The sports world has been demonstrating the extent to which they will go to enable themselves to keep making money in crisis times. One strand of this behavior started with Major League Baseball during World War II and continues through recent shifty moves of the National Football League.
As a youngster, I often wondered why the National Anthem was sung or played at the beginning of sports events. It seemed an odd practice to my way of thinking. I thought the Anthem more appropriate at civic events, e.g., military events, government events, Fourth of July festivals and parades, and even at PTA meetings. But sporting events? I never saw a connection, although I love sports, and was a high school and college athlete. I learned later that, like many matters in our society, a business reason influenced this practice.
For nearly a century, baseball was THE sport in America, the so-called national pastime. So it may not be a wonder that they played the National Anthem to kick-off the World Series during World War I and occasionally played it at holiday games. However, the Anthem was not played regularly–before every game–until World War II. As many citizens and industries geared up for the WW II “War Effort,” Major League Baseball team owners wanted to continue playing (and of course making money), but they wanted to do so without being criticized for not helping the war effort. So they solicited from President Roosevelt what became known as his “Greenlight Letter,” suggesting they continue the games to give Americans a way to have recreation during the difficult period of the war.
To show that they were being patriotic and supported the country while at war–while during nothing else differently–they hit upon the idea of playing the National Anthem before each game. A crass business ploy began masquerading as a civic moment.
And the rest, as the saying goes, is history. Through the years, other sports followed baseball’s anthem practice, and now it is institutionalized.
But please notice: the businessmen of sports are at it again, this time much less benign. The Professional Golf Association returned to action during the second week of June and shocked me with a 30-second silent pause each day in honor of George Floyd. This is the PGA, the last professional organization to permit black participation; the PGA, where in 1990 some of their top players laughed at the demonstrations citizens were holding against them playing one of their biggest tournaments at a club in Birmingham that would not admit black members; the PGA, which for many years sanctioned the Masters Tournament whose manager vowed—after the Civil Rights Act of 1964–that as long as he had anything to do with it all the players would be white and all the caddies would be black.
I can only assume that the PGA followed the example of MLB in WW II and wanted to avoid criticism for playing this game when hundreds of thousands of people were in the streets protesting racism in general and police killing black folks in particular.
And then there is NASCAR. What is the world coming to? Two days after Bubba Wallace, the lone black driver in NASCAR’s three national series, called for the sanctioning body to band all Confederate flags at their racetracks, the organization did just that.
By its presence all over the place, one could be forgiven for assuming the Confederate Battle Flag was as integral to a NASCAR race as the checkered flag. But NASCAR has been trying to attract black fans—to make more money.
But that is not all. The NFL announced that in addition to the Star-Spangled Banner, it would sing the Black National Anthem before football games. Now that is patronizing and downright offensive.
This is the NFL, where over two-thirds of the players are black, but there are only three black head coaches. It is run by thirty-two Trump-supporting owners, seven of whom gave Trump’s overtly white supremacist campaign at least a million dollars each. And they blackballed Colin Kaepernick for silently protesting the killing of blacks by the police.
I would be less offended if they hired more black head coaches and Colin Kaepernick, who once almost won a Super Bowl as a quarterback.
