Washington Post: Military tributes at baseball games: True honors or hollow gestures?
Like most people, John Dever awoke Sept. 11, 2001, saw horrific images on the news and tried to make sense of what would come next. Dever worked in the San Diego Padres’ media relations department, and he was summoned to a meeting to decide how the team would stage a potential game that night. The schedule had not been canceled; they still did not understand the scope of what had happened.
At the meeting, Dever spoke up with an idea. The traditional “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” would sound out of place during the seventh-inning stretch. He suggested the Padres should instead play, “God Bless America.” The idea reached the Padres’ Larry Lucchino, who had flown into Milwaukee for an owners meeting. He relayed the idea directly to Commissioner Bud Selig. A tradition was born.
“It kind of became a thing,” said Dever, who worked for the Nationals their first 10 years in Washington. “It really ramped itself up.”
WNU Editor: I have never grown tired of these military tributes .... both here or when I was living in Russia. My father .... who was a World War II vet .... was also never tired of them .... to him they were always special occasions. As to military tributes at baseball games .... in my opinion they are not hollow gestures .... they are what they are .... a moment to say thanks (or to remember) the many men and women who have served or are serving in the U.S. military.
5 comments:
WNU Editor,
They (MLB and NFL) get paid to do it,
So, hollow gesture at best.
Add in the underfunding and mismanagement of Veterans Services, the numbers of homeless and unemployed veterans and it just becomes cynical militarism.
I was not referring to those tributes where payment was made. I should have made that point more clearer in my comment.
On this point I find myself in rare agreement with Sen. McCain .... http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/mccain-joins-flake-in-blasting-paid-for-patriotism-in-nfl-other-sports/
And yes on the "underfunding and mismanagement of Veterans Services". I tend to post those news stories in my Military and Intelligence Briefs post .... but what is happening in the VA .... it is reprehensible and downright criminal.
I went to a major college
football game this year.
Both before the game and
at half time they trotted
out some wounded vets and
one Medal of Honor winner.
I was struck by how perfunc-
tory the presentation and the
applause was.
Up the military fatigue.
After a while it becomes just the same old, same old and only delays the start of the game unless of course there is a war going on.
If on the way to the stadium you passed some homeless vets the presentation might have become even more perfunctory.
Sad to see homeless vets and thinking about their war experience suggests that maybe they, through their efforts, helped to make millions of people including kids, homeless as they fled the carnage and destruction of an unnecessary conflict.
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