LITTLETON — With the flag of the United States waving proudly in center field, teenage baseball players held caps close to hearts and Heritage High School junior Kelli Searle sang the sweetest song we know, reminding us the real victory is before the game ever begins.
“It might sound cheesy, but I feel blessed to live in this country. It’s a country that has so many riches after overcoming great struggles,” Searle said Monday, upon finishing an emotional rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
It was a good day for baseball.
It was a great day to be an American.
When Heritage and Littleton high schools took the diamond, there were 76 men, women and children in the bleachers. All of them stood a little taller when the anthem was played.
From a scratchy recording piped over the loudspeakers in an old gym to pop star Christina Aguilera flubbing the lyrics as millions of Super Bowl witnesses cringe, “The Star- Spangled Banner” is botched so often that maybe the anthem has lost a little of its significance at sporting events.
Do I frequently shuffle my feet, impatiently waiting for the music to stop so we can get on with real action on the field? Guilty as charged.
But some days, for some reason born deep in the heart, you need to hear the words, and raise a voice to the sky. In those rare moments of unbridled national pride, the last line of the anthem is guaranteed to bring goose bumps.
May 2, 2011, when snow spit on the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, was one of those days.
“O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,” served not only as a notice to our enemies in the world, but as a reminder to our own people that an unbreakable spirit is what allows a great nation to endure.
In the hours after the United States ended its decade-long pursuit of Osama bin Laden and made the terrorist pay the ultimate price for the horror of 9/11, “The Star-Spangled Banner” became an anthem of raw emotion.
As the news spread Sunday night that the notorious leader of al-Qaeda had been killed in Pakistan by elite American troops, chants of “U-S-A!, U-S-A!” echoed off the walls of a major-league ballpark in Philadelphia. It sounded like payback. And it smelled like sweet revenge.
“So they have bin Laden’s body,” NFL quarterback Drew Brees declared to the world through the magic of Twitter. “Never thought we’d see the day. Figured he would be like (Adolf) Hitler and commit suicide or just disappear.”
Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 29 Chevy on NASCAR tracks, tweeted: “Finally that (expletive) bin Laden is dead!! Justice has been served!”
Here is a humble prayer that the death of bin Laden can bring a sense of closure to families who lost loved ones when the towers came crashing down in New York nearly a decade ago.
Here are sincere thanks for every military person who has served our country, sprinkled with tears for those men and women who sacrificed their lives. Air Force Academy professor Philip Ambard, whose wife teaches physical education at a Colorado Springs elementary school, died during shooting in Afghanistan just last week. Sooner or later, the pain hits close to everyone’s home.
Sports know vengeance. Fans dance around bonfires in the street when a bitter rival is defeated. Payback can be meaner than the devil.
But can I be forgiven for feeling something different than the testosterone-fueled condemnation spewed at bin Laden by a Super Bowl hero and a stock-car driver?
The words of “The Star-Spangled Banner” would ring hollow if they were about nothing more than blood justice. Vengeance alone cannot sustain the strength to succeed.
Maybe what raises the goose bumps in a song is the same indefatigable spirit that now relentlessly raises a new World Trade Center and a September 11 memorial from the rubble that was ground zero for the terrorist attacks.
It’s an anthem of hope, an expression of the belief that anything is possible.
When the last notes of “The Star-Spangled Banner” faded at Campbell Memorial Field, young Aaron Cook put the Heritage cap back on his head and went out to celebrate another great day to be living in the USA.
In the bottom of the first inning, Cook stepped in the batter’s box, took the measure of a fastball and sent a shot up the middle for a clean single, looking to give his team the lead.
We had already won.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
