Once a U.S. serviceman, always a patriot -- even in stadium press boxes and in front of the TV at home.
That'd how longtime Detroit sportswriter Jerry Green explains his reverence for "The Star Spangled Banner,' written 200 years old today.
"I served three years in the United States Navy. I am second-generation Navy," Green writes in a guest column for The Detroit News, where his byline was on articles and columns from 1963 to 2004. "I am stirred every time I sing along to 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' ”
I stand, put my hand over my heart and sing along. In my monotone.
That is when I’m live at the games.
My colleagues all know that and OK, I’m a bit eccentric.
What they don’t know is that when I’m home and TV actually shows the rendering of “The Star-Spangled Banner” instead of jumping to a big-bucks commercial, I stand up and sing along, too. Hand over heart. . . .
That is my ritual and I do it because I want to and because I am stirred every time I sing along to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Green, a Pulitzer Prize nominee who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2003, is an unapologetic purist about anthem performances.
I have stood and heard “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by famous celebrity singers — the late Whitney Houston at a Super Bowl, Robert Goulet at the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship in Maine. They didn’t quite know the words. I did.
I heard Jose Feliciano sing the first adulterated version of The National Anthem before Game 5 of the Tigers’ World Series at Tiger Stadium in 1968. He delivered the words with the lilting, pop stuff, falsetto that is so common nowadays. It was utter disrespect for our Anthem, for Americans who had served their country in the armed forces. For those of us who still care.
It was appalling
In addition to proudly describing his decades-long tradition, Green will lift his body and voice to uphold it on the song's bicentennial.
This Sunday — 200 years after the American flag withstood the British naval barrage at Fort McHenry in Baltimore on Sept. 14, 1814 — expectations are that I’ll tune into an array of games. I’ll stand, cover my heart and sing along again.
-- Alan Stamm
