Memorial Day: YOUR NAME HERE

Thanks to Gary Bedingfield and his fine work at Baseball’s Greatest Sacrifice for the inspiration to write this post.

John McCrae knew something about poppies.

Mattress Sales. Gun Shows. Special savings, this weekend only. Traffic jams. Campouts. Summer kickoff barbecues.

Friends chirping “Happy Memorial Day!”

And 1,743 Memorial Day-themed items on mlbshop.com. The Major League Baseball stuff site. That’s a real number, 1,743. Dave Barry might say, I am not making this up.

Camo logos, olive drab caps. Tastefully done, to honor The Troops. And the custom jersey — immense red white and blue Yankees logo, my own name on the back. $29.99, free shipping, hurry, order now, offer ends today. ‘Cuz Memorial Day. ‘Cuz America. And the military and stuff. God Bless.

Be proud, put your name on it. ‘Cuz, y’know, it’s all about you. Oh, and America. Hell yeah.

New Era and the gear companies love America. You bet they do. God bless you too, and thanks for your order. Ka-ching for patriotism.

Gallup once found that a majority of Americans still know what Memorial Day is about. 28% actually know that the holiday honors America’s war dead, those who died serving our country. Doing their duty.

Add that 28% to the 40% who say Memorial Day is because of veterans and the military and what not. Which to Gallup means 68% of all Americans know what it’s all about.

One might say the same about any holiday. Take Christmas. 28% Baby Jesus, 40% Santa Claus. So a majority of us know what it’s about. But still…

Newsmax documents the increasing percentage of Americans who understand Memorial Day’s importance. Headlining the Newsmax article is a picture of a man in camo, by implication a very healthy and alive active-duty military American, holding a flag. On a football field. In an article about the majority of all Americans understanding Memorial Day.

Take a minute and let that sink in.

…and it’s during football season, evidently.

This weekend, if we can stomach the annual broadcast hype, we’re bound to hear the same announcers with their same time-worn adoring references to Ted Williams, Joe D, Warren Spahn, who “sacrificed” a few years of their Hall of Fame careers to serve in World War II.

We’ll never hear of ballplayers who actually gave up their lives in service of their country. Not if they died before they could ever dirty their spikes on big league grass.

Or men like Harry O’Neill, who played just one major league game before serving with my own young ballplayer father in the 4^th Marines. Unlike my father, O’Neill did not come home.

We don’t speak their names. We don’t tell their stories. But we should.

Instead, out at the ballpark, we’ll see military color guards, flyovers, and the ever-present, not-a-dry-eye-in-the-house surprise homecoming of Sergeant Daddy to his sobbing wife and family, right there on the third base line in front of a packed house. And we’ll double down on the tears if there’s a military dog involved.

These troops and their families are doing their duty for us, serving our country. We like to think they’re all doing so honorably. It is right to give them thanks and praise. But this weekend, this holiday, was not made for that. It was not made for them. Those troops, those pilots, those loyal service dogs are very much among the living.

This weekend, if we’re doing it right, we should honor the fallen and their Gold Star families. A family whose father is not coming home – a family for whom every day is Memorial Day – might carry the flag at the ball game. The grandson of a ballplayer who gave his life on D-Day – not one who came home to return to the game – might throw out the first pitch.

This weekend, if we’re doing it right in the seventh inning, instead of drooling out a Pavlov ritual and somehow tying it all to our flag and our military and to God blessing us and our mountains and prairies and oceans like ours are better than yours because God blessed ours and not yours, what if we realize that’s not what this holiday is about?

What if instead, at that key moment of mindless routine before we sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame, we’re asked for a simple moment of silence to honor those whose memories the holiday is supposed to uphold? Even if we don’t know their names.

And maybe, at the end of the silence, we give up sixty seconds of our lives to hear a young Marine at home plate with a microphone telling us what it was like to watch his best buddy bleed out and die in the desolate sand of a nation halfway around the world.

And then we take another minute, just another tiny piece of another day we’re blessed to enjoy in this free land, another minute in gratitude for that dead Marine’s service, for his honorable duty to our nation… and in that minute we question whether it was worth it. Whether our nation gained anything for his sacrifice. Whether it had anything to do with what we’re told about freedom.

And what if that makes us wonder whether we the people, the nation that holy flag represents, did the right thing in sending that man over there?

And what if we realize, as loyal Americans who care about our soldiers, that we need to hold our rulers to account? That we should question every decision they make. That it’s honorable, respectful, and supportive of The Troops to demand justification for their sacrifice. That it’s American in the finest traditions of patriotism to protest a war. That it’s unAmerican to send endless streams of human beings across the globe to die, and to kill countless others, in endless unwon wars. That real patriotism isn’t wrapped in fancy uniforms, cheesy songs, and shiny parades.

That endless wars just add more names every year to the list we honor on Memorial Day.

YOUR NAME HERE name on the back of the jersey? Nope, not my name. Not on Memorial Day. I’m not worthy. I’m still alive. And grateful.