Sports should prohibit singing of U.S. anthem

Amending the Constitution of the United States is a matter to be undertaken only for the most serious of reasons and only after the most extensive soul and mind searching imaginable. So let’s do it.

Having listened to yet another mutilated version of our poor, maligned national anthem prior to a sporting event, we need an amendment. The time has come to make the singing, playing, screeching, warbling, suffocating, mumbling performance of the Star Spangled Banner prior to sporting events a violation of the Constitution.

Violators will be subject to 60 years in solitary confinement with a CD player and one CD: Nancy and Frank Sinatra singing “Something Stupid.”

If you are caught violating the amendment twice, you will be given one more CD, Nancy Sinatra singing (or whatever it was she did) “These Boots Are Made For Walking.”

Please. “Artists” who are the best friends of groundskeepers, public relations directors, the team owner’s neighbor, the Zamboni driver, the chain-gang leader and Lord knows who else, show up at sporting venues to sing the anthem, hoping this will be their big break.

These “artists” then proceed to perform a song that is introduced as the national anthem but somehow the words are not those written by Francis Scott Key and the notes have magically been altered or lost. In the grand tradition of Robert Goulet, who transformed the anthem into the Star Bungled Banner before the Ali-Liston fight in Lewiston, our national song gets trashed repeatedly in the name of sports.

At an NHL game the other night our special guest performer mangled both the Canadian and U.S. anthems even though the words were flashed on a 9,000 square-foot scoreboard screen as he sang.

Enough. Amend the Constitution and end the agony.

In the same vein, on a more serious note, there is the matter of “God Bless America” being performed during the seventh-inning stretch of MLB games. This was started last September to honor and remember the victims of the horrors of September 11: a noble and worthy thought.

However, even family members of those lost on that day are begging for an end to the phoniness of what was an honorable deed. We lost fellow Americans in World Wars and national tragedies and we haven’t forgotten any of them. We don’t need MLB wrapping itself in the flag to know what to remember.

Some MLB clubs have reverted to “Take Me Out To the Ballgame” for the stretch. Those who have not need to get to it in a hurry.

Players hide in the dugouts of runways in those parks that still don’t get it. Players shake their heads that clubs so prolonged an honor that it has become an embarrassment.

Radio and television broadcasts of MLB games used to carry the tribute, but now try to get to the commercial before “God Bless America” begins. No one wants to seem unpatriotic, but enough already.

What’s unpatriotic is converting a meaningful tribute into self-aggrandizement. That’s just what MLB has done.

The framers of the Constitution understood. They separated church and state so one would not destroy the other. We need to do the same with sports and patriotism.

Ben Franklin didn’t go watch the Phils to gain insight on how to frame the First Amendment. We don’t need to go to a Sox game to know how to honor those lost in tragedy. Play ball and leave it at that.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and NBC sportscaster.