I am a diehard Cincinnati Reds fan. Come hell, high water, or a losing season, I watch or listen to every Reds game. Currently, John Sadak and Jeff “Cowboy” Brantley call most of the games on TV. Every Sunday fans are treated to the singing of God Bless America. I either mute or fast forward through the sound — a minor annoyance, to be sure, but an annoyance, nonetheless.
Today, Sadak called the singing of God Bless America a “Sunday Tradition,” to which I politely 🙂 replied bullshit! The singing of “God Bless America” is a post 9-11 innovation. This sound may have had a unifying effect twenty-five years ago, but today it is song glorifying militarism and imperialism; complete with military planes or helicopters flying overhead.
The same goes for unfurling a field-sized U.S. flag while a soloist or group belts out the un-singable war song, The Star Spangled Banner. More flyovers too, an ever-present witness to our military might. Little do younger adults know that there was a time when we didn’t worship nationalism and Christianity. Today, we wave the flag of American exceptionalism with nary a thought. Sadak furthers this narrative by implying that singing God Bless America during the seventh inning of Reds game is a Sunday tradition. It is not, and never has been. Singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning six days a week . . . now that’s a baseball tradition.
When I turn on the Reds, I want to watch the game, not listen to masturbatory worship of American nationalism. Sadak might want to consider that many people in the stands and at home aren’t supporters of decades of military interventions and deaths across the globe; people who recognize the need for self-defense, but not wars over natural resources, communism, regime change, and geography; or even worse, wars fought solely based on lies
Count me as a patriotic Reds fan who wants military-free ballgames. I don’t believe for a moment that soldiers are dying in the Middle East so we can enjoy Sunday baseball games at home. Not in my name, I say. I don’t want one drop of innocent blood shed for the “American Dream”, another barrel of oil, or Donald Trump’s war fantasy.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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