The Rev. Ed Cipot at his Holy Child parish on Staten Island, where he watched the Mets’ playoff games. Ed Cipot was eating and drinking his way through the New York Mets 1977 Christmas party at a restaurant in Shea Stadium when a priest began walking toward him from across the room. Mr. Cipot immediately wondered what he had done wrong. Instead, the priest, the Rev. Joseph C. DiSpenza, simply asked, “You’re a Catholic, aren’t you?”As a matter of fact, that was true. As a matter of consequence, Mr. Cipot’s Roman Catholicism seemed not particularly relevant, at least to him....