Flags fly as baseball begins
Flags are flying throughout America as the baseball season debuts this week. Stadiums across the country (and in Canada) will be topped with pennants snapping in the wind. “The Star-Spangled Banner” will be sounded and sung.
That’s true now, and it was true a century ago in the major and minor leagues. In April 1914, the minor-league Portland Beavers in Oregon were welcomed by fans via a mammoth parade festooned with flags. The ceremonies included hoisting American flags atop local buildings as a signal.
“Whenever those flags go up,” a newspaper informed readers, “the opening day parade will take place.” Seeing the flags, the population rushed to the site of the parade and cheered on the local players.
As for the major leagues, John K. Tener, who was a former ballplayer, governor of Pennsylvania and president of the National League, declared: “Baseball, like the constitution, follows the flag.”
That was a popular way to express the growing international power of the United States. In other words, wherever America took its fleet, the U.S. was going to leave an impression through its national pastime as well as its laws. America’s victory in the Spanish-American War had expanded its reach to the Philippines.
An Ohio newspaper went into more detail in an article about how American influence inevitably included bringing the sport and other all-American elements, such as Old Glory, with it.
The article asserted that “there is no room for pessimism in regard to the progress made by the United States in raising the standard of life and thought in the Philippines. There is merely room for additional optimism. And the occasion is here – for baseball has secured a strong hold in the islands.”
Pondering the power of baseball, the article speculated that “if Mexico [then amid a revolution and in a squabble with the U.S. over Veracruz] could be persuaded to adopt baseball, our concern for the welfare” of that nation “might end. Let bats be substituted for firearms.”
In Aprils before and since 1914, U.S. flags and baseball pennants have fluttered side by side. As a New Orleans headline shouted a century ago, “Pennant races are under way,” while a Duluth journal declared, “Major leagues off on another pennant chase.”
The chase won’t end until October’s checkered flag.