If you call yourself a baseball fan, you’ll no doubt agree. Since Sept. 18, 2001–when Major League baseball returned after the terror attacks–the song “God Bless America” has pushed aside “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” as the new seventh-inning tradition. For the first few months, who could object? It provided catharsis and comfort–a way for Americans to grieve together.
Most teams have continued the “tradition” to this day. My beloved Mets and the hated Yankees still play “God Bless America” at all home games. Even my minor league team, the Brooklyn Cyclones, which fills the between-inning breaks with racing hot dogs and old ladies dancing the “Cha-Cha Slide” on the dugout roof, plays a somber version of the song at every game.
And this song is not merely played between the top and bottoms of the seventh inning. It is ponderously intoned with all the subtlety of a Mussolini speech. A stadium announcer–typically the same guy who was screaming, “Let’s Get Ready to Rummmmbllllle!” only minutes earlier–solemnly tells the crowd to rise in “tribute” to the soldiers who are defending our “way of life.” The players stop wherever they are, doff their caps, place them over their hearts and stand at attention. Even the Cyclones mascot–a dirty seagull named Sandy–stands rapt, his right wing bent over his heart. A somber, maudlin feeling fills the air. And the song begins.
Actually, “song” is too good a word for what “God Bless America” is. This is not a song, but an oppressive patriotic dirge. Written by Irving Berlin in 1918 while stationed at Camp Yaphank on Long Island, it was so maudlin and depressing that Berlin stuck it in a drawer and forgot all about it.
If Berlin–America’s resident sap–thought it was too mawkish that should tell you something.
Some 20 years later, as the world again prepared for war, Kate Smith asked Berlin for a patriotic song she could sing on her radio show. Berlin pulled out “God Bless America,” dusted it off and changed one lame line – “the gold fields up in Nome” – to the even lamer line – “oceans white with foam.” You know the rest: Smith’s rendition of the song became as much a symbol of post-war patriotism as the flag, the space program and all the white people moving to the suburbs.
But you don’t have to believe me. “Kate Smith’s recording of ‘God Bless America’ was iconic to that generation,” says Deane Root, director of the Center of American Music. “It was a simple statement of what it meant to be an American at that time.”
Three generations later, the seventh-inning stretch renditions of “God Bless America” still embody some great things about America–the community, the notion of shared sacrifice–and all of the worst things: the self-righteous pride, the forced piety, the earnest self-reverence, the smugness.
It offends a broad section of people, such as:
Atheists!: “As a patriotic American, I’d love to be able to join my fellow countrymen in song, but ‘God Bless America’ brings politics and religion to a baseball game,” says Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists. “I don’t go to a baseball game to get aggravated.” (Obviously, she’s not a Met fan.) Non-Atheists!: “The song is dumb,” says Charlie Pillsbury, who ran for Congress in Connecticut as a Green Party candidate last year (and got 5 percent of the vote.) One of his campaign issues was his objection to “God Bless America.” “If you believe in God, as I do, you believe that God shows no partiality towards nations,” he said. “God blesses the whole world.”
Traditionalists!: “What’s happening with ‘God Bless America’ is the same thing that happened with the national anthem,” says baseball historian Tom Gilbert. “The national anthem wasn’t played at games until World War II, when baseball needed to show it was patriotic. And it’s hung on, like rent control.”
Some British guy!: At a recent Cyclones game, I ran into James Silver, a British journalist who’s studying his country’s former colonists. When “God Bless America” was being played, Silver smiled. “It’s exactly what I expect from Americans,” he says. “The self-righteousness, the patriotism. It’s always nice to see my opinions confirmed.”
Woody Guthrie!: The great American folk singer was so offended by “God Bless America” that he wrote “God Blessed America” (later re-written as “This Land Is Your Land.”) Guthrie hated Berlin’s blind faith in American perfection, so the song’s original version is replete with lines like, “One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple/By the relief office, I saw my people/As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering/If God blessed America for me.” (Now, granted, that’s not a good seventh-inning stretch song, but it’s a great song.) Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a knee-jerk objection to all pro-America songs. “America the Beautiful,” for example, is a great song about a great land. But “God Bless America” is a horrible song whose lyrics are not only sappy, but poetically insipid. The rhymes alone are enough to make a seventh-grade poetry teacher run screaming into the night.
“Stand beside her and guide her, through the night with a light from above,” is bad enough, but it gets worse. “From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam.”
White with foam? Foam?! Foam is not a word that evokes the beauty of America, it is a substance that spews from the mouths of lunatics and/or talk radio hosts. Give me “amber waves of grain” above the “fruited plain” any day.
There was, of course, a brief effort to make “America the Beautiful” our national anthem, but the advocates were no doubt done in by the line, “America! America!/God mend thine ev’ry flaw.” We’re America, dammit. We have no flaws!
Most important, of course, is that “God Bless America” is a bully that has pushed aside a song that actually should be the National Anthem, namely, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
Written in 1908–by a guy who’d never even attended a game–this song embodies everything that is good about America, from the notion of losing yourself to something bigger than earthly concerns (“I don’t care if I ever get back”) to the assertion that Vince Lombardi was wrong about winning (“if they don’t win it’s a shame”) to, finally, the joy of fair play (“It’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old ball game”).
Again, don’t believe me. “‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ is really much more emblematic of America today,” says Root. “You eat junk food, you get out to the ol’ ballgame with your friends and if your team wins, great, but if not, it’s no big deal. That’s what makes it a great song.”
So, give me back my “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” If God wants to bless America, He can save it until after the game.
