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I am a baseball fan, and in our house we
celebrate Spring Training as if it were a religious event. We eat hot dogs,
potato chips, and cans of beer or soda (no glass is allowed at ball games)
while sitting in front of the fireplace watching a Yankee classic on DVD.
This year’s gathering celebrated Game Five of the 2001 World Series. And of
course, we eat ice cream novelties for dessert: usually the vanilla
sandwiches with the sticky brown cake barely holding it together. In this
time-honored ritual, the four of us sit huddled on the floor in front of the
TV celebrating all the hope and all the dreams that we hold close to our
hearts every year as we watch the boys of summer gather, stretch, throw and
bat. I lick my fingers I count the days until the season begins.
I have always loved everything about baseball. I
love the game, the stadium, the hot dogs, and even the $9.00 beers in soggy
paper cups. Sure, I root vigorously for the New York Yankees, but I’m a
baseball fan first and a Yankee fan second. I have rooted for teams in every
city that I have called home: the Cubs in my childhood city of Chicago, the Red Sox when I briefly lived in Boston as a college grad, and then the Baltimore Orioles
when I was a graduate student living in Washington,
D.C. Any city that would have
me, I gave back my love to its baseball team.
Since September 11, I have become especially
obsessed with baseball. As soon as the games started up again after that
horrible day they have provided me with relief from the outside world, a
respite on a green field. I now watch the Yankees every chance I get. I hang
on every game…sometimes every pitch. I read the sports pages before I even
look at the front page. And I am tortured through the off-season, hungering
for any shred of baseball news and desperate to find a Yankee Classic on the
YES network. When I hear the Star Spangled Banner anytime between November
and April I get excited for the first pitch and the roar of the crowds.
But since September 11, I have become disturbed
by something, too. For as much as I am a fan—and as much as I am an
American—I despise the seventh inning stretch starting off with the newfound
tradition of singing “God Bless America.” Of course, when the
National Anthem is played before the game I stand up, take my hat off and
belt out all the words to that great musical homage to our great nation. The
Star Spangled Banner is, after all, our National Anthem. But “God Bless America” is
not: it is a show tune written by a 20-year-old Irving Berlin for his summer
camp musical called “Yip, Yip, Yaphank.” Twenty years later, in 1938 when
World War II was brewing, he retooled it and labeled it a peace song. (Which
is ironic since it now seems to be a call to war against the terrorists of
Islam.) Because Kate Smith sang it well and made it famous, most people have
come to accept it as our unofficial national anthem.
Now, I take nothing away from Irving Berlin or
Kate Smith here: the real issue is that I am a believer in baseball, not God.
Let’s sing the Star Spangled Banner as we always have because it makes no
mention of an almighty and there is no prayer or intoning of powers from
above. If the intention of the 7th inning is to unite the fans, why divide us
over God? If we would all really sing the Star Spangled Banner (and since so
many Americans don’t know the words to our National Anthem they could put
them on the scoreboard with a little bouncing flag for us to sing along)
maybe then we wouldn’t need a back-up anthem.
Forget about separation of church and state, let’s start with a separation of church and
baseball. In the meantime, at the introduction to the 7th inning stretch, I
stand as instructed, but I only take off my hat to avoid being yelled at by
some drunk but God-fearing fan—it is the 7th inning after all and those $9.00
beers do add up. But just because you see me respectfully standing next to
you, don’t think I’m happy about it. My greatest wish is to be American
without feeling that an allegiance to God is a requirement for my
patriotism…even greater than my wish to see the Yankees play the Cubs in this
year’s World Series.
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