Lincicome: Sometimes a song is just a song, even if it's the national anthem

Here is my national anthem story. I have many but this one always seems to bubble up when the topic becomes timely.

I was in the Notre Dame press box when a writer from the Pittsburgh Press was paged just as he stood for the obligatory refrain. The Press was the larger and better of the two Pittsburgh papers, which is only incidental to this story.

The writer went back to take his phone call as the question was being asked about oh, say can you see. He returned to his seat, silent and upset, not minding the protocol of the moment. While the rest of us stood quietly, he busily stuffed his stuff in his bag and was gone before the rockets red glare.

His newspaper had folded. He was suddenly superfluous. He had no job. A life dislocated during "The Star-Spangled Banner."

My point is, I guess, that our national song has different associations for different people.

Recently the manager of the San Francisco Giants, Gabe Kapler, eschewed the pregame courtesy customary for the anthem in order to protest "the direction of our country."

Anyone alert to the current series of gun deaths across the nation would have to agree that we can do better, can demand we do better, can believe we are better. Steve Kerr, the old Bull and present coach of NBA Warriors passionately spoke for the rest of us.

The coincidence that two of the loudest voices in sports protesting gun violence happen to be in San Francisco (not to mention kneeling 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick) has less to do with geography than with honest anger against senselessness.

Yet, how is it that frustration seems to always gather around our national anthem? Well, most of all, because it is there.

The anthem is played before any sporting event you can name. The reason for that has its own history, but clearly it has to do with associating patriotism with sports, when one has nothing to do with the other.

Any simple song will do to kick things off. I suggest Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," at least the first verse. Or no song at all. Play ball. That is really all that is needed. But it seems too late for that. The anthem has become the overture for the show to follow, to be used or abused without making a bit of difference.

Censure is built into how the anthem is treated. I am guilty of it. In the old Orange Bowl the artist of the day, a lone singer with a guitar, sang the anthem with his back to the American flag.

"What's the matter with him?" I groused. "Is he blind?"

As a matter of fact ...

If it is not too late, I would like to apologize to Tom Sullivan.

Major League Baseball has stood behind Kapler, unlike the NFL with Kaepernick, only the White Sox' Tony La Russa demurring a bit. Gun violence is wrong, he agreed, but dissing the national tune is no way to go about fixing the problem.

"You need to understand what the veterans think when they hear the anthem," La Russa said.

As it happens, I am a veteran, with honorable discharges from two services, the Ohio National Guard, and the U.S. Air Force. And this is what I think. It is OK with me.

Stand, don't stand, text or email, stay in the dugout, whatever the personal choice. Freedom is or it is not.

As a veteran I will tell you what annoys me. Camouflage. The phony, gimmicky pretend fatigues that are worn by millionaire athletes who have never served nor saved a soul. In arenas camo means marketing. In battle it means safety.

Sports can be sports, sports should be sports, without honor guards or flyovers or flags or forced deference.

Here is one more anthem story. This one from old Comiskey Park where I happened to be seated next to Bill Gleason, a Chicago press legend, who was busy with his scorebook.

This was early in the Sox' fondness for using "God Bless America," during the seventh inning, a kind of patriotic piling on. The first familiar notes and the voice of Kate Smith came and I rose. Gleason did not. I nudged him.

"I don't stand for show tunes," he said.

Sometimes a song is just a song.