Was Mr. K on to something? Chorus grows to drop the national anthem at sports events

During the Vietnam War, in the summer of 1972, Kansas City Royals owner Ewing Kauffman decided to stop having the national anthem played before games because he was tired of fans “disrespecting” it.

He said he saw “some signs of disrespect during the playing of the song, mostly in attitude and late arrivals walking around.”

So the team announced the “Star-Spangled Banner” would only be played on Sundays, holidays and special occasions.

Kauffman quickly changed his mind.

The team received dozens of phone calls and letters, almost all emotional, almost all indignant, so the Royals reinstated the anthem before every home game.

Sports Illustrated predicted around that time that the “Star-Spangled Banner” would probably always be part of sports, but people have long wondered whether it should be.

In the heat over the last few days of the #TakeAKnee controversy, the case that the “Star-Spangled Banner” is out of place at professional sporting events is being made yet again.

A chorus is swelling, and it sounds like this: It’s time to stop singing the national anthem at sporting events.

Or, as former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura asked in a blunt tweet over the weekend: “Why the hell do we even need the ‘national anthem’ before they play?”

The quick answer is because Americans say they like singing the anthem at games.

In June, Tylt, a poll-taking website, asked: Should we stop playing the national anthem before sporting events?

A resounding 83.3 percent said the anthem is “a must.”

Less than 17 percent voted “games not anthems.”

A Marist Poll taken last year revealed even stronger support: Only 8 percent of Americans polled said the anthem should not be played at sporting events.

History shows that American sports fans like to be patriotically juiced before they watch their teams and favorite athletes head into battle.

“Sports are a kind of bloodless warfare, a sort of war without death,” Marc Ferris, author of “Star-Spangled Banner: The Unlikely Story of America's National Anthem,” recently told USA Today.

“We’re a patriotic country, and we’re different from the rest of the world in that respect. As we grew and as we prospered, people wanted to show their patriotism.”

But in 2015 after actor Jamie Foxx made ears bleed with an uneven rendition before the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight in Las Vegas, liberal commentator Alan Colmes called for dumping the song.

“How about stopping this false display of patriotism altogether? What does two people beating the bejesus out of each other have to do with ‘the rockets red glare’ and ‘bombs bursting in air,’” Colmes wrote for The Huffington Post.

“In fact, what does this song have to do with today’s America in the first place? The melody is based on an old English drinking song, has images of war, and is impossible to sing. And contrary to what one might think based on exposure to it, the last two words are not ‘play ball.’”

Last month when veteran NFL players Michael Bennett and Marshawn Lynch drew flak for sitting during the anthem at preseason games, ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser also questioned, as he has done before, why the song is still played.

“A lot of times I say it in half jest, but I’m getting to the point where it’s not even half jest anymore,” Kornheiser said. “I don’t even know why they play the anthem. I mean, play the Beach Boys. I like the Beach Boys.”

Quartz editor Paul Smalera argued Monday the song shouldn’t be used at events that don’t involve national teams.

“I know — standing and saluting or putting our hands over our hearts during the national anthem at a sporting event is what us Americans are all so used to,” Smalera wrote.

“But, in fact, playing the anthem before a game was a relatively rare occurrence prior to the World War 2 era ... let’s consider what is really at stake by not playing the anthem at a football or baseball game.

“Would we be actively dishonoring the country? No.

“Would we be insulting our military, or our flag? No.”

Tyler Cowen also made a pitch this week for rethinking the anthem’s use in an editorial for Bloomberg.

“We live in a country where very often the concession stands don’t stop operating during the anthem, nor do fans stop walking through the concourse,” Cowen wrote. “We’re fooling ourselves to think that current practices are really showing respect for the nation or its military.

“Anthem practices shouldn’t be viewed as sacrosanct, and no one would think the absence of an anthem unpatriotic if expectations were set differently. Professional sports don’t start their competitions with the Pledge of Allegiance, and that is hardly considered an act of treason. Nor do we play the anthem before movies, as is mandatory in India.”

Back in 1974 Boston sports talk show host Guy Mainella argued that the anthem and sports are a mismatched couple.

“It’s a game we’re about to watch, not the Battle of Iwo Jima,” Mainella wrote in the Boston Globe.

Mainella was “both prescient and probative,” writer Peter May wrote last year after Colin Kaepernick, then quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, first refused to stand for the anthem to protest “a country that oppresses black people and people of color” and police shootings of black people in the United States.

Mainella “foresaw the unholy alliance of nationalism, militarism and sports, producing what he called ‘a hybrid monster’ which rears its ugly head before every game,” May wrote. “He concluded, ‘it’s risky business tying sport to politics.’”

That risk was laid bare two years ago by a joint congressional oversight report released by Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake from Arizona.

In November 2015 the senators revealed that the Department of Defense had paid as much as $6.8 million in taxpayer money to teams in the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and MLS to honor the military and American troops at sporting events.

They called it paid patriotism.

“This not only betrays the sentiment and trust of fans, but casts an unfortunate shadow over the genuine patriotic partnerships that do so much for our troops,” the report stated.

The Defense Department paid for specific activities including performances of the anthem, on-field color guard performances, enlistment and re-enlistment ceremonies, and ceremonial first pitches and puck drops, the report revealed.

The NFL responded by returning $723,000 of the money it received over four seasons.

That idea of paid patriotism has stuck with people. Over the weekend actor Jesse Williams seemed to reference the controversy when he called the performance of the anthem at sports events “a scam.”

“This is not actually part of football,” Williams told HuffPost. “This was invented in 2009 from the government paying the NFL to market military recruitment to get more people to go off and fight wars to die.”

Columnist Drew Magary for Deadspin took up the dump-the-anthem call last year, confessing that he, not like others, has “disrespected” the song by going to the bathroom, whispering, buying beer, checking his phone and — gasp! — leaving his hat on at games.

What would Ewing Kauffman say?

“Sometimes the anthem still hits me right in the FEELS, but those moments are few and far in between,” Magary wrote. “There are moments when I need to step back and think very hard about my country and what it means to me, but those moments can’t be pre-programmed into the 10 minutes before kickoff of Week 9 of the NFL regular season ...”

“The national fabric would not be torn asunder if teams dropped it. In fact, if they ever did, maybe it would mean MORE to you.”

This story was originally published September 28, 2017 at 12:36 PM with the headline "Was Mr. K on to something? Chorus grows to drop the national anthem at sports events."