Forget Hockey: Where Does Sarah Palin Stand on Baseball?

Here's a pop quiz for Sarah Palin:

1. What is America's national pastime?

2. Who is Israel Baline?

3. What does the answer to #2 have to do with the answer to #1?

4. Why would Westbrook Pegler care?

Don't feel bad if you don't know all the answers. As a lifelong Cubs fan married to a man who's already envisioning an El tracks series between the Cubbies and the Sox, I know that baseball is the national pastime [watching the Cubs fall apart after July 4 used to be the national pastime, but we seem to have entered a new era]. We watched a bit of the final game in the old Yankee Stadium, last night, including the part where Ronan Tynan sang "God Bless America" to a stadium full of people whose parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents, weren't born here. For that matter, some of the people in the stands and on the field weren't born here - which brings us to the composer of that beloved song, and question #2.

Israel Baline is known to most of us as Irving Berlin, and he wrote "God Bless America" in 1918. He wrote it after he got to New York from Russia; his family fled the pogroms in 1893 and came to the land of the free, the home of the brave. He was so happy with his new home that he wrote his anthem, which always struck me as a nice addition to the patriotic repertoire - no bombs bursting in air, just mountains and prairies and oceans white with foam. And no stratospheric high notes that always make the listener nervous - will he make it? will her voice crack? - and make singing along almost impossible. This was people's patriotism, easy to memorize, easy to sing. It's a unifying song.

Which brings us to Berlin's contemporary, Westbrook Pegler, the anonymous guy Sarah Palin quoted so approvingly in her acceptance speech, because he once wrote a column about the good people we grow in small towns. He was a famous conservative newspaper columnist (think Rush Limbaugh in the newsprint age), who wrote lots of other things, too, things so offensive that I cannot bring myself to type them out on this keyboard, including evil caricatures of the Israel Balines of this country. He didn't much care for Jews, but they were in good company: He didn't much care for Democrats, either, and he publicly hoped for the assassination of Robert Kennedy. One can only wonder - if Pegler were alive today, would he join in when we sing "God Bless America" in a ballpark, or would he mutter nasty asides about the religious beliefs of its esteemed composer?

We have a vice-presidential candidate who quoted an anti-Semite in her nomination acceptance speech. Question #5: Was she aware, in which case we can all stay up nights worrying about the scope of her personal intolerance? Or was she oblivious, in which case, there are all sorts of other reasons not to get a good night's sleep.

Comments

[Nommo]

Deep to right field, waaay, way back....

[richdibo]

As an atheist, I resent the publicly ostentatious religious invocations after the top-half of the 7th inning at baseball games. I don't want to stretch it, but I go to a baseball park for baseball and its related diversion, not for pathetic public displays of religious rituals. After 7 years of imploring god's oversight, America is worst off--were getting hammered. The manager brings in a relief pitcher to replace a failing starter. Likewise, its time for another song.

Keep your religion to yourself.

Some religious player, especially some Latinos, make the sign of the cross before batting. Some do it more than once. These hapless players usually bat around .225. How about more batting practice with their hitting instructors?

The Onion had a funny article about this:

God Wastes Miracle On Running Catch In Outfield
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/god_wastes_miracle_on

[grailknight]

I take the point about Pegler and Palin, but instituting "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch has proventto be a buzz kill. The salutory civic religious service is at the beginning of the game and shouldn't encroach on the course of the game. Moreover, the song has been coopted by so-called patriots, who are really virulient nationalists. And if the lyrics are to be taken at face value, in the last eight years, old Jehoveh hasn't stood beside or guided us through the night with the light from above! Give me a populist ballad like "This Land is Your Land," or "If I Hammer" any day over the saccharin that baseball magnates force feed us at their version of patriotism at such exorbitant admissions.

[TXpastafarian]

great blog! thanks for pointing out something i didn't know before and probably would not have learned otherwise.