THE NATIONAL ANTHEM IS ABOUT A NATION NOT A PRESIDENT

President Trump says players who protested the National Anthem being played before games should be fired from their teams over the weekend, and the whole world exploded. Yesterday, America was treated to NFL players taking a knee, or sitting or locking arms while the national anthem was being played in protest of what the President said. Well, guess what? They weren’t protesting a President, they were giving a big middle finger to the country.

That flag and that song should be a unifying moment, a moment to say ‘no matter what differences we have, we are all American, and it’s a privilege to be one.’ But a bad player,influenced by his radical Muslim girlfriend last year decided to make it about him. He claimed to be protesting the killing of black men in America by the police while at the same time wearing a shirt praising the Castros of Cuba. And it’s spread to this. ‘He’s practicing his first amendment rights’ everyone said.

Well Donald Trump practiced his first amendment rights and an entire league lost their minds. This tradition goes back a hundred years to World War 1. The people loved their country then, with boys fighting overseas in a horrible war. We have soldiers on the battlefield today, and these players just spit on them. The national anthem is about a nation, not about a President. And if these thugs don’t know that, they should be thrown off the team.

And the commissioner of this league supports this. He should be thrown out too. He’s saying these players have a right to their free speech and to protest if they see fit. But it wasn’t that way when the Dallas Cowboys wanted to wear stickers on their helmets to honor the police after several Dallas policemen were shot. No, he wouldn’t allow that. Or when an NFL player wanted to honor 9/11 victims with a decal on his shoe. No, we couldn’t have that either. But spitting on the flag, you can do that all day.

But people will still defend these thugs who spit on everything good about America, saying it’s their right. But is it? Yes, they can say what they want, but shouldn’t they be accountable for what they say? Their bosses should fire them because they’re staining their product with anti-Americanism. But they won’t do anything because they’re too afraid of the backlash that the leftist fascists have instigated in this country. All that we used to honor and respect must be thrown out and we have to accept the ridiculous.

Man is woman, woman is man, America is bad, the Soviet Union was good. The Soviet Union was good and now Russia is bad. The civil rights movement never happened, minorities are now more oppressed than ever. It’s upside down. The fact that these players can do what they did yesterday, with no repercussions whatsoever disproves their arguments. Where could you do this on the planet? Dictatorial regimes you’d be killed or put in torture prisons. Even in Westernized countries you have laws against certain speech. I’ve been banned from Britain for something I didn’t even say, but here millionaire thugs can go on national TV and vehemently hate the country.

Remember this, when they do what they did yesterday, they’re not disrespecting a President, they’re disrespecting an entire nation. They’re disrespecting you and me.

From the Sept. 19, 2011 issue of ESPN The Magazine:

THAT STORY BEGINS, as so many tales in modern American sports do, with Babe Ruth. History records various games in which "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played dating from the mid-1800s, but Ruth's last postseason appearances for the Boston Red Sox coincided with the song's first unbreakable bond with the sports world, in 1918. Game 1 of that year's World Series was notable for many reasons...
There was also World War I, which blackened everything, including the national pastime. The U.S. had entered the war 17 months earlier, and in that time some 100,000 American soldiers died. Veterans who survived often came home maimed or shell-shocked from encounters with modern warfare's first mechanized mass-killing machines. At home, the public mood was sullen and anxious. The war strained the economy and the workforce, including baseball's. The government began drafting major leaguers for military service that summer and ordered baseball to end the regular season by Labor Day. As a result, the 1918 Series was the lone October Classic played entirely in September.
World War I wasn't the only issue weighing heavily on fans. On Sept. 4, the day before the first game, a bomb ripped through the Chicago Federal Building, killing four people and injuring 30. The Industrial Workers of the World were thought to be behind the attack, a retaliation for the conviction of several IWW members on federal sedition charges...
Although the Cubs festooned the park in as much red, white and blue as possible, the glum crowd in the stands for Game 1 remained nearly silent through most of Ruth's 1-0 shutout victory over Chicago's Hippo Vaughn. Not even the Cubs Claws, the forerunners to Wrigley's Bleacher Bums, could gin up enthusiasm...
With one exception: the seventh-inning stretch. As was common during sporting events, a military band was on hand to play, and while the fans were on their feet, the musicians fired up "The Star-Spangled Banner." They weren't the only active-duty servicemen on the field, though. Red Sox third baseman Fred Thomas was playing the Series while on furlough from the Navy, where he'd been learning seamanship at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago...
Upon hearing the opening notes of Key's song from the military band, Thomas immediately faced the flag and snapped to attention with a military salute. The other players on the field followed suit, in "civilian" fashion, meaning they stood and put their right hands over their hearts. The crowd, already standing, showed its first real signs of life all day, joining in a spontaneous sing-along, haltingly at first, then finishing with flair. The scene made such an impression that The New York Times opened its recap of the game not with a description of the action on the field but with an account of the impromptu singing: "First the song was taken up by a few, then others joined, and when the final notes came, a great volume of melody rolled across the field. It was at the very end that the onlookers exploded into thunderous applause and rent the air with a cheer that marked the highest point of the day's enthusiasm."
The Cubs front office realized it had witnessed something unique. For the next two games, it had the band play "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the seventh-inning stretch, to similarly enthusiastic crowds. By Game 3, a bigger crowd of 27,000 was in attendance. Not to be outdone, the Red Sox ratcheted up the pageantry when the Series relocated to Boston for the next three games. At Fenway Park, "The Star-Spangled Banner" moved from the seventh-inning stretch to the pregame festivities, and the team coupled the playing of the song with the introduction of wounded soldiers who had received free tickets.
Like the Chicago fans, the normally reserved Boston crowd erupted for the pregame anthem and the hobbled heroes. As the Tribune wrote of the wounded soldiers at Game 6, "[T]heir entrance on crutches supported by their comrades evoked louder cheers than anything the athletes did on the diamond..."
Still, the Series' most enduring legacy belongs to a song. Other major league teams noticed the popular reaction to "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 1918, and over the next decade it became standard for World Series and holiday games. In subsequent years, through subsequent wars, it grew into the daily institution we know today...
Congress didn't officially adopt the "The Star-Spangled Banner" until 1931 -- and by that time it was already a baseball tradition steeped in wartime patriotism. Thanks to a brass band, some fickle fans and a player who snapped to attention on a somber day in September, the old battle ballad was the national pastime's anthem more than a decade before it was the nation's.

-PJ

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