The Star Spangled Banner
In baseball it goes back, back, back.
THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER has been our national anthem only since 1931, but its ties to baseball go back, back, back … all the way to 1862. There appears to be no rule governing the playing or observance of the song at the ballpark … only custom. Here are a few background bits.
While the lyrics (to be sung to the tune of the warhorse drinking song “To Anacreon in Heaven”) were first published in broadside form, the first journal version was in The Analectic (November 1814), edited by Washington Irving. A copy came up at auction recently; I was an underbidder, alas.
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To demonstrate that our national anthem (like our national pastime) has its origins in England, now hear this:
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At the opening game in William Cammeyer’s Union Grounds park in Brooklyn, a former skating grounds refashioned for baseball, on May 15, 1862 — as the nation was divided by the Civil War — a band boomed out “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The first major-league Opening Day at which SSB was played took place in Philly on April 22, 1897.
These were the first opening day uses of the song, which did not become the national anthem until 1931.
The song was played at the seventh-inning break of the opening game of the 1918 World Series, when World War I was on everyone’s mind, but not until WWII was it played before every game. Playing the anthem before regular-season games was not universal in baseball till 1942 but some clubs had started the practice in 1941, before the U.S. entry into the War.
