O Say Can You See?

[Arroyos]

O SAY CAN YOU SEE?

When he woke, he expected to see the blue cement walls of his jail cell. Instead, he heard music. It was familiar, but it wasn’t “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”—the only song he knew all the lyrics to—but rather something more somber. Slummings rubbed his eyes, shook his head, and listened to the rising notes and voices—hundreds of voices—singing “the bombs bursting in air.” 

He was up with a start and stood, alone, in a small room, but not a cell, this one had windows—well, one big window that looked out over … Slummings rubbed his eyes again. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The green grass of a baseball stadium.

He wasn’t in a jail cell, he realized, but in a ball park. A private room with a view. He’d been here once before, he remembered, just after …

“Holy mackerel,” he thought, “I’m in the owner’s box. In John Deere Stadium! My stadium!”

“… o’er the land of the freeeeee,” the voices rose in a plaintive cry—Gotta change the name of the stadium, he thought— “and the home … of the … brave,” voices descending to the somber notes of the final word.

Strange song, Slummings thought, for a national anthem. It doesn’t finish with a rising note, an uplifting chord, but with a downward slide of notes toward the comparatively quiet “brave.” Curious. Who chose this tune for the nation’s anthem? Then he remembered.

Congress made “The Star Spangled Banner” the country’s anthem forty years after the U.S. Navy made it their official song in 1889. The lyrics were written by slave-owner Francis Scott Key while he dined aboard a British gun ship as it bombarded Fort McHenry, outside Baltimore. Key was moved by the sight of the American flag still flying the next morning, so he composed a poem which was later set to music. The irony of it all, Slummings thought, that Key’s poem about a British attack on an American fort became the young nation’s theme song. A very strange choice.

Slummings counted off the ironies as he paced the rectangle of the Owner’s Box, high above the Dozer’s home park.

“One,” Slummings said aloud, “what the hell was Scott Key doing on a British ship? Why was he wining and dining with British officers while they shelled the American fort?”

“Two,” he said, turning ninety degrees along the glass window of the box, “what kind of country chooses a song about being shelled as its anthem?”

“And who the hell decided to set it to the tune of a British popular song?” he shouted out. “That’s three!”

He turned and paced away from the window view of the half-empty stadium, thinking before he spoke again. “Four, how does a slave owner who advocated shipping Negroes back to Africa become the poster boy for American patriotism?” 

“And finally,” Slummings said, having run out of ironies, “didn’t a single Congressman try to sing the song before making it the official anthem? Mother of Mickey Mantle, the damn thing’s unsingable!”

Slummings collapsed into one of the soft chairs in the middle of the Owner’s Box. He discovered a platter with tiny slices of cheese, tiny crackers and tiny pieces of vegetables on a tiny table between the chairs. Beneath the tiny table, small cans of beer and soda cooled in a tiny icebox. Ain’t nothing like this in jail, Slummings thought, and wondered if he had landed in the middle of that Small World ride in Disneyland. 

He swung the swivel chair around and looked out the windows. Stadium seats, green grass, red infield dirt and the sun setting behind the mountains to the west. Not Disneyland, just Yuma’s best view. He sighed.

“Fuck Francis Scott Key,” he muttered. “This is where I belong.”

A roar rose from the crowd. Slummings leapt out of the chair to see what was going on. Players were rounding the bases, the crowd was cheering, the scoreboard fired off a salvo of fireworks (thank you, Bill Veeck), and a big 2  was posted in the top of the first for the Bulldozers.

“Well, kiss my sweet bippy,” Slummings said loudly, “who taught Andrés Hernández to hit like that?”

For nearly a minute—the time it took Hernández to round the bases and swap high fives and chest bumps with his teammates—for nearly the entire 60 seconds, Slummings was happy. Then Perreault struck out and Crow flew out and the joy subsided to a dull buzz. The crowd quieted too. They recognized the familiar plot line developing in the first inning: the Dozers get an early lead, misleading loyal fans into dreaming of that rarest of commodities in the Sonoran Desert, a Yuma win, only to have hope and joy dashed by a parade of opponents dancing across home plate in the later innings.

Winning is a fickle mistress, Slummings thought. Better to marry defeat—something reliable, dependable, a wife you can come home to, a faith you can count on.

As he watched the Dinosaurs chisel away at the Yuma lead with a walk, a single and a sacrifice fly, Slummings realized that scoring runs the old fashioned way, Small Ball, took longer than the sudden strike of a home run. The happiness lasted longer too. The joy built base by base until it spilled over home plate. Five, ten, fifteen minutes might go by in a good rally. That was time enough to savor the sensation, to embrace the experience, to prolong the pleasure and relish the release—Ahhh!

Small Ball, Slummings realized, was good for the fans, fed their appetites and satisfied their cravings. Small Ball was sustainable. And in an Age of Sustainability, who was to deny that?

“That’s it!” Slummings announced to his empty Owner’s Box. “Fewer homers, more sac flies for Yuma. That’s our motto. Small Ball will save us!”

He wanted to tell someone, share his epiphany, give an order, get the ball rolling, so to speak, a new direction for Bulldozer recruitment. More hits, fewer homers. More running, less jogging around the sacks. More base stealing, more sign stealing, more hit and run, more hitting behind the runner, and—most importantly, most excitingly, most gloriously—more BUNTING!

“Yes!” Slummings shouted. “Give me a phone. Let ‘em hear about our new plan all the way down there in Charlotte Amalia. Teach the rookies to bunt! Stop swinging for the fences.”

Slummings spun around looking for someone to give an order to—but no one was there. He looked for a phone, but there was none. He grabbed the handles to the sliding windows, pushed one open, leaned out like
Harry Carey singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in Wrigley, and screamed to the fans, his fans, Dozer fans:

“In the beginning was Small Ball. And God saw that it was good!”

“Holy Cow!” someone shouted back. Fans in the rows just below the private boxes looked up at the madman leaning out and shouting, “Small Ball.” They shrugged at one another, then one spun his finger around his ear and they all laughed. 

But Slummings would not be daunted. He yelled, “Medic!” and people started running. Security sprinted toward the Owner’s Box, barking commands into their shoulder microphones as they lumbered up the steps. The stadium medical officer fielded their call and tossed it to the paramedics on call who jumped into an electric cart and headed for Slumming’s box. The stadium announcer, noticing a sudden rush of security and emergency personnel, asked that the game be delayed for a moment. And hundreds of fans turned to look up toward the Owner’s Box where an old man with white hair was still leaning out of the windows and shouting “Small Ball will save us!” while repeatedly flashing the Dozers’ sign for “bunt.”

When the first EMT burst through the door of the Owner’s Box, she found Slummings breathing deeply and smiling a smile as wide as the one Andrés Hernández had flashed at his teammates when he returned to the Dozer dugout after his first inning home run.

“Sir,” the EMT asked, “what’s happening?”

“I’m reinventing baseball,” Slummings said grandly.

“Wait,” the EMT said, “there’s no emergency?”

“Yes, an emergency in baseball,” Slummings said. “It’s dying. We need to save it. Small Ball,” Slummings said reverently, “Small Ball will save baseball.”

“What is it?” the second EMT said as he came panting into the Owner’s Box.

“False alarm,” the first EMT said, then repeated it to the Security Officers who leaned into the box. They, in turn, reported on their shoulder microphones to the various emergency staff throughout the stadium.

“False alarm,” the word went out. 

And the panic resided, the rushing about the stadium ceased, fans turned back to the field, and the game resumed. Three more homers were hit, six more runs were scored, five surprisingly by the Dozers themselves, who managed to win, 7-3, for only the second time in two weeks. Yuma fans remembered the victory—rare as a triple play—and the madman leaning out of the Owner’s Box.

But Taffy Slummings remembered more. “Give me a phone,” he said. And when one of the EMT’s handed over his cell phone, Slummings began a Small Ball Revolution in Yuma.

[Lions]

I'm not particularly patriotic... not even a full fledged US citizen, but I think the Star Spangled Banner is a great national anthem. It's unapologetically American. The tune isn't beautiful and refined the way a lot of other anthems are. It's raw, exploratory, and the challenge of singing it well results in some really awful renditions, but also some really amazing ones.

and a big 2  was posted in the top of the first for the Bulldozers.

Bottom of the first?

As for small ball... I think Slummings should try incorporating the Japanese baseball for Yuma home games!

[Arroyos]

I'm not particularly patriotic... not even a full fledged US citizen, but I think the Star Spangled Banner is a great national anthem. It's unapologetically American. The tune isn't beautiful and refined the way a lot of other anthems are. It's raw, exploratory, and the challenge of singing it well results in some really awful renditions, but also some really amazing ones.

That is the ultimate irony of the anthem: it was written by a slave owner while visiting a British ship that was shelling an American fort, and it was set to music by a British pop song writer. It's really a very British song, yet you and others can hear it as "unapologetically American." Weird.

As for amazing renditions, none in my mind is better than José Feliciano's version sung during the 1968 World Series. It outraged many folks and nearly ended Feliciano's music career. Yet it remains lovely and memorable and ... singable.

[Lions]

That is the ultimate irony of the anthem: it was written by a slave owner while visiting a British ship that was shelling an American fort, and it was set to music by a British pop song writer. It's really a very British song, yet you and others can hear it as "unapologetically American." Weird.

Stealing from others and claiming as your own, whether or not it's any good? Seems American to me.

[Arroyos]

That is the ultimate irony of the anthem: it was written by a slave owner while visiting a British ship that was shelling an American fort, and it was set to music by a British pop song writer. It's really a very British song, yet you and others can hear it as "unapologetically American." Weird.

Stealing from others and claiming as your own, whether or not it's any good? Seems American to me.