November 8, 2022 • 27 mins
Why do we sing the National Anthem at sporting events? Is patriotism part of sports? Matt Andrews explains how American sports have been intertwined with national tragedies over the last century, including September 11th.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh, lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world
history examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome,
(00:26):
and we're back on the unsold history of sports in America.
I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Today we look at the
world of sports and times of American tragedies, with a
heavy emphasis on the events surrounding the aftermath of September eleven,
two thousand and one. When a president gets shot or
there's a major terrorist attack. Do sports still have significance
(00:47):
in the national conscious? What do you think, Matt. One
of our topics in this course has been the story
of sports as part of the patriotic pageantry in American history.
You know, certainly we have discussed the idea of playing
sports this is a patriotic virtue, and I will briefly
revisit that idea today. And of course we have discussed
(01:10):
Olympic sports and the celebration of American athletes. Today I
want to explore the idea of American sporting arenas as
patriotic spaces. You know, when did that idea and those
connections emerge, When, for example, did we start singing the
Star Spangled banner at sporting events. I'll tell you what
we know in just a second, and I want to
(01:32):
explore American sports and sporting arenas in times of national
trauma and crisis. We will explore a few different moments,
but we will work our way towards September eleventh, two
thousand and one. That was the moment when the links
between sports and patriotism and militarism were solidified even more
(01:52):
in the American mind. And then, finally, part of what
I'm doing today is setting up for our final lecture
when we explore the reaction to American athletes like the
football player Colin Kaepernick using the sporting arena as a
space for political protests. I think this lecture right now
will help us better understand the backlash to that moment. Okay, well,
(02:17):
one of the things that's so interesting in the current
debate over athletes using sporting arenas and the national anthem
to make political protests is we just assume that the
national anthem should be played at sporting events. There's almost
no other place in American life where we do this.
When I teach my courses in a classroom, there's no anthem,
(02:38):
go to the movies, to play the opera, a rock concert, whatever,
there's no anthem. So why sporting events? When did the
tradition of playing patriotic songs at sporting events begin. It's
a good question, I'm glad I asked it. Sports historians
are trying to figure this out precisely. And here's what
(02:58):
we know. The earliest known playing of the Star Spangled
banner at a sporting event it came out of baseball game.
It was played at the opening of the Union Grounds
ballpark in Brooklyn in May of eighteen sixty two. In
eighteen sixty two, this was during the Civil War, and
the name of the park, the Union Grounds, was itself
(03:19):
linked to the war. Union referred to the reason that
the Northern States were fighting the war to preserve the Union,
and so the Star Spangled Banner was played as a
statement of exactly that Unionism. Let's fast forward to World
War One. As a reminder, I said in an earlier
lecture that no war had a greater impact on sports
(03:40):
in the United States than World War One. In the
early twentieth century, sports were becoming a part of everyday
life in the US, and then comes the Great War
and physical educators assured Americans that we were ready because
we're a nation of athletes, and after the war, they
claimed that the American victory could be attributed to sports.
Sports and military preparedness, and American patriotism have been mostly
(04:05):
linked ever since. The connections between sports and the Star
Spangled Banner were strengthened during this war as well, and
once again we turned to Baseballen World Series was between
the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox. Game one
was in Chicago, and the Red Sox star pitcher Babe
(04:26):
Ruth remember him, He threw a shutout for the win.
But the game is remembered for the middle of the
seventh inning when the Cubs stadium band played an impromptu
rendition of the Star Spangled Banner and the players turned
and took off their caps and faced the music. The
crowd sang the words and then roared as one when
it was over. They sang the Star Spangled Banner as
(04:50):
a sign of American resolved during a time of international crisis,
and the performance was repeated at every game of the
World Series. But then the war ended and the playing
of the Star Spangled Banner at baseball game that went away,
So you know, it was not until nineteen thirty one
that the StarSpangled banner was made the official national anthem
(05:14):
of the United States. This was by an Act of Congress.
And then a decade later comes World War Two, and
this is when the new official anthem, the Star Spangled banner.
This is when it became a permanent presence at American
sporting events. During World War Two, all Major League teams
opened their games with the national anthem, and this continued
(05:35):
throughout the war, and then it continued after the war
because now the United States was in another war, the
Cold War with the Soviet Union, and the United States
has more or less been at war since December seven,
ninety one. World War two, the Cold War, the War
(05:55):
on Terror, and so since World War Two, the national
anthem has been played before virtually every professional baseball, football, basketball,
and hockey contest in this country, college and high school
athletic competitions as well. It's played because of the long
standing links between sports and militarism in our country. I
(06:16):
think back to our discussion of early college football being
seen as the moral equivalent of war. It's played because
sporting arenas are our great civic gathering spaces where Americans
congregate in times of peace and trouble. I'll say more
about this later, and it's played because that's just how
we've done it for so long since World War Two,
(06:37):
and to stop now could be perceived as being anti American,
and no team or sports league wants to be perceived
as that. There's another moment, another war, and another sporting
event that I think needs to be mentioned here. In January,
the United States was preparing for battle against Iraq. This
(07:01):
was in response to the Iraqi army occupying Kuwait and
of course the threat that posed to American access to
oil reserves in the Middle East. In January, the US
military began pounding Baghdad by air. That this began what's
known as the First Golf War, and ten days after
(07:21):
that air offensive began as the US was preparing for
a land invasion of Iraq. Super Bowl five was played
in Tampa, Florida, between the New York Giants and the
Buffalo Bills, and there was talk of postponing the game.
You know, we're sports appropriate at a time like this.
We'll talk more about this idea of pausing sports in
(07:41):
just a second. The NFL Commissioner pol tag Leaboo. He
reasoned that this game was exactly what the country needed
at the time. This game could be part of the
larger war effort. And that's what happened the NFL, ABC Television,
and the White House. They turned the Super Bowl into
what one columnists called a five hour infomercial for war.
(08:07):
There were videos of soldiers in the Middle East playing
football and then watching the game. There were thunderous military
flyovers above the Tampa stadium, the exact same types of
planes that were at that very moment dropping bombs on Baghdad.
Whitney Houston saying a rousing version of the StarSpangled banner,
(08:27):
a version so popular it became a top ten pop
hit that winner. And instead of showing the Glitzies Super
Bowl halftime show, Sorry, New Kids on the Block, ABC
aired a halftime speech in which the President, George H. W. Bush,
He addressed the nation, updated Americans on the military situation,
(08:48):
and he called the Gulf War and I kid you,
not my Super Bowl. The links between sports and patriotism
and militarism were cemented even further, and then came September eleven,
after the break, Mike Piazza crushes a towering home run
(09:12):
in New York and the twelve year old Mike Coscarelli
go bananas. Those who are old enough remember it like
it was yesterday. You know what happened. Al Qaeda operatives
(09:33):
hijacked four airplanes. They flew two of them into the
World Trade Center the twin towers. Office workers scampered out
of these buildings. Police officers and firefighters rushed in to
rescue people, but then the heat from the fire caused
the steel structure of the towers to melt and then collapse.
(09:53):
This was the worst day in American history, maybe only
Pearl Harbor Day in compares. Over three thousand Americans were killed.
And it always feels a little silly to me to
relate this moment to sports. But that's my task today,
although I should say that's actually how people thought of
(10:14):
it back then. Let's not talk about sports. Who cares
about sports at a time like this, and so all
sports stopped. Let's talk right now about sports stopping. When
has that happened in American history? The template for what
(10:35):
to do in a time of crisis was set. I
think back on Pearl Harbor Day, December seven. The attack
was on a Sunday morning, and NFL games kicked off
just a few hours later. Football did not stop, But
if you remember what I said in our lecture about
the NFL, pro football was a minor sport back then.
(10:55):
This just did not cause much conversation. The more significant
moment came one month later, in January of two, when
Kenne saw Mountain Landis, the commissioner of Major League Baseball.
He wrote a letter to the American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Major League Baseball was getting ready to sign contracts and
(11:15):
plan for spring training for the season, and Landis wanted
to know should baseball go on? Should it continue? During
the war? Now? It must have killed Landis to defer
to Roosevelt. Landis was as conservative as they came, and
he thought that Roosevelt and his New Deal policies were
leading the nation to socialism and ruined. But he knew
(11:38):
he had to get the president's blessing, which he got.
Roosevelt wrote back and said he thought baseball should continue,
and his response to Landis is known as the green
Light Letter. Roosevelt reasoned that not only was baseball an
important part of the American economy, but in this time
of national trauma. People were going to need diversions and
(12:02):
baseball could provide that. And I think this set the standard,
that the green Light letters set the tone. Because sports
are such a fundamental aspect of American life, they need
to continue. Twenty years later, on November the President of
(12:22):
the United States, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
That was a Friday. Two days later, with the nation
still reeling in shock, the NFL insisted upon a full
slate of games. The NFL commissioner, Pete Roselle, he did
not cancel games. He said that as a football fan,
(12:42):
Kennedy would have wanted the games to go on. Now.
There was solemnity at these NFL games, there was remembrance
for the fallen president, but the decision to play so
soon after Kennedy's death is considered one of the great
missteps in NFL history, and the commissioner himself, Pete Roselle,
he said at the end of his career that it
(13:03):
was his biggest regret. There were far too many assassinations
in the nineteen sixties. Five years later, Martin Luther King Jr.
Was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee, April fourth, night.
Major League Baseball was scheduled to start their season on
April nine, but that was the same day of King's
(13:24):
funeral in Atlanta. There were calls to pause sports and
postpone opening day out of respect for King. But another
consideration was that American cities were burning in response to
the murder of doctor King. Many American inner cities exploded
in anger. How safe would it be to host of
baseball game? And there was another factor. Listen to this.
(13:49):
Almost one third of all Major League players in nineteen
sixty eight they were members of the National Guard. Baseball
team owners got their players positions in the National Guard
so they would not lose their players to the draft
for the Vietnam War, and the National Guard was patrolling
the streets of American cities trying to stop looting and arson.
(14:10):
The baseball players were busy, so opening day was postponed
for a couple of days. Sports stopped. Just two months later,
Robert Kennedy was running for the Democratic nomination for president
and he was assassinated in Los Angeles. Bobby Kennedy always
(14:30):
had one eye on the sports world, and he had
strong ties with many American athletes. You know in the
speech that he gave right before he was shot. He
congratulated the Los Angeles Dodgers picture Don Drysdale on pitching
a shutout that evening. As he walked off the stage,
he was shot by Sir Hans sur Hunt, and it
was two athletes, the Olympic tocathlete Rayford Johnson and the
(14:54):
NFL star Rosie Greer who tackled and disarmed the assassin.
This time, there would be no league wide stoppage of play.
The commissioner of Major League Baseball now a guy named
William Eckert. He announced that it would be left to
individual teams to decide whether or not to play, but
this caused confusion and an acrimony. Robert Kennedy's funeral was
(15:20):
on June eight. The New York Mets were scheduled to
play in San Francisco against the Giants that day. And remember,
Bobby Kennedy was not just the presidential candidate, he was
a senator from New York. And the New York Mets
players they voted not to play, but the Giants objected.
Their owners said, if the Mets do not play, we
(15:40):
will gladly accept the forfeit. The commissioner eventually stepped in
and had the game postponed. I don't want to turn
this into a laundry list of moments, though I actually
do find all these stories very interesting. But there is
just one more moment to consider before we get to
September eleven. On March the President of the United States,
(16:03):
Ronald Reagan, was in Washington, d C. Secret servicemen rushed
him to the hospital for emergency surgery, and the President's
fate that day was uncertain. There were two big cultural
events scheduled for that night, the Academy Awards in Los
Angeles and the n c A A championship basketball game
(16:24):
in Philadelphia. The Academy Awards were postponed for a day,
and I suppose there was no debate, as not only
had the president been shot, but Reagan had been the
governor of California and the president of the Hollywood Screen
Actors Guild. The n c A title game that was
between the Universities of Indiana and North Carolina, and there's
(16:47):
a famous story that the two coaches, Bobby Knight and
Dean Smith, that they met in a broom closet right
before the game was scheduled to start to discuss whether
or not to play, but the decision was not actually there's,
It was up to the n c a A, and
just twenty seven minutes before tip off, they got the
word that Reagan was out of surgery and stable. So
(17:09):
the game was played that evening, and sort of shockingly,
the third place consolation game between l s U and
Virginia was also played that day, and it was played
before the final while Ronald Reagan's prognosis was still unknown.
Was the last year that the n c a A
(17:30):
played a third place consolation game at the Final four,
and part of the reason for terminating that game was
what many considered the mccobbre spectacle of college athletes playing
basketball while the president of the United States was being
operated on. We will talk next time about when sports
stopped due to COVID and then again after the shooting
(17:52):
of Jacob Blake. But let's turn to September eleven to
two thou and one September eleven happened on a Tuesday.
I suppose it's possible that we as a nation could
have wrapped our heads around a NFL football five days
later as a grasp at normalcy. And I have read
that the NFL owners did not want to postpone the
(18:13):
games that weekend, But first of all, there were no flights.
All airplanes were grounded for a week. No one could
travel by air. Would the NFL owners really have asked
for an exception to play football? But more than this,
as I suggested, earlier sports stopped because they seemed totally irrelevant.
What was football or a baseball game compared to this attack.
(18:36):
The NFL did postpone their games that weekend. Those games
were moved to the end of their season. Major League
Baseball went on hiatus for a week. Most high school
football games, almost all college football games were canceled that weekend.
But then eventually the sports came back. I mean, life
does go on after all, and I think it's interesting
(18:59):
and it makes perfect sense, really, how sporting arenas were
the prime mary public spaces in which Americans grappled with
what had just happened. Where else in American life do
fifty thousand or eighty thousand people come together? The answer
unequivocally is nowhere. This is one of the great powers
(19:21):
of sports in this nation. And this was the power
of sports. In the aftermath of September eleven, sporting arenas
were more than ever the great American spaces, Baseball resumed first,
and the focus of the nation's grief was on New York.
So there was an outpouring of love and sympathy for
(19:42):
New Yorkers in Pittsburgh fans where I love New York Pins,
and they donated thousands of dollars for relief efforts. At
Fenway Park in Boston, the crowd spontaneously started singing Frank
Sinatra's New York, New York. They hate the New York
Yankees in Boston, but such was the moment. The first
(20:05):
professional sporting event to occur in New York City after
the attacks. It took place ten days after nine eleven
on September twenty one, when the Atlanta Braves visited the
New York Mets, and just a few miles away, smoke
was still rising from the smoldering fires beneath the rubble
that had been the World Trade Center, and the Mets
(20:25):
players they wore NYP D and f D n Y
hats in honor of the police officers and the firefighters
who had rushed into those buildings and been killed in
the collapse, and they wore those hats the rest of
the season. In the bottom of the eighth inning of
this game, down one run, Mike Piazza hit a booming
home run to put the Mets in the league, and
(20:47):
the stands were pulsating, fans hugging and shouting. For the
first time in ten days, New Yorkers had something to
cheer about ten days of anguish. It just poured out.
I was not there, but even watching it on television,
you could just feel the release. You know, I know
(21:09):
it's just a baseball game, but it was definitely a
moment of catharsis. Football came back the next weekend, and
what went on in football stadiums was different than what
went on in baseball parks. And in baseball parks, I
think the general sentiment was healing and togetherness. But football,
(21:30):
as you know, it's the great American militaristic sport, and
so it's not surprising that football stadiums were spaces where
one saw displays of impending militarism, marching soldiers and thundering
jets flying overhead. This was what was coming al Qaeda's way, revenge.
(21:53):
And then in October came a presidential first pitch. It
seemed fitting that the New York Yankees, the team that
we're in many ways is the symbol of American professionals sports.
They were in the World Series one month later against
the Arizona Diamondbacks and the two thousand and one World
Series that opened in Arizona. So Game three was the
(22:15):
first game in New York and President George W. Bush
throughout the first pitch. New York City was on high alert.
The Attorney General had said there was credible evidence of
another attack coming our away. Police officers were assigned to
the game. There were metal detectors and bombs sniffing dogs.
(22:36):
The Secret Service put snipers on the roof of the stadium.
There was a Secret serviceman disguised as an umpire on
the field. And there's a very good story about the
lead up to this first pitch. President Bush was down
under the seats warming up as a pretty serious baseball guy.
He was trying to get used to the bulletproof vest
(22:56):
he was wearing under his jacket. And the Yankee shortstop
Derek Jeter, he walked up and he asked the President
if he was going to throw from the front of
them own or on the mound, and the President said
he thought he'd throw from the front of the mound,
and Jeter said, I wouldn't do that, Mr President. This
is Yankee Stadium. You'll get booed. And so Bush said,
(23:18):
all right, I'll throw from the mound. Then Jeter nodded
and walked off, but then at the last minute turned
back and said, and you better not bounce it. Wow,
talk about pressure. Well, the president was introduced, he walked
to the mound and he calmly threw it right down
the middle, and the crowd erupted and then burst into
(23:41):
the chant Usa Usa. And I do realize I'm overstating
things a bit, but this felt like a pretty big moment.
It was a declaration that life goes on. We will
keep playing baseball in this country. It was another presidential
green light letter. And as ridiculous as this sounds, and
(24:04):
it's sounds pretty ridiculous, I know, but at the time,
the accuracy of the pitch somehow felt important. Maybe it
was the fact that the president was cool and composed
enough to throw a strike, or maybe it was just
that he didn't embarrass himself at a time when national
emotions were still very fragile. Anyway, it's silly now, but
(24:25):
at the time um, And I'll be honest, I did
not root for George W. Bush often, not in elections
at least, but I was definitely rooting for him that night. Okay,
I have one last quick but I think significant story
and this will wrap up what we're talking about right
now and point to our topic next time. There was
(24:47):
no American athlete who received more praise and publicity in
the post September eleventh environment than the NFL player Pat Tillman.
Pat Tilman was a safety for the Arizona Cardinals, but
after the attacks, he quit the NFL and he gave
up his multimillion dollar contract to go in the Army.
And the Army loved Pat Tilman. I mean, Tilman was
(25:09):
the poster boy for military recruitment. Pat Tilman gave up
everything for his country, so can you. Pat Tilman was
an Army ranger and he was sent to Afghanistan and
he was killed in two thousand and four. And it
turns out that even though the Pentagon knew that Tilman
(25:29):
had accidentally been killed by friendly fire by an American
soldier who mistook him for the enemy, they fabricated a
story that he had been killed by enemy combatants. I
really don't know why they made that story up. Some
Wise I actually understand, But but but why this one?
Does it matter how he was killed? Does it somehow
(25:50):
cheap in his service? I don't think so. But the
Pentagon lied, and for critics of the continuing wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, they saw this as evidence that the
American government was just not being honest to its isn's
about these wars abroad. But here's how I want to
relate this to the next time. Our last lecture. Let's
(26:11):
forget the controversy about Pat Tillman's death. Let's focus on
his service. The NFL was very, very proud that one
of its players traded in his football uniform for a
military uniform. Pat Tillman's enlistment. It helped further solidify the
idea that football was preparation for war. It further the
(26:32):
idea that football players were American warriors. It furthered the
idea that the football stadium was a hyper patriotic space.
And this is going to be one of the reasons
that the outcry was so loud when another NFL player,
Colin Kaepernick, used the football stadium to critique the American system.
(26:55):
That's all for now, next time. On the final episode
of The Untold History of Sports in America, presented by
One Day University, Shut Up and Dribble School of Humans,
Oh, lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world
history examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome,
(00:26):
and we're back on the unsold history of sports in America.
I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Today we look at the
world of sports and times of American tragedies, with a
heavy emphasis on the events surrounding the aftermath of September eleven,
two thousand and one. When a president gets shot or
there's a major terrorist attack. Do sports still have significance
(00:47):
in the national conscious? What do you think, Matt. One
of our topics in this course has been the story
of sports as part of the patriotic pageantry in American history.
You know, certainly we have discussed the idea of playing
sports this is a patriotic virtue, and I will briefly
revisit that idea today. And of course we have discussed
(01:10):
Olympic sports and the celebration of American athletes. Today I
want to explore the idea of American sporting arenas as
patriotic spaces. You know, when did that idea and those
connections emerge, When, for example, did we start singing the
Star Spangled banner at sporting events. I'll tell you what
we know in just a second, and I want to
(01:32):
explore American sports and sporting arenas in times of national
trauma and crisis. We will explore a few different moments,
but we will work our way towards September eleventh, two
thousand and one. That was the moment when the links
between sports and patriotism and militarism were solidified even more
(01:52):
in the American mind. And then, finally, part of what
I'm doing today is setting up for our final lecture
when we explore the reaction to American athletes like the
football player Colin Kaepernick using the sporting arena as a
space for political protests. I think this lecture right now
will help us better understand the backlash to that moment. Okay, well,
(02:17):
one of the things that's so interesting in the current
debate over athletes using sporting arenas and the national anthem
to make political protests is we just assume that the
national anthem should be played at sporting events. There's almost
no other place in American life where we do this.
When I teach my courses in a classroom, there's no anthem,
(02:38):
go to the movies, to play the opera, a rock concert, whatever,
there's no anthem. So why sporting events? When did the
tradition of playing patriotic songs at sporting events begin. It's
a good question, I'm glad I asked it. Sports historians
are trying to figure this out precisely. And here's what
(02:58):
we know. The earliest known playing of the Star Spangled
banner at a sporting event it came out of baseball game.
It was played at the opening of the Union Grounds
ballpark in Brooklyn in May of eighteen sixty two. In
eighteen sixty two, this was during the Civil War, and
the name of the park, the Union Grounds, was itself
(03:19):
linked to the war. Union referred to the reason that
the Northern States were fighting the war to preserve the Union,
and so the Star Spangled Banner was played as a
statement of exactly that Unionism. Let's fast forward to World
War One. As a reminder, I said in an earlier
lecture that no war had a greater impact on sports
(03:40):
in the United States than World War One. In the
early twentieth century, sports were becoming a part of everyday
life in the US, and then comes the Great War
and physical educators assured Americans that we were ready because
we're a nation of athletes, and after the war, they
claimed that the American victory could be attributed to sports.
Sports and military preparedness, and American patriotism have been mostly
(04:05):
linked ever since. The connections between sports and the Star
Spangled Banner were strengthened during this war as well, and
once again we turned to Baseballen World Series was between
the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox. Game one
was in Chicago, and the Red Sox star pitcher Babe
(04:26):
Ruth remember him, He threw a shutout for the win.
But the game is remembered for the middle of the
seventh inning when the Cubs stadium band played an impromptu
rendition of the Star Spangled Banner and the players turned
and took off their caps and faced the music. The
crowd sang the words and then roared as one when
it was over. They sang the Star Spangled Banner as
(04:50):
a sign of American resolved during a time of international crisis,
and the performance was repeated at every game of the
World Series. But then the war ended and the playing
of the Star Spangled Banner at baseball game that went away,
So you know, it was not until nineteen thirty one
that the StarSpangled banner was made the official national anthem
(05:14):
of the United States. This was by an Act of Congress.
And then a decade later comes World War Two, and
this is when the new official anthem, the Star Spangled banner.
This is when it became a permanent presence at American
sporting events. During World War Two, all Major League teams
opened their games with the national anthem, and this continued
(05:35):
throughout the war, and then it continued after the war
because now the United States was in another war, the
Cold War with the Soviet Union, and the United States
has more or less been at war since December seven,
ninety one. World War two, the Cold War, the War
(05:55):
on Terror, and so since World War Two, the national
anthem has been played before virtually every professional baseball, football, basketball,
and hockey contest in this country, college and high school
athletic competitions as well. It's played because of the long
standing links between sports and militarism in our country. I
(06:16):
think back to our discussion of early college football being
seen as the moral equivalent of war. It's played because
sporting arenas are our great civic gathering spaces where Americans
congregate in times of peace and trouble. I'll say more
about this later, and it's played because that's just how
we've done it for so long since World War Two,
(06:37):
and to stop now could be perceived as being anti American,
and no team or sports league wants to be perceived
as that. There's another moment, another war, and another sporting
event that I think needs to be mentioned here. In January,
the United States was preparing for battle against Iraq. This
(07:01):
was in response to the Iraqi army occupying Kuwait and
of course the threat that posed to American access to
oil reserves in the Middle East. In January, the US
military began pounding Baghdad by air. That this began what's
known as the First Golf War, and ten days after
(07:21):
that air offensive began as the US was preparing for
a land invasion of Iraq. Super Bowl five was played
in Tampa, Florida, between the New York Giants and the
Buffalo Bills, and there was talk of postponing the game.
You know, we're sports appropriate at a time like this.
We'll talk more about this idea of pausing sports in
(07:41):
just a second. The NFL Commissioner pol tag Leaboo. He
reasoned that this game was exactly what the country needed
at the time. This game could be part of the
larger war effort. And that's what happened the NFL, ABC Television,
and the White House. They turned the Super Bowl into
what one columnists called a five hour infomercial for war.
(08:07):
There were videos of soldiers in the Middle East playing
football and then watching the game. There were thunderous military
flyovers above the Tampa stadium, the exact same types of
planes that were at that very moment dropping bombs on Baghdad.
Whitney Houston saying a rousing version of the StarSpangled banner,
(08:27):
a version so popular it became a top ten pop
hit that winner. And instead of showing the Glitzies Super
Bowl halftime show, Sorry, New Kids on the Block, ABC
aired a halftime speech in which the President, George H. W. Bush,
He addressed the nation, updated Americans on the military situation,
(08:48):
and he called the Gulf War and I kid you,
not my Super Bowl. The links between sports and patriotism
and militarism were cemented even further, and then came September eleven,
after the break, Mike Piazza crushes a towering home run
(09:12):
in New York and the twelve year old Mike Coscarelli
go bananas. Those who are old enough remember it like
it was yesterday. You know what happened. Al Qaeda operatives
(09:33):
hijacked four airplanes. They flew two of them into the
World Trade Center the twin towers. Office workers scampered out
of these buildings. Police officers and firefighters rushed in to
rescue people, but then the heat from the fire caused
the steel structure of the towers to melt and then collapse.
(09:53):
This was the worst day in American history, maybe only
Pearl Harbor Day in compares. Over three thousand Americans were killed.
And it always feels a little silly to me to
relate this moment to sports. But that's my task today,
although I should say that's actually how people thought of
(10:14):
it back then. Let's not talk about sports. Who cares
about sports at a time like this, and so all
sports stopped. Let's talk right now about sports stopping. When
has that happened in American history? The template for what
(10:35):
to do in a time of crisis was set. I
think back on Pearl Harbor Day, December seven. The attack
was on a Sunday morning, and NFL games kicked off
just a few hours later. Football did not stop, But
if you remember what I said in our lecture about
the NFL, pro football was a minor sport back then.
(10:55):
This just did not cause much conversation. The more significant
moment came one month later, in January of two, when
Kenne saw Mountain Landis, the commissioner of Major League Baseball.
He wrote a letter to the American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Major League Baseball was getting ready to sign contracts and
(11:15):
plan for spring training for the season, and Landis wanted
to know should baseball go on? Should it continue? During
the war? Now? It must have killed Landis to defer
to Roosevelt. Landis was as conservative as they came, and
he thought that Roosevelt and his New Deal policies were
leading the nation to socialism and ruined. But he knew
(11:38):
he had to get the president's blessing, which he got.
Roosevelt wrote back and said he thought baseball should continue,
and his response to Landis is known as the green
Light Letter. Roosevelt reasoned that not only was baseball an
important part of the American economy, but in this time
of national trauma. People were going to need diversions and
(12:02):
baseball could provide that. And I think this set the standard,
that the green Light letters set the tone. Because sports
are such a fundamental aspect of American life, they need
to continue. Twenty years later, on November the President of
(12:22):
the United States, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
That was a Friday. Two days later, with the nation
still reeling in shock, the NFL insisted upon a full
slate of games. The NFL commissioner, Pete Roselle, he did
not cancel games. He said that as a football fan,
(12:42):
Kennedy would have wanted the games to go on. Now.
There was solemnity at these NFL games, there was remembrance
for the fallen president, but the decision to play so
soon after Kennedy's death is considered one of the great
missteps in NFL history, and the commissioner himself, Pete Roselle,
he said at the end of his career that it
(13:03):
was his biggest regret. There were far too many assassinations
in the nineteen sixties. Five years later, Martin Luther King Jr.
Was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee, April fourth, night.
Major League Baseball was scheduled to start their season on
April nine, but that was the same day of King's
(13:24):
funeral in Atlanta. There were calls to pause sports and
postpone opening day out of respect for King. But another
consideration was that American cities were burning in response to
the murder of doctor King. Many American inner cities exploded
in anger. How safe would it be to host of
baseball game? And there was another factor. Listen to this.
(13:49):
Almost one third of all Major League players in nineteen
sixty eight they were members of the National Guard. Baseball
team owners got their players positions in the National Guard
so they would not lose their players to the draft
for the Vietnam War, and the National Guard was patrolling
the streets of American cities trying to stop looting and arson.
(14:10):
The baseball players were busy, so opening day was postponed
for a couple of days. Sports stopped. Just two months later,
Robert Kennedy was running for the Democratic nomination for president
and he was assassinated in Los Angeles. Bobby Kennedy always
(14:30):
had one eye on the sports world, and he had
strong ties with many American athletes. You know in the
speech that he gave right before he was shot. He
congratulated the Los Angeles Dodgers picture Don Drysdale on pitching
a shutout that evening. As he walked off the stage,
he was shot by Sir Hans sur Hunt, and it
was two athletes, the Olympic tocathlete Rayford Johnson and the
(14:54):
NFL star Rosie Greer who tackled and disarmed the assassin.
This time, there would be no league wide stoppage of play.
The commissioner of Major League Baseball now a guy named
William Eckert. He announced that it would be left to
individual teams to decide whether or not to play, but
this caused confusion and an acrimony. Robert Kennedy's funeral was
(15:20):
on June eight. The New York Mets were scheduled to
play in San Francisco against the Giants that day. And remember,
Bobby Kennedy was not just the presidential candidate, he was
a senator from New York. And the New York Mets
players they voted not to play, but the Giants objected.
Their owners said, if the Mets do not play, we
(15:40):
will gladly accept the forfeit. The commissioner eventually stepped in
and had the game postponed. I don't want to turn
this into a laundry list of moments, though I actually
do find all these stories very interesting. But there is
just one more moment to consider before we get to
September eleven. On March the President of the United States,
(16:03):
Ronald Reagan, was in Washington, d C. Secret servicemen rushed
him to the hospital for emergency surgery, and the President's
fate that day was uncertain. There were two big cultural
events scheduled for that night, the Academy Awards in Los
Angeles and the n c A A championship basketball game
(16:24):
in Philadelphia. The Academy Awards were postponed for a day,
and I suppose there was no debate, as not only
had the president been shot, but Reagan had been the
governor of California and the president of the Hollywood Screen
Actors Guild. The n c A title game that was
between the Universities of Indiana and North Carolina, and there's
(16:47):
a famous story that the two coaches, Bobby Knight and
Dean Smith, that they met in a broom closet right
before the game was scheduled to start to discuss whether
or not to play, but the decision was not actually there's,
It was up to the n c a A, and
just twenty seven minutes before tip off, they got the
word that Reagan was out of surgery and stable. So
(17:09):
the game was played that evening, and sort of shockingly,
the third place consolation game between l s U and
Virginia was also played that day, and it was played
before the final while Ronald Reagan's prognosis was still unknown.
Was the last year that the n c a A
(17:30):
played a third place consolation game at the Final four,
and part of the reason for terminating that game was
what many considered the mccobbre spectacle of college athletes playing
basketball while the president of the United States was being
operated on. We will talk next time about when sports
stopped due to COVID and then again after the shooting
(17:52):
of Jacob Blake. But let's turn to September eleven to
two thou and one September eleven happened on a Tuesday.
I suppose it's possible that we as a nation could
have wrapped our heads around a NFL football five days
later as a grasp at normalcy. And I have read
that the NFL owners did not want to postpone the
(18:13):
games that weekend, But first of all, there were no flights.
All airplanes were grounded for a week. No one could
travel by air. Would the NFL owners really have asked
for an exception to play football? But more than this,
as I suggested, earlier sports stopped because they seemed totally irrelevant.
What was football or a baseball game compared to this attack.
(18:36):
The NFL did postpone their games that weekend. Those games
were moved to the end of their season. Major League
Baseball went on hiatus for a week. Most high school
football games, almost all college football games were canceled that weekend.
But then eventually the sports came back. I mean, life
does go on after all, and I think it's interesting
(18:59):
and it makes perfect sense, really, how sporting arenas were
the prime mary public spaces in which Americans grappled with
what had just happened. Where else in American life do
fifty thousand or eighty thousand people come together? The answer
unequivocally is nowhere. This is one of the great powers
(19:21):
of sports in this nation. And this was the power
of sports. In the aftermath of September eleven, sporting arenas
were more than ever the great American spaces, Baseball resumed first,
and the focus of the nation's grief was on New York.
So there was an outpouring of love and sympathy for
(19:42):
New Yorkers in Pittsburgh fans where I love New York Pins,
and they donated thousands of dollars for relief efforts. At
Fenway Park in Boston, the crowd spontaneously started singing Frank
Sinatra's New York, New York. They hate the New York
Yankees in Boston, but such was the moment. The first
(20:05):
professional sporting event to occur in New York City after
the attacks. It took place ten days after nine eleven
on September twenty one, when the Atlanta Braves visited the
New York Mets, and just a few miles away, smoke
was still rising from the smoldering fires beneath the rubble
that had been the World Trade Center, and the Mets
(20:25):
players they wore NYP D and f D n Y
hats in honor of the police officers and the firefighters
who had rushed into those buildings and been killed in
the collapse, and they wore those hats the rest of
the season. In the bottom of the eighth inning of
this game, down one run, Mike Piazza hit a booming
home run to put the Mets in the league, and
(20:47):
the stands were pulsating, fans hugging and shouting. For the
first time in ten days, New Yorkers had something to
cheer about ten days of anguish. It just poured out.
I was not there, but even watching it on television,
you could just feel the release. You know, I know
(21:09):
it's just a baseball game, but it was definitely a
moment of catharsis. Football came back the next weekend, and
what went on in football stadiums was different than what
went on in baseball parks. And in baseball parks, I
think the general sentiment was healing and togetherness. But football,
(21:30):
as you know, it's the great American militaristic sport, and
so it's not surprising that football stadiums were spaces where
one saw displays of impending militarism, marching soldiers and thundering
jets flying overhead. This was what was coming al Qaeda's way, revenge.
(21:53):
And then in October came a presidential first pitch. It
seemed fitting that the New York Yankees, the team that
we're in many ways is the symbol of American professionals sports.
They were in the World Series one month later against
the Arizona Diamondbacks and the two thousand and one World
Series that opened in Arizona. So Game three was the
(22:15):
first game in New York and President George W. Bush
throughout the first pitch. New York City was on high alert.
The Attorney General had said there was credible evidence of
another attack coming our away. Police officers were assigned to
the game. There were metal detectors and bombs sniffing dogs.
(22:36):
The Secret Service put snipers on the roof of the stadium.
There was a Secret serviceman disguised as an umpire on
the field. And there's a very good story about the
lead up to this first pitch. President Bush was down
under the seats warming up as a pretty serious baseball guy.
He was trying to get used to the bulletproof vest
(22:56):
he was wearing under his jacket. And the Yankee shortstop
Derek Jeter, he walked up and he asked the President
if he was going to throw from the front of
them own or on the mound, and the President said
he thought he'd throw from the front of the mound,
and Jeter said, I wouldn't do that, Mr President. This
is Yankee Stadium. You'll get booed. And so Bush said,
(23:18):
all right, I'll throw from the mound. Then Jeter nodded
and walked off, but then at the last minute turned
back and said, and you better not bounce it. Wow,
talk about pressure. Well, the president was introduced, he walked
to the mound and he calmly threw it right down
the middle, and the crowd erupted and then burst into
(23:41):
the chant Usa Usa. And I do realize I'm overstating
things a bit, but this felt like a pretty big moment.
It was a declaration that life goes on. We will
keep playing baseball in this country. It was another presidential
green light letter. And as ridiculous as this sounds, and
(24:04):
it's sounds pretty ridiculous, I know, but at the time,
the accuracy of the pitch somehow felt important. Maybe it
was the fact that the president was cool and composed
enough to throw a strike, or maybe it was just
that he didn't embarrass himself at a time when national
emotions were still very fragile. Anyway, it's silly now, but
(24:25):
at the time um, And I'll be honest, I did
not root for George W. Bush often, not in elections
at least, but I was definitely rooting for him that night. Okay,
I have one last quick but I think significant story
and this will wrap up what we're talking about right
now and point to our topic next time. There was
(24:47):
no American athlete who received more praise and publicity in
the post September eleventh environment than the NFL player Pat Tillman.
Pat Tilman was a safety for the Arizona Cardinals, but
after the attacks, he quit the NFL and he gave
up his multimillion dollar contract to go in the Army.
And the Army loved Pat Tilman. I mean, Tilman was
(25:09):
the poster boy for military recruitment. Pat Tilman gave up
everything for his country, so can you. Pat Tilman was
an Army ranger and he was sent to Afghanistan and
he was killed in two thousand and four. And it
turns out that even though the Pentagon knew that Tilman
(25:29):
had accidentally been killed by friendly fire by an American
soldier who mistook him for the enemy, they fabricated a
story that he had been killed by enemy combatants. I
really don't know why they made that story up. Some
Wise I actually understand, But but but why this one?
Does it matter how he was killed? Does it somehow
(25:50):
cheap in his service? I don't think so. But the
Pentagon lied, and for critics of the continuing wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, they saw this as evidence that the
American government was just not being honest to its isn's
about these wars abroad. But here's how I want to
relate this to the next time. Our last lecture. Let's
(26:11):
forget the controversy about Pat Tillman's death. Let's focus on
his service. The NFL was very, very proud that one
of its players traded in his football uniform for a
military uniform. Pat Tillman's enlistment. It helped further solidify the
idea that football was preparation for war. It further the
(26:32):
idea that football players were American warriors. It furthered the
idea that the football stadium was a hyper patriotic space.
And this is going to be one of the reasons
that the outcry was so loud when another NFL player,
Colin Kaepernick, used the football stadium to critique the American system.
(26:55):
That's all for now, next time. On the final episode
of The Untold History of Sports in America, presented by
One Day University, Shut Up and Dribble School of Humans,
Host
Matthew Andrews
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