Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Part II

As we mentioned earlier, we took the Bonzo family out to the ball game last Thursday evening.  A good time was had by all, although the early start to the season and the recently very odd weather in the Inquisition's home-away-from-home meant that it was a cold time as well.

Since we had in tow 5-year-old "Sweet Pea" Bonzo, we followed our usual practice of staying only through the 7th inning stretch, in order to allow "Sweet Pea" to enjoy the traditional singing of Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

How gravely disappointed we were!

Our first clue that something might possibly be amiss, or at least unusual, about the game was the complete halt in activity, and announcement of a "moment of silence," at eleven minutes past the hour of nine o'clock.  See it coming yet?  Yes, we had a "moment of silence" to commemmorate the heroes and victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington.

Now, we at the Boulder Inquisition love our country as much as the next Inquisitor, and are deeply grateful for the freedoms which permit us to rant freely in cyberspace.  Nevertheless, as our comments regarding Ted Rall's "Terror Widows" cartoon should make evident, we also believe in Getting Over It.  We thus accepted the 9:11 "moment of silence" as a necessary interruption -- especially considering that this was, after all, Opening Night.

But that was not to be the last, nor the most disturbing, deviation from Tradition that we would suffer that night.  For Lo! when the Stretch came, we were indeed invited to join together in song, but not to the winsome strains of Take Me Out to the Ball Game, oh no!

Instead, we were collectively subjected to a round of lip-synching along with Kate Smith's bellowing rendition of God Bless America.

This is wrong.  This is sick.  This is a blasphemous abandonment of a great and noble tradition.  This is beyond the pale of acceptable and bearable patriotic fervor.  Having already interrupted the quiet and steady routine of the game for the so-called "moment of silence," should we not have been permitted to return to normalcy?  Instead, we were subjected to a wrenching disappointment, not only on our own part, but on the part of our 5-year-old companion.  (And those of our gentle readers with 5-year-olds in their lives know how loud that disappointment can be.)  It was a horror not to be borne without protest.

Therefore I, Dr. Bonzo, by the Grace of God Grand Inquisitor of Boulder, hereby declare the substitution of God Bless America for Take Me Out to the Ball Game at the seventh inning stretch to be anathema:  as such, it is to be abhorred and condemned by all right-thinking people.  Anathema sit!

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