They're Playing Our Song

 

 Sorry I've been away so long. Like most people in Boston, I’ve been following the Red Sox closely, and am just beginning to consider what life will be like now that the parade is over.  (The first five artic les in the on-line Boston Globe were about the  Sox, so I guess we won’t exactly be going cold turkey.)

            Among the few thing that got me annoyed during the run were, in fact, two Globe articles.  The first fell into the classic literary form sportswriter faireweatherness.  Because the Red Sox lost two of the first three games, and made some obvious blunders, this reported now saw them as not playing hard enough and announced his disgust with a team he had probably been enthusiastic about for over 170 games.  I just hope he’s not taking credit now for lighting a fire under them for the next three consecutive wins.

            The worse offense, though, was another writer who announced it was now time to retire the tradition of singing Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” at the seventh inning stretch. A Boston Herald writer said the same thing, but only as a temporary suggestion  for the playoffs, to throw the other team off, kind of like replacing your left-handed knuckleball starter with a fastball righty in the eighth inning.  To which many have replied that you never change anything in the middle of a lucky streak – why not have the Red Sox shave their beards to the next team wouldn’t recognize tem?

            But the Globe guy wants the song gone for good.  Why: 1. It’s been around for over 10 years; 2. It’s not a good song, and 3.  There’s a line about touching that creeps him out because Diamond was writing an ode to the young Caroline Kennedy.

            If obsolescence is a reason for dropping an anthem, why do we have two Civil War songs at the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness (more on that later) and a national anthem that dates from one of our less significant wars?

            Regarding age and quality, The Star-Spangled banner may be the most unsingable national anthem in the world, and its butchery by hundreds of incompetent and egotistical performers is grounds enough for its demise. 

            And if bad lyrics are the problem, let’s look again at “My Old Kentucky Home,” which is a lament by a “darky” – the word is used several times – who has apparently been sold away from his plantation and may be leaving his family behind to die in a strange land.

            Even worse, “Maryland My Maryland” is a pro-Confederacy song that urged Maryland to join  Virginia and “spurn the Northern scum” led by the “despot,” “vandal” and “tyrant” Lincoln, and even includes the words “Sic semper is the proud refrain” – as used by John Wilkes Booth.

            No, sports fans and patriots, there’s no accounting for taste in mob lyrics.  How else can we explain the British soccer tradition  of club songs, ranging from Liverpool’s valiant “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to  West Ham’s bizarre “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”?  The songs have catchy tunes – okay, not the SSB – and a few lyrics that also work – the Fenway chant of “So Good, So good” that breaks up the song – and then they take on a life, as Caroline did, and does still more after Diamond came to the diamond to lead Sweet Caroline on the first game after the Marathon bombing.  Woe to him who tries to apply Mr. Spock’s logic to the most emotional of art forms.

            I wonder if they still sing The Star-Spangled Banner on the deck of the Enterprise?