On July 30th, 1906, a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that, despite “voluntary contributions” instead of paid admissions, Brooklyn was conducting a business enterprise and thus violating the law prohibiting Sunday baseball in New York. Sunday baseball in Brooklyn would not be legal until 1919.

Sunday Blue Laws have always been a strange concept to me. I say that as a theologically trained Christian.

I lived for a while in Moorhead, Minnesota while going to college. For those not up on the finer points of Minnesota geography, the city of Moorhead, Minnesota, is just right across the Red River from Fargo, North Dakota. Maybe 100 feet separate the two cities most of the time.

The State of North Dakota in those days had Sunday Blue Laws. For all I know, they still do. What that meant for me in the late 1970s and early 1980s was that the big shopping mall and some other stores in Fargo were not open on Sundays. And even though Minnesota had no such Sunday Blue Laws, for some reason the City of Moorhead, Minnesota, had adopted the Fargo, North Dakota, rules as their own. WTF!

Today, there are a few private businesses in my Minnesota neighborhood that seem to be trying to use this concept of Sunday Blue Laws, based on bad theology, as part of a marketing strategy. I am thinking of Chick-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby. From what I have read, this seems to be a big hit with the Christian Nationalist crowd.

Fortunately baseball abandoned this stupid idea years ago. But bad theology like bad laws are stubborn things to weed out.