WILD PITCH

Scientology Built a Soccer Field So Tom Cruise Could Lure David Beckham to Cult, Book Claims

The former Manchester United star was, apparently, less than impressed.

Tom Cruise was so keen to get David Beckham to join Scientology that the organization once built a professional soccer field in the hope that it would tempt the former player to join, a book claims. The celebrity-loving religion even appointed a full-time caretaker to tend the pitch, according to former member Mike Rinder’s work A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology. Cruise “was doing his best to court celebrities other than those with whom he was working on films. Perhaps the most famous were David and Victoria Beckham,” Rinder writes in the book. “A professional-grade soccer pitch was constructed on the property at Gold [Base, Scientology headquarters in San Jacinto, California]. The ground was leveled, irrigation installed, perfect turf, goals raised. A full-time caretaker was appointed from the Gold staff … It was built for one purpose only: so Tom Cruise could woo his friend David to come to Gold. It never happened.”