Chicago Cubs

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A World Series MVP's marriage crashes and his pastor is more than a role player in the drama

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A World Series MVP's marriage crashes and his pastor is more than a role player in the drama

Celebrity divorces are rarely tidy and uncomplicated. This is especially true when one of the people in the marriage is alleged to have been sleeping with the couple’s marriage counselor.

Two more details: The marriage counselor was (1) both the couple’s pastor and (2) the leader of a charitable foundation funded by the jilted husband. Now, throw in the fact that the husband was, at the time, a Major League Baseball star — the 2016 World Series MVP — with the Chicago Cubs.

This is not, alas, your usual upbeat Bobby Ross, Jr., story about God and baseball. Several news operations have reported on this sad affair, but the key report ran, logically enough, at The Chicago Tribune. The headline: “Ben Zobrist lawsuit alleges his pastor had an affair with his wife Julianna and defrauded the former Chicago Cubs player’s charity.”

The story was written by a reporter who covers “sports pop culture with a Chicago focus as well as a range of other topics from the White Sox to fantasy football.” As you would expect, this story misses one or two religion details that many readers would have liked to have known. Here’s some crucial material right up top:

The lawsuit against Byron Yawn, CEO of the Nashville-area counseling firm Forrest Crain and Co., seeks $6 million in punitive and compensatory damages through a jury trial.

According to the complaint filed May 6 in Nashville Circuit Court, Yawn, while acting as the Zobrists’ marital counselor and executive director of Ben Zobrist’s charity, “usurped the ministerial-counselor role, violated and betrayed the confidence entrusted to him by the plaintiff, breached his fiduciary duty owed to the plaintiff and deceitfully used his access as counselor to engage in an inappropriate sexual relationship with the plaintiff’s wife.”

Yawn’s attorney, Christopher Bellamy of Nashville-based Neal and Harwell, told the Tribune …: “At the end of the day, a woman has the right to choose who she wants to be with. We’re in the middle of litigation, so I can’t really comment further at this point, but that’s what it boils down to.”

Yes, that certainly raises moral questions, in terms of the actions of high-profile conservative Christians. But that is not the stuff of journalism discussions.

I did, however, want to know more about this pastor and the church at the heart of this drama.


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Looking for faith in the Washington Post's bittersweet look at Chicago Cubs heaven

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Does anyone know where the whole concept of baseball as an alternative religion got started, I mean other than in classic Hollywood flicks?

We're talking about a level of symbolism that's even deeper than the unwritten law that all pre-game montages for pivotal baseball contests must include a shot of nuns -- hopefully wearing baseball hats. Images of rabbis and priests are optional, but producers have to find some nuns to put on camera or it's just not a real baseball game.

Maybe it has something to do with baseball's golden age being linked to the heartbeat of life in the great American cities of the Northeast and Midwest. That was back when Catholic families had lots of children and large Catholic schools -- with lots of nuns, of course -- where so important to urban, ethnic Catholic parishes.

Then there are the rituals of baseball. Football happens once a week, like a blowout bash of a spectacular tailgate kegger (think Ole Miss). But for fans, baseball is part of the familiar rites of daily life, involving a radio (or television), a father's stuffed chair, peanuts, the right beverage, the common wisdom of the box scores and, for the truly devout, even the sacred process of keeping score -- just like your parents or grandparents taught you to do it.

This brings us to God and the Chicago Cubs. We're talking about the theological questions (for some, theodicy was a relevant topic) surrounding the fact that a loving God allowed so many Cubs fans to live and die during the club's 108-year trek through the baseball wilderness, with the promised land of a World Series championship hovering off in the distance.

This brings us to that Washington Post story with the headline: "What of the lifelong Cubs fans who departed before it came?" You got it. Were these fans able to watch the game from prime seats located up in heaven?

You want baseball religion?


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MVP! Cubs' Ben Zobrist - 'a missionary in the big leagues' -- wins World Series again

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A holy ghost in the story of Ben Zobrist, the Chicago Cubs' World Series MVP?

You bet!

On Twitter last night (or was it early this morning?), CNN Religion Editor Daniel Burke offered insight on the Cubs' righteous dude:

Ben Zobrist almost followed his father into the ministry but decided to try out for some @Mlb scouts.
How's that for a curse-breaker?

Of course, Zobrist's devoted Christian background is not news to faithful GetReligion readers or — presumably — Kansas City Royals fans.

We wrote about this last year when Zobrist helped lead another team to baseball's Promised Land.

A year later, the Kansas City Star's terrific piece on Zobrist the baseball player — and the man of faith — still makes for great reading. 

Some of the crucial background from that story:


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Curse of the Cubs: Does Chicago really have a prayer of winning the World Series?

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The church of baseball is back in the news.

In a city all-too-familiar with a certain curse, the Chicago Tribune explores how baseball and religion often overlap for long-suffering Cubs' fans:

When the Cubs' Starlin Castro cracked a home run in Game 3 of last year's divisional playoff series against the Cardinals, Affan Arain was praying.
Arain, who is Muslim, had excused himself from his seat and found an out-of-the-way spot in the Wrigley Field concourse for his daily evening ritual. The crowd's roar provided an unmistakable soundtrack, and he knew instantly the Cubs had scored.
"In the midst of that prayer," Arain said, "I prayed there would be many others."
The Cubs went on to hit six home runs that night, a postseason record.
For Arain, like many Cubs fans of all religious persuasions, baseball and faith are inseparable. While prayers are the most visible sign of this connection — queue the close-up camera shot of a fretting fan in the stands, fingers interlocked and head bowed — the spiritual connection between loyal fans and their team often runs deeper, emerging in more subtle expressions of devotion.
"Perseverance, loyalty, faithfulness, long-suffering — those are the things that we talk about in our lives, and those are the things that we need when we cheer for the Cubs," said Sister Ann Terese Reznicek, a nun of the Congregation of St. Joseph and a Cubs fan.

Keep reading, and the Tribune quotes John Sexton, author of the book "Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game."

Additional Cubs fans quoted include both regular folks and academics, such as a religious studies professor who is the son of a Baptist minister.


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