No national anthem at Mavs game

[Kammrath]

The Star-Spangled Banner made it’s debut in September 1918, during that year’s first World Series game between the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox.

In addition to the ongoing toll of World War I, a cloud of violence hung over Chicago’s Comiskey Park, as a bomb had torn apart the Chicago Federal Building just the day before. During the seventh-inning stretch, the military band on hand struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and in a moving spectacle, players and fans alike fell silent and saluted the flag.

The practice soon spread across major league baseball, and into other sports, and eventually became a widely accepted pregame tradition.

Thanks for sharing this. 

VERY similar to the history of flags in churches. WWI and WWII usually precipitated the placement of flags in church sanctuaries. 

In my particular German-American heritage it happened because of persecution from Americans toward German-Americans during that time. Our churches stopped praying in German and moved to English and also put up American flags in sanctuaries as a way to say "we aren't Nazis!" 

The irony though was that Nazi flags were also put in so many (all?) churches during those times in Germany, leading to an incredible toxic relationship between church and state (where the church went along with state atrocities). As a little old Austrian lady in one of my previous churches said to me, "I am so glad you refuse to put an American flag in our church, when I was a little girl we had a Nazi flag in our church and I saw the corruption that came from the church surrendering its identity in the Kingdom God to the state."

The pledge of allegiance is also really interesting and its own connections and overlaps to how Nazis used it.

Check out these American kids in 1915, look familiar?