Pope hits home run with faithful at NY Yankee Stadium

By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York's Yankee Stadium is considered hallowed ground by some baseball fans, but on Sunday it hosted another kind of faithful as thousands of Catholics flocked to hear Pope Benedict celebrate Mass.

The Yankees' colors of blue and white, which usually adorn the fences and flagpoles, gave way to the Vatican colors of yellow, white and purple. An excited crowd roared and waved yellow and white scarves as the pontiff entered in his popemobile.

"Just being so close to him and having all the Catholic energy around him -- it's really inspiring," said college student Maria Pluta, 18, who traveled seven hours from Virginia to be among the crowd of more than 57,000.

A choir sang from behind home plate, while the altar for the Mass -- held amid tight security -- was positioned over second base. The visit marked the third time a pope has celebrated Mass at Yankee Stadium.

Pope Paul VI delivered the first Mass by a Roman Catholic pontiff in America in 1965 at the stadium, and Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass in the Bronx in 1979.

Benedict became the third pope to deliver what has come to be known as "the sermon on the mound," a term coined after the 1965 Mass here when the papal altar was near the spot where the pitcher throws the ball.

Baseball wasn't too far from the minds of many on Sunday, with a mention of Boston -- home to the Yankees' archrivals, the Red Sox -- by Cardinal Edward Egan drawing boos from the crowd.

For several days, flags, coffee cups, t-shirts and other Pope Benedict souvenirs were sold on the streets outside the stadium alongside Yankees paraphernalia, even when the New York team played the Red Sox on Wednesday.

"You would think that on Wednesday the Yankees were playing the pope," said season ticket holder Tom Zippilli, a nurse from Nyack, New York, who called attending the Mass "an honor."

The crowd shouted "we want the pope," rose to their feet and gave Benedict an ecstatic welcome as he entered and rode around the stadium in a bullet-proof "popemobile."

The day began with overcast skies, but the clouds parted and bathed the stadium in sunshine for the Mass.

The event drew a small number of protesters carrying signs reading "Priests rape boys" and "Roman Catholicism is the Devil" as they mixed among several hundred faithful who lined a street outside Yankee Stadium to greet the pope.

Harriet Masri, 26, carrying a $5 flag with a picture of the pope, traveled from Connecticut with her family even though they had no tickets to the Mass, which were allocated through a lottery.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get to feel a feeling that you just can't find anywhere else," she said.

Before the Mass, a "Concert of Hope," headlined by performer Harry Connick Jr., warmed up the crowd by jazzing up some hymns. "People asked me if I am a practicing Catholic and I said 'You can't practice any better than this -- I'm playing for the pope," Connick Jr., who also composed music for the event, told the crowd.