NYT: Orioles play "This Land is Your Land" each Friday

[earthtones]

The Baltimore Orioles have never been my favorite team, but they just went up a step or two in my book.

Side note: y'all know about the rarely-sung last verses that were part of "This Land is Your Land"? I love me some Woody Guthrie:

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

- - - - - - -

Orioles Deliver a Seventh-Inning Message: This Song Is Their Song

www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/sports/baseball/baltimore-orioles-woody-guthrie-this-land-is-your-land.html

BALTIMORE — In the middle of the seventh inning of the Baltimore Orioles’ game against the Arizona Diamondbacks two Friday nights ago, the public-address announcer asked the crowd at Camden Yards to stand and celebrate America’s diversity. Three singers then stood on the first-base dugout and did a rendition of “This Land Is Your Land,” the famous folk song written by Woody Guthrie.

By the time the end of the third verse arrived — “All around me a voice was sounding, this land was made for you and me” — fans had joined in.

In a tradition that dates to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, “God Bless America” is played in major league ballparks around the country, including in Baltimore, during the seventh-inning stretch of Sunday games. The song can also be heard during assorted holiday games, and the Yankees play the song during the seventh inning of every home game.

But Baltimore is the only major league franchise to regularly play “This Land Is Your Land,” which it does at Friday home games. And the song, long considered an anthem of the left because of its populist themes, is meant to be more than a Camden Yards singalong. It is a subtle, yet intentional, message from the Orioles’ management that at the intersection of sports and patriotism, one size does not have to fit all.

“‘God Bless America’ speaks to a lot of people,” said John Angelos, the Orioles’ chief operating officer and the son of the team’s owner, Peter Angelos. But, he added, “there is a strain of progressivism in American life, and if we can reflect it, I think that’s a good thing.”

The Orioles began occasionally playing Guthrie’s song in the 2015 season. This year, they made it a staple on Fridays, which means it was in place before San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick focused attention on a nationwide debate when he declined to stand for the national anthem before an N.F.L. exhibition game in August.

Kaepernick cited racial oppression as the reason for his action, which paved the way for symbolic gestures by other athletes, some who have knelt during the anthem, others who have linked arms while standing at attention and still others who have raised a clenched fist.

Set against all this is Guthrie’s song, which the Orioles, who finish the season at Yankee Stadium, will have a chance to play again this year only if the team makes it to the playoffs. Regardless, they plan to keep playing “This Land” next season. In the meantime, Angelos is keeping a close eye on all the ripple effects created by Kaepernick.

“I hope people in the sports industry are learning from what Colin Kaepernick is doing,” he said. “I hope we can learn that speaking out about your country is not un-American, that words like ‘un-American’ have no place.”

As for the criticism Kaepernick has faced, Angelos called it “disgusting.” “It reeks of McCarthyism,” he said.

The history of Guthrie’s tune is linked to “God Bless America,” which was written by Irving Berlin and then recorded by Kate Smith in 1938, when it became a hit at a time of uneasiness in the years leading up to World War II.

Guthrie, who had spent years traveling the country during the Great Depression, had Communist sympathies and a different, more defiant, vision of the United States than the one conveyed in “God Bless America.” As an answer to that song, he wrote “This Land Is Your Land” in 1940.

His original lyrics questioned the merits of private property and included lines that were never officially recorded: “By the relief office, I saw my people. As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if this land was made for you and me.” Through the years, the song was popularized by Guthrie’s son, Arlo, and others, including Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen.

John Shaw, the author of “This Land That I Love,” a book about the two songs, said the two songwriters had more in common than meets the eye. Although “God Bless America” has become associated with unvarnished patriotism, that was not Berlin’s intent. When the song was written, Shaw said, it was Berlin’s way of showing gratitude that he was no longer in Europe. “It’s a love letter written by an immigrant to his adopted country,” Shaw said.

As for Guthrie, Shaw noted that while the original lyrics were a sarcastic response to Berlin’s song, “This Land Is Your Land” evolved, too. “It became a love song to America, too,” Shaw said.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, major league teams began playing Berlin’s song as a show of patriotism. But Angelos also thought about how the Orioles could diversify the way they honored America. For instance, the team now has a program to honor community heroes at Friday, Saturday and Sunday home games.

The core of the idea was to celebrate various citizens, and not just members of the military, and pair each day with a different song (“America the Beautiful” is played on Saturdays). Last Friday, the community hero was a bus driver, Reneita Smith, who saved a group of elementary students from a burning school bus.

“People forget a lot of these stadiums are publicly funded buildings and, by law, they have to welcome people from all different walks of life,” Angelos said. “Sometimes sports can be narrowcast in the causes and groups focused on. Our idea is that everyone should be included; let’s not leave anyone out.”

That the Orioles are taking this approach is not all that surprising. Peter Angelos made his fortune representing workers in asbestos cases. He refused to sign replacement players during the strike by players in 1994 and 1995, and he helped arrange for the Orioles to play a home-and-home series with the Cuban national team in 1999 at a time when there was no active relationship between the countries.

During protests over the death of Freddie Gray, a black man killed while in the custody of the Baltimore police last year, John Angelos spoke publicly about needing to put the demonstrations within the context of longstanding racial inequality.

“This family, these owners, have always been on the side of the unions, of the people,” Orioles center fielder Adam Jones said in reference to the Angeloses. “The city means something to them.”

Still, for most Orioles fans at Camden Yards, “This Land” remains a song and not much more. Jones, who recently said that athlete protests over the national anthem had not spread to baseball because of a lack of racial diversity in the sport, said he was not conversant with the song’s political history.

Several fans, asked about the song’s meaning last week, also pleaded ignorance. “I doubt most of our guys know who Woody Guthrie is,” Manager Buck Showalter added.

For his part, John Angelos said it did not bother him that many fans and players may not know the song’s origins because it was only one aspect of the community heroes program.

“We can honor a veteran, but we can also honor a veteran who is against a particular war,” he said. “That diversity is what the song represents.”

[2doxies]

I love this song.

[OscarQ]

I'm a Yankees fan but live in DE so we typically get tix to see them play the Orioles since it's closer and cheaper. Next year I'm making sure we go on a Friday.

I remember the '94 strike and how they wouldn't use replacement players but I always associated it with Ripken's consecutive game streak.