(is Vito ready to get saved?)

Given this organ’s tendency to bash the fuck out of the New York Post’s buggy beard, it is only fair to acknowledge that Phil Mushnick is capable of quality work every solar eclipse or so.

So it’s Saturday afternoon and we’re watching the Mets on Ch. 11. They’re playing the Cubs in Wrigley, when, during a commercial break, David Wright, in his Mets uniform and standing in Shea, pops up to tell us:

“Hi, I’m David Wright. I invite you to the ‘Salvation Miracles Revival Crusade‘ with Dr. Jaerock Lee (above), at Madison Square Garden, July 27, 28 and 29.”

And then a graphic, giving the dates and printed in Spanish, appears.

Next we see footage of a man holding two crutches aloft, as if they were suddenly rendered needless by the Rev. Dr. Lee’s astonishing healing powers. And then a similarly miraculous story is told as we see an elderly woman walking across a stage, her abandoned wheelchair in the background.

Sorry, boys and girls, while we mean no offense toward anyone’s spirituality and religious devotion – Wright’s included – that was the weirdest player/team-connected TV ad we’d ever seen within a telecast of a big league game.

And are Mets telecasts and Mets dressed in their Mets uniforms now available to help deliver religious come-ons of any and all kinds?

But above and beyond all that, why is Wright telling us about the Rev. Dr. Lee? If this holy man can spring people from wheelchairs, shouldn’t Wright, at the very least, be telling Victor Zambrano?

Dr. Lee’s website features intense testimony, even by crazed evangelical standards :

To live, I’d drink even the liquid of feces!

Modern medical science was not able to heal me, so I used all sorts of folk remedies. I ate whatever was said to be good for my health. I even changed my name and invited a sorceress to perform an exorcism. But to make things worse, I got the rheumatic arthritis and I had to hide myself. In this terrible situation, I heard that the liquid of feces was good for recovering my health. Although its stench was unbearable, I drank it earnestly. But it was all in vain and my condition got so worse that others had to help me urinate and defecate. I didn’t know about God’s providence and tried many things in human way, only to see no hopeful result for the future. My wife frequently ran away from home and my beloved mother wished I would die. Nobody can imagine how sorrowful and painful it was!

David Wright has a rep for clean living and boy-next-door demeanor. So it’s pretty fucking hot that he’d be a paid spokesperson for a corophilia advocate.