Tuesday, May 31, 2022
On Kapler, the Anthem, and the Atrocity That Provoked Him
This time, a funny thing happened after Giants manager Gabe Kapler said the atrocity in Uvalde, Texas moves him to stay in the clubhouse until "The Star Spangled Banner" finishes playing before games, because he's "not okay with the present state of the country." The funny thing that happened was ... nothing.
No flood of outrage. No choking social media to death with demands for Kapler's termination, if not execution. No threatened boycotts of Giants games. No politicians from the top down demanding Kapler be run out of a job, run out of town, run out of the country. No mass demonstrations around AT&T Park. No thunderous editorials calling for a Giants organizational shakeup.
This time, the country seems very much united across all lines of race, ethnicity, and even political belief in outrage that nineteen Uvalde police officers were in or around the Robb Elementary School building and did nothing to thwart the 18-year-old shooter who killed 19 young children, a pair of teachers, and whose murders may have caused the fatal heart attack of the husband of one of those slain teachers.
The outrage deepens when learning as we have that those Uvalde police even tried thwarting efforts by the adjacent Border Patrol and federal marshals to stop the massacre. "As sickening as it is," writes Reason's Robby Soave, "this is worth repeating: with the children wounded, bleeding, dying, and frantically — quietly — calling [9-1-1 on cell phones] for help, the police stood by, waiting for even more assistance. They told the Border Patrol to hold off, and they actively restrained parents outside the school who begged them to help and even volunteered to do so themselves."
"Second Amendment supporters often counter, 'The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.' Except the hallway of Robb Elementary School had no shortage of good guys with guns, and yet they did not stop the massacre until it was far too late," fumes an editorial by National Review, a publication not known to suffer criticism of law enforcement without a fight. "Perhaps that slogan should be revised, 'The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun and the willingness to act.' No Uvalde cops acted when it could have made a difference."
From the atrocity of George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minnesota police to the atrocity of Salvador Ramos at Robb Elemenrary, Kapler — one of baseball's most articulate and genuinely sensitive managers — looked upon the state of these United States and discovered he simply couldn't partake of a dubious pre-game ritual because Uvalde slams an exclamation point down upon a country in self-inflicted peril.
"When I was the same age as the children in Uvalde," wrote Kapler in a blog entry last Friday, "my father taught me to stand for the pledge of allegiance when I believed my country was representing its people well or to protest and stay seated when it wasn't. I don't believe it is representing us well right now."
About the only truly pronounced demurral Kapler incurred came from Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa, who came out of retirement to take the White Sox bridge last year. "I think he's exactly right to be concerned ... with what's happening in our country," La Russa told reporters before a game against the Cubs. "He's right there. Where I disagree is the flag and the anthem are not appropriate places to try to voice your objections."
Apparently, La Russa forgot the anthem's line about "the land of the free and the home of the brave." The brave were thwarted actively and incompetently at Robb Elementary, the only people Ramos set free were 19 children and two adults from their earthly lives, and those Uvalde, Texas pays to be brave in the presence of evil — to put it in the absolute most polite language available — didn't exactly do what they're paid to do last Tuesday.
We can debate La Russa's demurral and Kapler's quiet outrage all day long. La Russa thinks Kapler's intended protest disrespects the men and women of the military who defend what the flag and anthem purport to mean. I fear La Russa dismisses the prospect that those very men and women would think, appropriately, that they didn't put their hides on the line to defend either police becoming criminals or police doing nothing to prevent mass murder while blocking others from trying to prevent it or while allowing it to continue inexplicably.
Some of Kapler's fellow skippers get it. "[He] is very passionate about things he believes in and that's his way of protesting," says his downstate rival, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. "I don't think any of us are happy with what's going on in our country. I do respect people using whatever platforms they have to address that."
So does Alex Cora, who played with Kapler on the 2005-06 Red Sox and now manages the Red Sox. "He's a good friend of mine and the kind of guy I respect from afar for what he's doing," Cora says, "and if this is what he's doing, good for him. I understand his reasons. He was very open about it and I know there's a lot of people that are going to support him."
One of those people is also Chris Woodward, the manager of the Rangers. "I think we're all frustrated, especially in this country," he says. "Nobody's happy. It's not about which side you're on. It's just we've got to get better as a society ... I'm not going to really make comment either way on whether I would or wouldn't do what he did."
Kapler made a Memorial Day exception to his intended protest before today's game against the Phillies. "While I believe strongly in the right to protest and the importance of doing so," he said, "I also believe strongly in honoring and mourning our country's service men and women who fought and died for that right. Those who serve in our military, and especially those who have paid the ultimate price for our rights and freedoms, deserve that acknowledgment and respect, and I am honored to stand on the line today to show mine."
Maybe now it's time to revisit an argument I made a few times a few years ago in these very pages: it's time at last to re-think "The Star Spangled Banner" before sporting events.
What began as a spontaneous show of respect, by a Red Sox third baseman as a Navy band played "The Star Spangled Banner" during the seventh-inning stretch of a 1918 World Series game, has become at once a ritual of habit and — since the NFL's Colin Kaepernick over police brutality in 2016 — a flash point whenever professional athletes seize upon its playing to protest quietly, usually by kneeling, over assorted outrages.
The song wasn't even the sanctioned National Anthem when Fred Thomas (on leave from the Navy to play in the 1918 Series) turned and saluted the flag. That didn't happen until the 1930s. But the song's playing before every last sporting event regardless of day, evening, or calendar significance, renders it meaningless except as pressuring crowds into a patriotic gesture.
I've suggested it before, but it's worth repeating yet again: an everyday anthem during baseball season means nothing but false patriotism, compulsory patriotism, the sort of patriotism you see in countries unworthy of it but likely to execute those who say or behave so.
Faithful readers (all three of you) may remember my saying this in prior writings on the matter: I don't write lightly about this. I'm the paternal grandson of a New York police officer, and I'm an Air Force veteran. My grandfather would have fumed over Uvalde police doing nothing and trying to stop others from doing something, anything to save those children and teachers. And though I wasn't in a job requiring direct combat, I wore the Air Force uniform knowing well that I had sworn by implication to die if it came to that on behalf of defending these not always so United States.
I accepted and lived it proudly. And I damn well didn't spend four and a half years of my life in a military uniform, doing a military job, on behalf of those engaged to protect us from the criminals either becoming the criminals themselves or living down to the admonition, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Neither did the men and women we commemorate on Memorial Day who died in actual combat.
So, one more time. Save "The Star Spangled Banner" — and, while we're at it, "God Bless America" in the seventh-inning stretch — for baseball games played on such national holidays as Memorial Day, Flag Day, the Fourth of July, and Labour Day. Save it otherwise for Opening Day, the All-Star Game, Game 1 of the World Series, and even Game 7 if the Series gets that far.
The rest of the season, can it.
We can live quite well without the National Anthem before every last game without losing the only patriotism that truly matters, that in and of the heart. Even when that patriotism is challenged as murderously as it was in Uvalde, Texas last week. A challenge so murderous that the manager of the Giants prefers no compulsion to false or diluted patriotism when his country is compromised by evil.