My brother and I were waiting just inside the gate at the ballpark in Geneva, home of the Kane County Cougars, a Class A minor league baseball team.
It was “Bark in the Park” night. Attendance was so sparse, there may have been more dogs than people on this mid-August evening. My son and brother and I have a 26-year tradition of attending at least one game per summer. We’ve endured everything from Myron Noodleman to Jake the Wonder Dog to large inflatable ZOOperstars, so dogs barking in the lawn section wasn’t going to bother us.
My son was outside buying a ticket when the Star-Spangled Banner began and as he came to the entrance, a ticket-taker with an overly inflated sense of authority closed the chain link fence in his face and told him he would have to wait to get in until the song concluded. This sort of thing happens when you arrive late to classical music concerts or professional tennis matches, but never, in my experience, for the Star-Spangled Banner. Annoyed, I turned and listened to yet another uninspired rendition of our national anthem.
The next thing I knew, the officious ticket-taker was tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to take my hat off.
Beyond annoyed now, I said no. I should have said, “Sorry, I thought this was ‘the land of the free.'”
He wouldn’t let it go, informing me he was a Vietnam veteran, the implication, I guess, being that it gave him the right to dictate national anthem protocol.
I could have told him I’d just read Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and that I sympathized with anyone who endured that terrible war. I could also have pointed out that my son, whom he had just shut out of the stadium, joined the National Guard last week and probably would have appreciated this patriotic moment.
Actually, my son later came up with the best comeback: “Well, luckily for me, we live in a country that affords me the freedom to not remove my hat if I choose.”
The episode aggravated my longstanding reservations about the quasi-religious nature of this pre-game ritual, which keeps escalating. First it was just standing up. Then it was removing hats (men only, I’ve noticed). Then it was putting your hand (or hat) over your heart. What’s next, genuflecting? Monitors cupping their ear and saying, “I can’t hear you”?
And it’s no longer limited to the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Many Major League stadiums now sing “America the Beautiful” during the seventh-inning stretch.
If we’re going to sing a song before the first pitch, let’s make it “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” which is at least in the celebratory spirit of these gatherings. For that I would happily stand and belt out the words at the top of my lungs — like they do at Wrigley Field in the seventh inning.
There is nothing inherently patriotic about a baseball game (or any of our other major sporting events). It makes sense to play the anthem during Olympic medal ceremonies, but Class A minor league baseball with a few hundred people in the stands on a Tuesday evening? Not so much.
I know this custom is meaningful for many Americans, so I am respectfully silent when the anthem is played. One friend of mine says it’s one of the few times Americans can come together and experience a moment of solidarity. Enforced uniformity, however, is another matter. Where’s the respect for people who choose to express their love of country in other ways — and who may have reasons for keeping their hats on that are, frankly, none of your business? I bristle when people try to impose their brand of patriotism on me. Assuming I am less patriotic because I don’t remove my hat is way off base, so to speak.
I may not doff my cap, but at least I think about what the words actually mean. I’m not sure the same can be said of the attention-deficit patriots standing around me.
As I’ve mentioned before in this column, the anthem’s lyrics include an important question that challenges all of us to do the kind of soul-searching necessary to keep our American ideals alive: “Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” I take that question very seriously — at least as seriously as anyone else in any ballpark, including the patriotism-enforcing Vietnam vet at Kane County stadium last week.
He may be a fine fellow, but he seems to be snared by the classic idolatry trap: In the process of raising this symbol to the level of worship, he violates pretty much everything that symbol stands for. He managed, in the space of two short minutes to lock out a young man who had just entered military service, tried to coerce an innocent bystander into following his rules, and completely missed the entire rendition of the anthem that is supposedly so precious to him.
From now on, when some well-intentioned, wrong-headed patriot tells me to take my hat off, I’m going to say, “Please, this is the national anthem. Show some respect.”