Kneeling in Fenway Park to the Gods of War
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SharePosted on Jul 7, 2014
Boston Red Sox fans lean over "the Green Monster" to touch an
American flag covering the wall during pregame ceremonies on Memorial
Day in 2011. Photo by Winslow Townson
|
BOSTON—On Saturday I went to one of the massive temples across
the country where we celebrate our state religion. The temple I visited
was Boston’s Fenway Park. I was inspired to go by reading Andrew Bacevich’s thoughtful book
“Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their
Country,” which opens with a scene at Fenway from July 4, 2011. The
Fourth of July worship service that I attended last week—a game between
the Red Sox and the Baltimore Orioles—was a day late because of a
rescheduling caused by Tropical Storm Arthur. When the crowd sang “The
Star-Spangled Banner” a gargantuan American flag descended to cover “the
Green Monster,” the 37-foot, 2-inch-high wall in left field. Patriotic
music blasted from loudspeakers. Col. Lester A. Weilacher, commander of
the 66th Air Base Group at Massachusetts’ Hanscom Air Force Base,
wearing a light blue short-sleeved Air Force shirt and dark blue pants,
threw the ceremonial first pitch. A line of Air Force personnel stood
along the left field wall. The fighter jets—our angels of death—that
usually roar over the stadium on the Fourth were absent. But the face of
Fernard Frechette, a 93-year-old World War II veteran who was
attending, appeared on the 38-by-100-foot Jumbotron above the
center-field seats as part of Fenway’s “Hats Off to Heroes” program,
which honors military veterans or active-duty members at every game. The
crowd stood and applauded. Army National Guard Sgt. Ben Arnold had been
honored at the previous game, on Wednesday. Arnold said his favorite
Red Sox player was Mike Napoli. Arnold, who fought in Afghanistan, makes
about $27,000 a year. Napoli makes $16 million. The owners of the Red
Sox clear about $60 million annually. God bless America.
The religious reverie—repeated in sports arenas throughout the United States—is used to justify our bloated war budget and endless wars. Schools and libraries are closing. Unemployment and underemployment are chronic. Our infrastructure is broken and decrepit. And we will have paid a crippling $4 trillion for the useless and futile wars we waged over the last 13 years in the Middle East. But the military remains as unassailable as Jesus, or, among those who have season tickets at Fenway Park, the Red Sox. The military is the repository of our honor and patriotism. No public official dares criticize the armed forces or challenge their divine right to more than half of all the nation’s discretionary spending. And although we may be distrustful of government, the military—in the twisted logic of the American mind—is somehow separate.
The heroes of war and the heroes of sport are indistinguishable in militarized societies. War is sold to a gullible public as a noble game. Few have the athletic prowess to play professional sports, but almost any young man or woman can go to a recruiter and sign up to be a military hero. The fusion of the military with baseball, along with the recruitment ads that appeared intermittently Saturday on the television screens mounted on green iron pillars throughout Fenway Park, caters to this illusion: Sign up. You will be part of a professional team. We will show you in your uniform on the Jumbotron in Fenway Park. You will be a hero like Mike Napoli.
Saturday’s crowd of some 37,000, which paid on average about $70 for a ticket, dutifully sang hosannas—including “God Bless America” in the seventh inning—to the flag and the instruments of death and war. It blessed and applauded a military machine that, ironically, oversees the wholesale surveillance of everyone in the ballpark and has the power under the National Defense Authorization Act to snatch anyone in the stands and hold him or her indefinitely in a military facility. There was no mention of targeted assassinations of U.S. citizens, kill lists or those lost or crippled in the wars. The crowd roared its approval every time the military was mentioned. It cheered its own enslavement.
War is not a sport. It is about killing. It is dirty, messy and deeply demoralizing. It brings with it trauma, lifelong wounds, loss and feelings of shame and guilt. It leaves bleeding or dead bodies on its fields. The pay is lousy. The working conditions are horrific. And those who come back from war are usually discarded. The veterans who died waiting for medical care from Veterans Affairs hospitals could, if they were alive, explain the difference between being a multimillion-dollar-a-year baseball star and a lance corporal home from Iraq or Afghanistan. At best, you are trotted out for a public event, as long as you read from the script they give you, the one designed to entice the naive into the military. Otherwise, you are forgotten.
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The religious reverie—repeated in sports arenas throughout the United States—is used to justify our bloated war budget and endless wars. Schools and libraries are closing. Unemployment and underemployment are chronic. Our infrastructure is broken and decrepit. And we will have paid a crippling $4 trillion for the useless and futile wars we waged over the last 13 years in the Middle East. But the military remains as unassailable as Jesus, or, among those who have season tickets at Fenway Park, the Red Sox. The military is the repository of our honor and patriotism. No public official dares criticize the armed forces or challenge their divine right to more than half of all the nation’s discretionary spending. And although we may be distrustful of government, the military—in the twisted logic of the American mind—is somehow separate.
The heroes of war and the heroes of sport are indistinguishable in militarized societies. War is sold to a gullible public as a noble game. Few have the athletic prowess to play professional sports, but almost any young man or woman can go to a recruiter and sign up to be a military hero. The fusion of the military with baseball, along with the recruitment ads that appeared intermittently Saturday on the television screens mounted on green iron pillars throughout Fenway Park, caters to this illusion: Sign up. You will be part of a professional team. We will show you in your uniform on the Jumbotron in Fenway Park. You will be a hero like Mike Napoli.
Saturday’s crowd of some 37,000, which paid on average about $70 for a ticket, dutifully sang hosannas—including “God Bless America” in the seventh inning—to the flag and the instruments of death and war. It blessed and applauded a military machine that, ironically, oversees the wholesale surveillance of everyone in the ballpark and has the power under the National Defense Authorization Act to snatch anyone in the stands and hold him or her indefinitely in a military facility. There was no mention of targeted assassinations of U.S. citizens, kill lists or those lost or crippled in the wars. The crowd roared its approval every time the military was mentioned. It cheered its own enslavement.
War is not a sport. It is about killing. It is dirty, messy and deeply demoralizing. It brings with it trauma, lifelong wounds, loss and feelings of shame and guilt. It leaves bleeding or dead bodies on its fields. The pay is lousy. The working conditions are horrific. And those who come back from war are usually discarded. The veterans who died waiting for medical care from Veterans Affairs hospitals could, if they were alive, explain the difference between being a multimillion-dollar-a-year baseball star and a lance corporal home from Iraq or Afghanistan. At best, you are trotted out for a public event, as long as you read from the script they give you, the one designed to entice the naive into the military. Otherwise, you are forgotten.
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All religions need relics. Old uniforms, bats, balls, gloves and caps
are preserved in the Baseball Hall of Fame, like the bones of saints in
churches. In that Cooperstown, N.Y., museum you walk by glass cases of
baseball relics on your way to the third-floor display bearing the words
“Sacred Ground: Examining ballparks of the past and present, this
exhibit takes a look at America’s cathedrals of the game.” At ballparks
the teams display statues of their titans—there is one of left fielder
Ted Williams outside Fenway Park. And tens of thousands of dollars are
paid for objects used by the immortals. A 1968 Mickey Mantle jersey
was auctioned in May for $201,450. Team minutiae and statistics are
preserved, much as monasteries preserve details of the lives and deaths
of saints. Epic tales of glory and defeat are etched into the permanent
record. The military has astutely deified itself through the fans’
deification of teams.
The collective euphoria experienced in stadiums, especially among
those struggling to survive in the corporate state, gives to many
anxious Americans what they crave. They flock to the temples of sport
while most places of traditional religious worship in the United States
are largely deserted on the Sabbath. Those packed into the stadiums feel
as if they and everyone around them speak the same language. They
believe those in the crowd are one entity. And they all hate the same
enemy. To walk through Fenway Park in a New York Yankees shirt is to
court verbal abuse. To be identified as a Yankees fan after a game in
one of the bars outside the park is unwise. The longing to belong,
especially in a society where many have lost their sense of place and
identity, is skillfully catered to by both the professional sports
machine and the military propaganda machine.
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The World As It Is:
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