By CARDINAL JOHN J. O'CONNOR

My father loved baseball. That made it hard for him to give it up for five years in the prime of his life, refusing to go to a single game, because the Yankees played ball on the day Babe Ruth was buried. For my father, Yankee Stadium was "the house that Ruth built." And he wasn't even a New Yorker!

I love the Yankees, I love the Mets. I love baseball. This was to be the summer that even if the creek rose, I was going to get to some games. Not this year. I can be quite as cantankerous about some things as my father ever was. I will not go to a game because all over the country, it seems, major league teams played on Good Friday. (The Boston Red Sox, I believe, at least had the grace to begin at 3 p.m., in honor of the 12 to 3 period observed by Christians, the period of the crucifixion, and to end before 6 p.m., when the Jewish Passover began. A reminder that we do claim to be dominantly a Judeo-Christian country.)

Why did other teams play during the Sacred Hours? I am told they insisted they now have so many games to play that they couldn't miss a single day of the season. Not even if a torrential rainstorm, or a hurricane or a tornado takes over? Come on, owners and other decisionmakers, this kind of shell game is supposed to have gone out with the last O. Henry story.

So how ironic that Yankee Stadium has had to be closed suddenly, on Easter Monday, because a 500-pound iron beam crashed down on the stands. Obviously, for fan safety, it should have closed. But if I'm correct, the Yankees had to postpone two games of a three-game series, playing the third game in the Mets' Shea Stadium! But teams had to play on Good Friday? Couldn't miss a single day? Even the stock market closes on Good Friday.

Many ballplayers have become national heroes. Many pull down huge salaries. Most are pretty decent fellows, and I like them. I don't like their playing on Good Friday. Maybe many of them didn't like it either. From time to time I have defended and am friends of various owners not infrequently accused of being infinitely more nefarious than Boss Tweed, a pack of riverboat gamblers and a covey of foreclosers-of-mortages-on-elderly-widows all rolled up into one. That's all part of the game, and many of them still give us a lot of good and exciting baseball, even if they are accused of exploiting the game or not even liking it themselves. I am ignorant of both possibilities, if they exist.

Or maybe playing on Good Friday is to be blamed on the demands of a handful of fans? Oh, please tell us more. Since when did every demand of every fan get such exquisite attention from owners, managers or anyone else trying to run the game? It would be a new and strange game if a manager yanked a pitcher simply because fans started screaming, "Throw the bum out." If the demands of the fans are top priority, why aren't the Dodgers still in Brooklyn, the Braves in Boston, the A's in Philadelphia, etc., etc., etc.? Why so much talk about the Bronx Bombers becoming the Meadowland Marshmallows, or whatever, wherever? Is that the demand of the fans?

Whatever, whoever is responsible, I believe that playing on Good Friday, at the very least from 12 to 3, is cheap and cheapens our culture, no matter how big the box-office receipts. It's cheap and it's cheapening. I resent it. I protest it. I will not go to a game in 1998. Next year, I'll see. Unlike my father, who was in the prime of his life when he swore off baseball for five years, with plenty of years ahead to see plenty of games, I can't guarantee staying away for five years. I'm too old.