JOSE CAN YOU SEE?

 

               Back when I was employed as a columnist people sometimes would ask me how I kept coming up with ideas for pieces.  “No problem,” I’d answer, “God provides.”

               That was a wisecrack, of course, but the universe regularly churns out plenty of grist for a writer’s mill, and if a week’s supply is short there always are a few “evergreen” subjects to which one can turn.

               One such is how our national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, is used or abused in the world of sports.  It’s as predictable as sunrise that, every so often, somebody, somewhere will take offense at how the song is treated, and start a row. Then the research done for previous pieces can be trotted out for reuse, good as new.

               The latest anthem contretemps involves Mark Cuban, the ubiquitous billionaire who owns the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks, among other things. On his instruction, with a nod to recent protests over racial inequities in American society, the team didn’t play the anthem at the start of its first 13 home games this season. The lack went unremarked until a reporter for the website The Athletic noticed and wrote about it. Then the bricks started flying.

               Last summer, while the protests boiled, the NBA told its teams they could do what they wished with the anthem. Not so this season, commissioner Adam Silver decreed-- league policy is to play it. Cuban relented and Mav fans now are oh-saying along with the others.  Thus, it turns out that not playing the song could be as offensive as kneeling, sitting or making other gestures while it’s played.

               I qualify as an expert on the anthem, if only by virtue of having heard it played a couple thousand times in a long life of games-going. More than once it’s occurred to me to ask why it has become more connected with sports than with other public gatherings. One could spend decades at movies, plays, concerts and such without being asked to stand for it.

               As Tevye the dairyman said in another context, the answer is TRADITION, but one not old as most people think. The words to the song were written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, a lawyer who witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore by the British in the War of 1812, and set to an existing English song. It was no instant hit, though, taking 117 years before Congress in 1931 dubbed it the anthem, the nation having gone without one before that. It didn’t become a sports fixture until Major League Baseball teams began playing it before games during World War II.

               There were dissenting opinions about the song’s worth when it gained official status, and they continue. Its meter is lumpy, its 12-tone range makes it hard to sing properly and its words are hard to get the tongue around, which is why it’s often prerecorded and lipsynched for major public performances. When polled some Americans say they’d pick “America” (my country tis of thee), “America the Beautiful” or “God Bless America” to represent this land. “God Bless the USA,” aka the red-neck anthem, also gets some votes. Before one event I attended, a U.S. Olympics Trial, the Lee Greenwood ditty was played, and everyone took off their hats and stood.

 “God Bless America,” which Irving Berlin wrote in 1918 for a Broadway musical but decided it didn’t fit, gained co-anthem status after 9/11 when MLB began playing it during the seventh inning stretch at games. That’s still done in places. Again, people are asked to stand for it, anthem or not. 

               With all its repetition one would think Americans have anthem protocol down pat, but they don’t. Men pretty much remember to stand and remove their hats when it’s played, but the rules for women are fuzzier; baseball-type caps are supposed to be doffed but women’s “style” hats can remain planted. And while it’s clear what to do when you’re in your seat when the song begins (unless you’ve got a hot dog in one hand and a beer in the other), what about when you’re in a stadium concourse, a concessions-stand line or a restroom? I’ve seen some amusing confusion in those places.

               The worst things I’ve seen done to the anthem came from people who performed it, not from disrespectful players or fans. A proper anthem can be sung in about 75 seconds but many singers prolong their spotlight time by stretching it well beyond that. Paul Zimmerman of Sports Illustrated used to put a stopwatch to the song in football press boxes and announce the result. I recall him once getting a reading of two minutes 15 seconds.

               Relatedly, the vocal gymnastics some singers employ can render the song all but unrecognizable. Opera singers and members of the military can be counted on to deliver it straight, but others not so much. The worst anthem I’ve heard “live” came at a Chicago Bulls’ game when the country singer Ferlin Husky sang offkey and then had to quit because he forgot the words. The worst end-to-end rendition, which I heard on video, was by the Olympic sprinter Carl Lewis, before a Houston Rockets’ game. It killed his singing career.

               Some years ago the actress Roseanne Barr capped a screechy rendition of the anthem before a San Diego Padres’ game by clutching her crotch and spitting—in homage to baseball, she said. Botching the anthem—or sitting, kneeling or first-raising during it--isn’t against the law, so nothing happened to her afterward except some boos, but she got some laughs, too. If you’re having a bad day check out her performance online. It’s a classic.