and eagerly accepting an invitation from the Cubs to sing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game." Otherwise, well, what's the point of the Chicago thing at all?
The first American-born pope, the Villanova-educated artist formerly known as Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, just picked up his new gig, and within a half-hour the Pittsburgh Pirates used his election as cover to announce the firing of manager Derek Shelton, proving that Leo’s is truly the first National League Central papacy. Or it just proves that opportunism knows no season, and only the Pirates and their mudslide public relations sense could see the use in doing it this way. "The Pope has our back," you could almost hear owner Bob Nutting saying. "Let's do it now." It probably didn't happen exactly that way, but also nothing says they had to announce it then. Whatever the case, the announcement of Don Kelly as Pittsburgh’s new manager will not lead the local news this evening.
So here we are, living in a world with a Pope who not only knows who Rollie Massimino is, but almost certainly has a passionate opinion about him. The selection is a testament to any number of theological points in a changing and difficult world for the Catholic Church, but mostly to the value of playing the long odds. Prevost, or more correctly his new surname The Fourteenth, didn't even have the best odds of any American cardinal, and yet he hit as a surprise choice—the equivalent of the Indiana Pacers winning the NBA championship, to put it in time-zone appropriate terms. DraftKings must be thrilled.
We will make no representation here of what kind of pope he will be or the weight of the spiritual and political challenges awaiting him. ABC News has confirmed that he is a Cubs fan, which is admittedly worrying. But they have ecclesiastical pundits for that sort of analysis, blathering even now on whatever the Vatican version of ESPN is. Still, being an American, the new pope immediately takes on the burdens of this dumb country’s cultural imprint.
Which means that now more than ever, a Chicago sports fan is the world’s problem. But even more, this is a man from Chicago with a degree from Villanova, which means that somehow the Knicks end up getting a piece of this, too, through the Third Rule Of Strained Connections. Just as the late pope Francis had his favorite sports franchise in the Argentine soccer team San Lorenzo, Leo will have one of his own in all likelihood, and plenty of candidates from which to choose. But until and unless he names it on his own and thereby confers infallibility upon it, there will likely be a battle between teams to be declared The Pope's Favorite. Given that he was stationed for years in Peru, Leo might well be a Deportivo Garcilaso man. It’s a developing story, as they say, although it is something of a relief that despite being born on the South Side of Chicago, Leo is not a White Sox fan. The job is the job, but there are limits to how many miracles anyone can reasonably expect from the man. God has a sense of humor, but She's not fixing those guys.
