We won't stand for them not standing

[MajGenl.Meade]

Stop playing the National Anthem before sporting events. That takes care of it and aligns the U.S. with the rest of the civilized world.

The Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association and a local union, which represents the city's dispatchers, EMTs and paramedics, said they won't join the Cleveland Browns on the field to hold the American flag for the opening game.

They were all set to go — it's a pretty nice day to hold the flag before the game and then hang around to watch the season opener from field level — but EMT union president Daniel Nemeth told Fox-8 TV that everything changed when the Browns players refused to honor the Anthem.

"This hit home with me. I am a veteran, an 8-year veteran with the U.S. Marine Corps. So, to disrespect the flag by taking a knee is not something I was going to be a part of," Nemeth said.

We tracked down police union president Steve Loomis out of state at a police convention.

"I’m here at a national police convention, and soon as they hear that I'm from Cleveland, the first question is ‘What about those stinking Browns?'" Loomis said. "So if the ownership of the Browns and the league are going to allow that type of stuff to happen, and then come to us and say, ‘We want you to help us with the flag,’ that's hypocritical. We're not gonna participate.”

The stadium sits just steps away from city hall. The FOX 8 I-Team learned the stand being made by the safety forces was discussed by the city's top brass. A city spokesman said the police have been told the Browns will replace the officers, paramedics and firefighters with members of the military.

Linebacker Christian Kirksey recently explained the demonstration by saying, “We respect our veterans, respect our military. We're not protesting against them. We just have our reasons of why we're doing what we're doing.”

After the Browns players refused to stand for the Anthem, the team issued a statement.

“As an organization, we have a profound respect for our country’s National Anthem, flag and the servicemen and servicewomen in the United States and abroad. We feel it's important for our team to join in this great tradition and special moment of recognition, at the same time we also respect the great liberties afforded by our country, including the freedom of personal expression.”

[ex-khobar Andy]

I remember in the UK they used to play the National Anthem at the movies before the film; and on TV at the end of the night when the Beeb shut down. I imagine they stopped doing that in cinemas because so many people got up and left during it. 60s??

More directly relevant to a movie, I don't like it when everyone gets up and leaves when the credits come on: that seems to me to be disrespectful to the people who actually produced the thing. I know they are well paid; and a case could be made that the junior assistant deputy acting key grip does not need to be acknowledged; but I usually stay in my seat until the credits are done.

[BoSoxGal]

[MajGenl.Meade]

I remember in the UK they used to play the National Anthem at the movies before the film; and on TV at the end of the night when the Beeb shut down. I imagine they stopped doing that in cinemas because so many people got up and left during it. 60s??

That's almost word-for-word what I wrote in a post that I cancelled (I think I cancelled it). In the early days there was only one showing - newsreel, short film (sometimes a full length B film) followed by the A film - the main event. Some do say they played it before the first feature and after the last one, but that must have been when they moved to two showings and got rid of the newsreel and the short (or the B).

I remember the Anthem being played in the 50s but it died out around 1962/3. I blame the Beatles and the Catholic church and Republicans and all non-scientists for the decline of deference.

In the context of sports, the US national anthem should only be heard at International sporting events such as the Olympics. Again, aligning the US with the sane part of the world

[Long Run]

I guess we should stop eating hot dogs and drinking beer at the game too?

Over the past century, "The Star-Spangled Banner" and baseball have become inextricably wed. ESPN The Magazine
Sep 8, 2011

Luke Cyphers and Ethan Trex



This story appeared in the Sept. 19, 2011 issue of ESPN The Magazine.

THE FIRST THING to remember is that it's a battle song.

The most memorable lines involve rockets and bombs, and the lesser-known verses conjure "the havoc of war" and "the gloom of the grave."

The second thing to remember? It's a taunt, a lyrical grenade chucked at a defeated opponent. "See that flag still flying, the one you tried to capture?" it famously asks the British. Then it answers: "Scoreboard."

That's why, in a country that loudly lauds actions on the battlefield and the playing field, "The Star-Spangled Banner" and American athletics have a nearly indissoluble marriage. Hatched during one war, institutionalized during another, this song has become so entrenched in our sports identity that it's almost impossible to think of one without the other.

Our nation honors war. Our nation loves sports. Our nation glorifies winning. Our national anthem strikes all three chords at the same time.

THOSE CHORDS WERE ringing loudly on Sept. 17, 2001, the day Major League Baseball resumed following 9/11. The country was in mourning, hurting in ways it could hardly have imagined a week earlier. And when the nation collectively decided to right itself, to acknowledge tragedy while reclaiming everyday life, it turned to sports -- and to the anthem. Across MLB, teams surrounded the song with tributes to the victims and the country's public servants. In Los Angeles, police officer Rosalind Iams sang the song while members of the Dodgers and Padres helped firefighters and police officers unfurl a colossal stars and stripes that stretched almost entirely across the playing field. That same night in Pittsburgh, two members of the Air Force Reserve were called on to sing the anthem as spectators donned "I Love New York" buttons. And in every ballpark for weeks afterward, tears were shed over what it took Francis Scott Key's lyrics to remind them of: "Our flag was still there."

Of course, in American sports, the flag -- and the anthem -- is always there. At the biggest events, pregame festivities surrounding the song provide as much spectacle as the games themselves. The anthem is a show, and a show of force. Every year, the Pentagon approves several hundred requests for military flyovers (even if that means five F-18s buzzing the closed roof of Cowboys Stadium, as was the case at this year's Super Bowl). At lesser events, even at the high school level, a color guard is often on hand with the flag as the anthem is played. A game without the anthem is likely one that doesn't matter much.
Whitney Houston's national anthem was a top-20 hit during the Persian Gulf War and again after 9/11.

Despite the spectacle we make of it, the song remains sacred -- for better or worse. Sing it well and you're having a moment. Whitney Houston's rendition before Super Bowl XXV in 1991 has been a top-20 single not once but twice: first in 1991 during the Gulf War and again in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. Sing it poorly, as Christina Aguilera can attest, and you're a national punch line. Spit and grab your crotch at the ending, as Roseanne Barr did in 1990, and the president himself will declare your performance "disgraceful." Others have protested the idea of the song itself. Goshen College in Indiana, a Mennonite school that competes in the NAIA, recently decided that the violent lyrics clashed with its mission, which it sums up in the slogan "Healing the world, peace by peace." Goshen will not play the anthem before athletic competitions this academic year, substituting "America the Beautiful."

As the good people of Goshen have noted, the song's wartime roots are unmistakable. Key wrote it to bear witness to a bloody battle during the War of 1812. But its origins as a game-day ritual are murkier. It's not as if every other country in the world plays its anthem before every game. So how did we, the people, get here?

THAT STORY BEGINS, as so many tales in modern American sports do, with Babe Ruth. History records various games in which "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played dating from the mid-1800s, but Ruth's last postseason appearances for the Boston Red Sox coincided with the song's first unbreakable bond with the sports world, in 1918. Game 1 of that year's World Series was notable for many reasons. For starters, the Red Sox and the opposing Cubs were considered champs back then. After 1918, they would serve as symbols of futility; neither won a title for the rest of the century. But at the time, the Cubs were so highly regarded that their World Series home was not Wrigley Field (then Weeghman Park), which seated only 14,000 fans; the National League champs instead rented out the White Sox's Comiskey Park, which accommodated about 30,000.

There was also World War I, which blackened everything, including the national pastime. The U.S. had entered the war 17 months earlier, and in that time some 100,000 American soldiers died. Veterans who survived often came home maimed or shell-shocked from encounters with modern warfare's first mechanized mass-killing machines. At home, the public mood was sullen and anxious. The war strained the economy and the workforce, including baseball's. The government began drafting major leaguers for military service that summer and ordered baseball to end the regular season by Labor Day. As a result, the 1918 Series was the lone October Classic played entirely in September.

World War I wasn't the only issue weighing heavily on fans. On Sept. 4, the day before the first game, a bomb ripped through the Chicago Federal Building, killing four people and injuring 30. The Industrial Workers of the World were thought to be behind the attack, a retaliation for the conviction of several IWW members on federal sedition charges in the court of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. (Two years later, Landis was appointed commissioner of baseball, a position he held until 1944.) Domestic terrorism didn't exactly generate interest in a lighthearted day at the ball game. For the opener at Comiskey, newspapers optimistically estimated that a sellout crowd would drop anywhere from 50 cents for a bleacher ticket to $3 for a box seat. When only 19,000 and change showed, a Chicago Herald-Examiner headline proclaimed, "Scalpers Are Making No Money."

Although the Cubs festooned the park in as much red, white and blue as possible, the glum crowd in the stands for Game 1 remained nearly silent through most of Ruth's 1-0 shutout victory over Chicago's Hippo Vaughn. Not even the Cubs Claws, the forerunners to Wrigley's Bleacher Bums, could gin up enthusiasm. "For a baseball game in a world's Championship series," the Chicago Tribune wrote, "yesterday's combat between the Cubs and Red Sox was perhaps the quietest on record."
The Red Sox beat the Cubs in the 1918 World Series -- and wouldn't win another title for 86 years. The "Star-Spangled Banner" would have a better run. Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images

With one exception: the seventh-inning stretch. As was common during sporting events, a military band was on hand to play, and while the fans were on their feet, the musicians fired up "The Star-Spangled Banner." They weren't the only active-duty servicemen on the field, though. Red Sox third baseman Fred Thomas was playing the Series while on furlough from the Navy, where he'd been learning seamanship at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago. But Thomas' months of military training had hardly dulled his diamond skills. According to the Society of American Baseball Research, the station's commander, Capt. William Moffett, was a baseball fanatic who actively recruited athletes for the training center's team. Thomas, who started playing professionally right out of high school in Wisconsin, later said he "had it made at Great Lakes. All had to do was play baseball." So after the Red Sox went through nine third basemen during the season, they took a shot and asked the Navy whether he could join them as they took on the Cubs. The military said yes, and Thomas stood at his usual position on the diamond during Game 1's seventh-inning stretch, present at the creation of a tradition.

Upon hearing the opening notes of Key's song from the military band, Thomas immediately faced the flag and snapped to attention with a military salute. The other players on the field followed suit, in "civilian" fashion, meaning they stood and put their right hands over their hearts. The crowd, already standing, showed its first real signs of life all day, joining in a spontaneous sing-along, haltingly at first, then finishing with flair. The scene made such an impression that The New York Times opened its recap of the game not with a description of the action on the field but with an account of the impromptu singing: "First the song was taken up by a few, then others joined, and when the final notes came, a great volume of melody rolled across the field. It was at the very end that the onlookers exploded into thunderous applause and rent the air with a cheer that marked the highest point of the day's enthusiasm."

The Cubs front office realized it had witnessed something unique. For the next two games, it had the band play "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the seventh-inning stretch, to similarly enthusiastic crowds. By Game 3, a bigger crowd of 27,000 was in attendance. Not to be outdone, the Red Sox ratcheted up the pageantry when the Series relocated to Boston for the next three games. At Fenway Park, "The Star-Spangled Banner" moved from the seventh-inning stretch to the pregame festivities, and the team coupled the playing of the song with the introduction of wounded soldiers who had received free tickets.

Like the Chicago fans, the normally reserved Boston crowd erupted for the pregame anthem and the hobbled heroes. As the Tribune wrote of the wounded soldiers at Game 6, "[T]heir entrance on crutches supported by their comrades evoked louder cheers than anything the athletes did on the diamond."

THE RED SOX ended up winning the Series in six games, their third championship in four years and their last for the next 86. Not for the first time, and not for the last, Ruth etched his name in the record books. He pitched 16 straight scoreless innings in his two wins, which, along with 13 shutout innings in 1916, set a Series mark for consecutive scoreless innings that wouldn't be broken for 43 years. Meanwhile, Thomas typified a near-flawless fielding performance by the Red Sox, making several spectacular plays in the Series-clinching sixth game on Sept. 11. In the seventh inning that night, he snagged a scorcher down the line from Chicago's Fred Merkle, a play The Times called an act of "downright grand larceny." After the game, he had the ball autographed by his Boston mates. A Thomas family member bought it at auction in 2007, and today the old third sacker's descendants keep his memory alive at the Fred Thomas Resort, a fishing camp on Big Lake Chetac in Wisconsin that Thomas started after retiring from baseball in 1924.

Still, the Series' most enduring legacy belongs to a song. Other major league teams noticed the popular reaction to "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 1918, and over the next decade it became standard for World Series and holiday games. In subsequent years, through subsequent wars, it grew into the daily institution we know today.

But with ubiquity comes backlash -- and those, like the folks at Goshen College, who prefer to decouple the anthem from sports. What, after all, does an antagonistic, difficult-to-sing 200-year-old tune about a flag have to do with playing ball?

Quite a bit, actually. Congress didn't officially adopt the "The Star-Spangled Banner" until 1931 -- and by that time it was already a baseball tradition steeped in wartime patriotism. Thanks to a brass band, some fickle fans and a player who snapped to attention on a somber day in September, the old battle ballad was the national pastime's anthem more than a decade before it was the nation's.

Luke Cyphers is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine; Ethan Trex is a contributing editor for mental_floss and the co-creator of the blog Straight Cash Homey.

http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/695 ... n-magazine

[RayThom]

And what's the deal with the Pledge of Allegiance?

Every Elementary through High School student is forced/expected to Pledge daily in the classroom. (Visions of Brownshirts march in my head.) Yet our newest citizens only need to Pledge once, and prior to the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance Ceremony. Logic would dictate that it would be the "ex-alien" who would be expected to recite the pledge on a daily basis and not our native born citizens.

Based on this impeccable logic it would make sense to dump the National Anthem before any sporting event. I do not see it serving any purpose other than displaying in-your-face, quasi-militaristic, American elitism. As for myself, I still don't know all the words to the Anthem.

Oh, and God bless America.

[Econoline]

One very important aspect of “The Star-Spangled Banner”* that is usually overlooked is that it begins—and, more significantly, ends—with a question: “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

It's left for the listener—each of us, in every generation since—to answer. Can you see it? (Depends on where you're standing/sitting/genuflecting.) Does it wave? (Depends on the wind speed.)

But... Is this place where it waves the land of the free and the home of the brave? Is it? Hmm? Now that's the real question.





*(specifically the first verse, which is all that is ever sung anymore)

[MajGenl.Meade]

I guess we should stop eating hot dogs and drinking beer at the game too?

Yes indeed! Because the truly sacred song says you should be eating peanuts and cracker jack.

[dales]

I remember the Anthem being played in the 50s but it died out around 1962/3. I blame the Beatles and the Catholic church and Republicans and all non-scientists for the decline of deference.

When I was in the UK in 1965/66 the Anthem was played before the film.

[dales]

And speaking of "The Star-Spangled Banner"...... I've never liked it and think it's high time be replace it with "America The Beautiful".

So, there!

[rubato]

And speaking of "The Star-Spangled Banner"...... I've never liked it and think it's high time be replace it with "America The Beautiful".

So, there!

Ray Charles version!


yrs,
rubato

[Bicycle Bill]

I will continue to come to my feet, remove my headgear, and stand in silent respect for the National Anthem, which at this time is the arrangement of words and music known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" — not "God Bless America" or "America the Beautiful" or even "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"; and I will continue to do so because that's how I was raised.  The rest of you can spout all the pathetic excuses and half-baked 'enlightened' logical arguments you want; it won't make one rat's ass worth of difference to me.

You would very likely have become a far bigger asshole; just as well you never spent time in the military.

Now if this kicks me up a couple more notches on your 'asshole scale', BSG, then so be it.  And just so you will better know just how far along that scale to move me, I'm also the same asshole who stands if "Oh Canada", "God Save The Queen", "La Marseillaise", or even "Das Deutschlandlied" ("Deutschland Über Alles") is played ... not because I'm rejecting America or because I'm secretly yearning to be Canadian or British or French or German, but because I was raised to be a gentleman and a gentleman knows it costs nothing to show respect.

So there, too.

-"BB"-

[RayThom]

I will continue to come to my feet, remove my headgear, and stand in silent respect for the National Anthem, which at this time is the arrangement of words and music known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" — not "God Bless America" or "America the Beautiful" or even "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"; and I will continue to do so because that's how I was raised.  The rest of you can spout all the pathetic excuses and half-baked 'enlightened' logical arguments you want; it won't make one rat's ass worth of difference to me.

You would very likely have become a far bigger asshole; just as well you never spent time in the military.

Now if this kicks me up a couple more notches on your 'asshole scale', BSG, then so be it.  And just so you will better know just how far along that scale to move me, I'm also the same asshole who stands if "Oh Canada", "God Save The Queen", "La Marseillaise", or even "Das Deutschlandlied" ("Deutschland Über Alles") is played ... not because I'm rejecting America or because I'm secretly yearning to be Canadian or British or French or German, but because I was raised to be a gentleman and a gentleman knows it costs nothing to show respect.

Good for you, BB, everyone has an opinion and yours says a lot.

[dales]

No use to become unglued Bicycle Bill...I will proudly stand for our national anthem.

So, there

[ex-khobar Andy]

And BB makes a good point. Although not a citizen I will stand for the US national anthem and remove a hat (although I never wear one). But I will not put my hand over my heart. Rather in the same way that if I am in church for a wedding or funeral I will kneel or stand with everyone else but I won't pray or take communion.

[Scooter]

I will continue to come to my feet, remove my headgear, and stand in silent respect for the National Anthem, which at this time is the arrangement of words and music known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" — not "God Bless America" or "America the Beautiful" or even "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"; and I will continue to do so because that's how I was raised.  The rest of you can spout all the pathetic excuses and half-baked 'enlightened' logical arguments you want; it won't make one rat's ass worth of difference to me.

You would very likely have become a far bigger asshole; just as well you never spent time in the military.

Now if this kicks me up a couple more notches on your 'asshole scale', BSG, then so be it.

So you took a quote from an unrelated thread and posted it here to imply that BSG would call you an asshole because you stand for the national anthem.

And then you wonder why people think you're an asshole, that has to rank among the slimiest moves ever perpetrated on this board.

Pathetic sack of pig shit.

[BoSoxGal]

Thank you, Scooter.

[Big RR]

the point raised above makes a lot of sense, standing for the national anthem (any national anthem) is a matter of etiquette, not some inviolable law, and failing to stand is more akin to using one's salad fork for dinner than exhibiting any disrespect that deserves to be punished or condemned. And in a situation where one uses the national anthem to exercise his or her constitutional right to protest, (s)he is doing far more honor to the real America than some drunken singing ending with "home of the braves" (or starting with an exaggerated "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOh").

But in this day and age when people are hyper sensitive and want to fight against any individualism, maybe stopping the playing the national anthem at sporting events makes sense--at least it's one less thing to fight about.

[Bicycle Bill]

So you took a quote from an unrelated thread and posted it here to imply that BSG would call you an asshole because you stand for the national anthem.

And then you wonder why people think you're an asshole, that has to rank among the slimiest moves ever perpetrated on this board.

Pathetic sack of pig shit.

For whatever it's worth, I don't see BSG saying I am not an asshole on his particular matter, either.

The quote I posted, even if it was from an unrelated thread, is clear evidence that she feels I am an asshole — and not merely on the topic of the thread from which that quote was taken — and has no qualms about calling me one.  So yeah — having taken a stance in disagreement with her own in this thread, I fully expected that vulgarity to once again come into play.

And I'm OK with that. I'm sure that in my lifetime I've been called worse things than 'asshole', and by people who have far more importance in my life than a faceless poster on an internet bulletin board.

-"BB"-

[Scooter]

You can try to rationalize it however you want. It was a dishonest, sleaze ball move and I'm not surprised in the slightest that you are incapable of feeling the minutest bit of shame in showing yourself to be such a pigfucking fraud.