TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Flag-Waiving at the Ballpark

The Yankees were the first among several clubs to rent the services of an Eagle named "Challenger" for a symbolic flight from the outfield to home plate, notably reprised during the 2003 World Series when Challenger swooped and nearly took out shortstop Derek Jeter. While the eagle is a majestic animal, and I freely admit to having been to a zoo or two in my time (counting Yankee Stadium), somehow the re-capturing of a formerly wild animal after a 400' flight does not to me say "freedom". It says "stage managed symbol". (I don't mean to be crass at all here, but is it really appropriate to name a winged animal after a space vehicle that exploded in mid-air? I suppose the answer is again "symbolism", imbuing the Eagle with a Phoenix-like attribute.)

SportsCenter covered Pat Tillman's death in great detail, as it should have. Tillman himself eschewed any publicity surrounding his decision to forgo millions in NFL salary and take up arms in service to his country, so perhaps would not have been pleased with his beatification in death. But not a word on SportsCenter or Baseball Tonight about Carlos Delgado's anti-war protests, despite the fact the Associated Press put out a wire story and it was the subject of controversy in New York. As I write this, the only mention of Delgado's Yankee Stadium protest on the ESPN.COM web site is the same AP article, which is fed to the site automatically.

In case you've missed it - and the way the mainstream media covers things, I wouldn't be surprised if you did- Carlos Delgado is engaging in a rather passive anti-war protest. When "God Bless America" is being played during the seventh-inning stretch, Delgado stays in the dugout.

The Yankees are the only team that does this every single game, with most other teams having scaled back the use of the extra patriotic song to Sundays. The Yankees have their reasons. Only a dreadful cynic would point out that the enforced ritual of standing on the field for an extra two minutes late in the game has resulted in the visiting team giving up more runs in the bottom of the seventh than prior to when the practice was adopted.

Delgado hasn't exactly been handed the Dixie-Chicks treatment, perhaps in part because so many people continue to ignorantly believe that Puerto Rico, whence Delgado hails, is not part of the United States. It is. Puerto Ricans are US Citizens. But it's probably because his protests haven't been covered at all by the mainstream US media. Only bloggers have really given it any attention.

The international press has covered this. The Toronto and San Juan papers have been following the story with some interest. Even the Jerusalem Times has covered the Delgado statement-protest. It finally trickled into the New York Times yesterday, thanks to the Jays arriving in Yankee Stadium.

Only the conspiracy-minded would point out that ESPN is part of the same ABC-Disney media conglomerate that refused to show Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Right?

I'm a flag-waver myself. I have Old Glory out in front of the house 365 days a year, 366 this year. I love to sing the National Anthem at the ballgame, even when some wretched pop singer is inventing new notes and forgetting the words. I don't hold my hat over my heart during "God Bless America" because, as I explained to one outraged fan a couple of years ago, I prefer to reserve that honor for the national anthem.

But I am not fond of enforced "patriotic" rituals. The groupthink of a crowd is bad enough when the subject is Wade Boggs' girlfriend or Darryl Strawberry's first name. Using the power of intimidation of 50,000 people in a public place is the ultimate in stampeding bandwagon faux patriotism. Delgado is doing the right and appropriate gesture in walking out on the new, fake "anthem", which, if you look at the context of the Yankees, is not a patriotic gesture but a political one. The Yankees are very chummy with the Bushes. They invite the big Republican politicians to the front row boxes but not the Democratic ones (Ralph Nader probably wouldn't come, so we'll ignore third parties). Go to Fundrace.org and fish around the Tampa Bay zip codes for contributions from the Yankees limited partners.

George Steinbrenner is a convicted felon -- he was nabbed for making illegal contributions to the Nixon campaign in 1972 - can he vote in Florida, where he legally resides? I mention this again in this space since having a convicted felon as an owner seems kind of remarkable to me.

There's a lot more to this kind of connection between the baseball power structure, the anti-trust exemption and baseball's guaranteed monopoly, the incumbency rate in Congress, and general New York Post-style populism that would take up many more electrons to describe adequately. Let's just point out the obvious: the Yankees are institutionally in favor of the war, and by some interpretations the 7th-inning singing of songs not about Nelly Kelly are meant to reinforce that in the public mind.

The National Anthem wasn't played at games before World War I. Hard as it may be for the collective memory to appreciate, our country's entry into a European war was very controversial. Domestic critics of the war were imprisoned, peace activists beaten and prevented from peaceable protests, and anyone who wasn't publically for the war was considered to be a dangerous traitor. In that context, when ballplayers actually were forced to do military-style drills on the field with bats in place of rifles, the "tradition" of playing the Star-Spangled Banner was enforced on teams by the respective leagues. Baseball had its own agenda back then beyond spontaneous love of the Great War. The Wilson administration had threatened to cancel baseball as a drain on manpower and spare funds that might've gone to war bonds and so forth, and baseball was eager to demonstrate it was useful for rallying public support for the war. Even so, it didn't work, as the Wilson administration forced an early end to the 1918 season; the World Series was played in early September that year.

The "new tradition" continued on in the immediate post-war period, which was a time of great suspicion of Bolshevism and union activities, often lumped together. The Star-Spangled Banner wasn't even officially made our National Anthem until 1931.

Do I see some parallels? You bet. The original enforced use of the anthem during a time of war was used as a public litmus test of one's loyalty to the policies of the government engaged in the war. For whatever combination of reasons, that temporary practice has become a universal ritual at sporting events, to the point that it's possible to be ostracized - probable in some areas - if you deliberately choose not to. Even while the origins of the practice are obscure to most, the ritual remains.

Don't get me wrong - as I said, I personally love to sing the anthem and think of it as one of the great parts of the ritual of going to a baseball game. And I love the song "God Bless America", too.

But I don't think anybody who doesn't participate in the national anthem isn't a good person or unpatriotic. It's a tough song to sing, especially the way a lot of clubs abuse it (some teams actually charge the singers for the privilege of singing as part of a "showcase" deal.) To do so would be like accusing somebody of being a bad baseball fan for not singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame".

I am reminded parenthetically of the very first game played by the Wilmington Blue Rocks. Prior to the first pitch, the fans were instructed by the PA announcer that they were going to start a "new tradition" -- lovely oxymoron, that -- by clapping until the starting pitcher got the first strike. This was cribbed from some college basketball fans who stood and clapped until the first basket, to be sure, and didn't really fit the whole baseball ethos. I instantly resented being instructed on how to behave as a fan in areas not directly related to the health, safety, and enjoyment of my fellow fans. The club wanted to stage-manage the fans, for the benefit of the fans, to try to convince them they were having a good time.

Delgado is engaging in a practice as American as Apple Pie and, well, Baseball - he's doing his own thing. He doesn't believe the war is right, and his form of protest is to sit out a ritual that had its origins in the murky beginnings of the current set of wars. Delgado, until recently, hasn't particularly sought publicity about this form of protest. I might add that he's donated a lot of his own money to help clean up the island of Vieques, the island site of a controversial Naval Practice Range off Puerto Rico; he's not a talking head activist.

I contrast this to the cheap and completely inaccurate symbolism of having a captured wild animal fly a few hundred feet only to return to chains. And forcing fans to stand up for yet another patriotic song, where the ritual becomes much more important than the meaning behind it. There's no doubt in my mind: Carlos Delgado is a better American than convicted felon George Steinbrenner.

posted by The Crank 1:39 PM