In my post directly below from Monday I wrote about NBC and how they altered the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the US Open on Sunday. Outrage ensued and USGA told me over the phone they would be making a statement condemning NBC for their actions. This morning I received an email response from the USGA in regards to an email I sent them asking where their statement was.
Dear Don:
As you may be aware, NBC Sports issued a second apology statement yesterday, accepting responsibility for the omission of important language in the Pledge of Allegiance during the opening segment of their Sunday 2011 U.S. Open telecast:
We understand your concern over the beginning of our U.S. Open coverage on Sunday.
We are aware of the distress this has caused many of our viewers and are taking the issue very seriously.
Unfortunately, when producing the piece – which was intended to capitalize on the patriotism of having our national championship played in our nation’s capital – a decision was made by a small group of people to edit portions of the Pledge of Allegiance.
This was a bad decision.
As soon as management became aware of this decision and the controversy it justifiably created, it immediately took steps to correct it resulting in an on-air apology provided by NBC Sports’ lead golf commentator Dan Hicks.
It was not the intent of NBC to upset anyone and we sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended.
Thank you again for taking the time to voice your concerns.
Viewers wishing to contact NBC Sports on this issue can send emails to: nbcuniversalviewerfeedback@nbcuni.com.The USGA did not review or approve this segment, and did not become aware of the problem until the segment aired. We have received assurances from NBC that this will not happen again.
We thank you for contacting us to express your concerns.
Regards,
The United States Golf Association
And my response back to the USGA:
********************
Nice try, but your organization lied and many people heard you lie about issuing a formal statement to condemn the actions of NBC.
This was no mistake by NBC or just a few, it was calculated, intentional and done with the typical anti-American malice that NBC practices within their obvious political ideology.
NBC consistently picks and chooses sides and altered a document signed into law by the President of the United States after approval of Congress in 1954.
Your organization, like NBC, would like to apologize to “some” of the people or “many” of the people who were offended. The entire United States should be offended and the USGA should stand up and make a stand against NBC or you’re no better than they are while you operate a golf organization and major tournament called the US Open and while you use US/United States in your organization title – you have now become a part of the cabal who dishonors the United States of America.
You have chosen to “apologize” for NBC instead of formally taking action and chose to further scapegoat this enormous issue. We won’t forget this inaction on the part of the USGA.
********************
Nor will I forget as an individual and I will remain a constant reminder of this incident.
Let the USGA have it for their irresponsibility at Facebook or at:
The United States Golf Association
P.O. Box 708
Far Hills, N.J. 07931
908-234-2300
Fax: 908-234-9687
USGA Media Relations
77 Liberty Corner Road
Far Hills, N.J. 07931
Phone: (908) 234-2300
e-mail: mediarelations@usga.org
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Yesterday the U.S. Open golf tournament concluded it’s final round but it began with the Pledge of Allegiance and a video montage.
Rory McIlroy, a 22-year old Irish lad had drained all the drama out of the on-course play at the Open being played in the shadow of the nations capital. However, outside the ropes, NBC led off its telecast with an immediately controversial pre-taped segment. Listen to the pledge of allegiance that runs alongside the patriotic images, and later to the one that overlays video of previous U.S. Open winners:
In case it’s been some time since you said the pledge in elementary school or at an event , the first version left out the words “under God” and “indivisible.” The second went even further, eliminating “one nation” as well.
The outcry on Twitter was immediate and almost universally negative. Some news groups are writing that “perhaps this style was an artistic choice on the part of the segment producer”, interweaving the pledge with military and golf-related sound bites, but the decision to leave out “under God” is “a curious one at best”, and a highly controversial one, without doubt.
I say removing the words from the Pledge of Allegiance was no accident, it was planned and purposeful.
Later in the telecast, host Dan Hicks read the following statement during coverage:
“It was our intent to begin our coverage of this U.S. Open championship with a feature that captured the patriotism of our national championship being here in our nation’s capital for the third time. Regrettably, a portion of the pledge of allegiance that was in that feature was edited out. It was not done to upset anyone and we’d like to apologize to those of you who were offended by it.”
Excuse me but apology not accepted. NBC got caught and Twitter caught fire pointing out their tinkering with the Pledge of Allegiance so they were basically forced to make a statement.
The press also likes to point out that “under God” was not in the original pledge from 1892, which read, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” The words “under God” were not added to the pledge until 1954, when President Eisenhower signed Congressional legislation to that effect into law.
Key words here, “Congressional legislation into law.” So NBC chose to break the law.
I’ve read some of the comments concerning this mess and it’s very disturbing, depending where you read, how many people think this is just fine and GOD isn’t in the Constitution and has no place on our currency or in documents. These people have now sense of history, the law or decency. Let’s point out the history of the Pledge of Allegiance:
On September 8,1892, the Boston based “The Youth’s Companion” magazine published a few words for students to repeat on Columbus Day that year. Written by Francis Bellamy,the circulation manager and native of Rome, New York, and reprinted on thousands of leaflets, was sent out to public schools across the country. On October 12, 1892, the quadricentennial of Columbus’ arrival, more than 12 million children recited the Pledge of Allegiance, thus beginning a required school-day ritual.
At the first National Flag Conference in Washington D.C., on June14, 1923, a change was made. For clarity, the words “the Flag of the United States” replaced “my flag”. In the following years various other changes were suggested but were never formally adopted.
It was not until 1942 that Congress officially recognized the Pledge of Allegiance. One year later, in June 1943, the Supreme Court ruled that school children could not be forced to recite it. In fact,today only half of our fifty states have laws that encourage the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom!
In June of 1954 an amendment was made to add the words “under God”. Then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower said “In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war.”
Liberal’s enjoy parsing words to fit what they want, ignoring history or attempting to rewrite it. The Supreme Court said “children could not be forced to recite it” but I don’t see where anyone is authorized to rewrite the words, change or alter them.
The Marxist cabal at NBC should be placed on notice that this is unacceptable and the United States Golf Association should change telecast venues in the future or at the very least question NBC’s actions and protest.
I called the USGA this morning and they are issuing a statement condemning NBC’s actions. I will update with their statement when it becomes available.
USGA personal response in post above this one.
As of Tuesday morning I can find no statement by USGA and have written to their media relations for information concerning this.
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The following is an excerpt from “The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History” by Jayson Stark. Copyright (c) 2007 by the author.
Only about 500 people in the world get to vote in the baseball Hall of Fame election. I’m one of them. So I’m always aware, when I hold that ballot in my hand, that this is about more than a list of names. This is about lives and legacies. Those lives, those legacies, are changed forever by the results of those elections.
So from the day that ballot arrives in the mail to the day I fill it out, those names, those lives, those legacies grab a little chunk of my brain and hold on so tight, you’d think they were stamped on a winning Powerball ticket. They pinball around up there for WEEKS — until I’m finished the momentous debate that revolves around every one of them: Yes or no? Hall of Famer or not?
I’ve learned, in a decade and a half as a voter, not to answer that question too quickly. And I know exactly who taught me that lesson.
Ron Santo.
My first year as a Hall voter was 1989. Santo’s name was on that ballot. I left the box next to his name unchecked. Little did I know it would be a life-altering experience.
At the time, Santo hadn’t played a baseball game in 15 years. His prime had come and gone long before I started covering baseball. So because it was my first year as a voter and I had the Hall of Fame fate of 30 players to weigh, I zipped past Ron Santo faster than I should have. I took a quick look at his numbers, but what I really did was something I’ve never allowed myself to do since: I went by first impression. A voice up there said Santo was only the fourth-best player on a Cubs team that never won anything. So how could he be one of the greatest players ever to play his position?
This is the logic hundreds of voters used for years to rationalize not voting for Ron Santo. But I admit now that I used it myself before I’d ever seriously thought it through. I didn’t even know I’d done that until a couple of weeks later.
So how did I figure it out? Well, let’s just say it’s not usually a good sign when talk radio changes your mind about anything — sports, politics, even your favorite lasagna recipe. But in this case, I was co-hosting a talk show about the Hall of Fame when a caller began grilling me on why I hadn’t voted for Santo. The more I explained myself, the more he thought my logic made less sense than Borat. So he decided to write me a letter, laying out the case for Santo with depth and passion. I’m still glad he did.
Here’s what I know now about Ron Santo that I didn’t know then:
1) It IS possible to be the “fourth-best player on your own team” and still be a Hall of Famer. It’s not as if Santo was the player-GM of the Cubs. He didn’t arrange to be on the same club as Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ferguson Jenkins. It just happened. There may be quotas on how many anchovies you can import from France. But there are no quotas on how many Hall of Famers can play on one team. So the only question is whether Ron Santo was a great player at his position in his era — not how his own greatness related to his teammates’ greatness. But before I get to that question, let me remind the skeptics that it was Santo — not Banks, not Williams — who hit cleanup for those Cubs teams, from his third full season in the big leagues (1963) through his 11th (1971). And there was a reason for that. “Any time things started to get tough,” says Dodgers GM Ned Colletti, who grew up a Cubs fan in the ’60s, “you’d find yourself hoping it was Ronnie’s turn to bat.”
2) Ron Santo was almost certainly the greatest all-around third baseman of his time. Name ANY other third baseman from the 1960s you would rather have run out there than Santo. Maybe Brooks Robinson, if you ate a lot of crabcakes. And there’s a case to be made for Ken Boyer, a similar player whose Cardinals teams at least finished first once in a while. But I’d still take Santo. Of the 23 third basemen who got to the plate 3,000 times during Santo’s 15 seasons, he led all of them in homers, RBIs, runs scored, extra-base hits, walks and times reaching base. Only Dick Allen and Eddie Mathews outslugged him — but Allen was so awful defensively, he had to be moved to first base, and Mathews was done as a full-time player by the mid-’60s. Finally, let’s put Santo’s eight straight seasons of at least 25 homers and 90 RBIs in perspective. From the end of World War 2 through the end of Santo’s career, only two players at ANY position had streaks longer than that: Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. This was not an age where 40-homer, 125-RBI seasons were as prevalent as bad sitcoms. So the only fair way to evaluate Santo’s numbers is from the perspective of HIS time, not our time.
3) Ron Santo was even more underrated defensively than he was offensively. I didn’t figure that out right away, either. By the time I became a voter, Mike Schmidt had broken all of Santo’s National League glove-story records. And Brooks Robinson, who played in Santo’s era, probably needed to add a floor to his house to hold all his Gold Gloves. So if you were someone like me, who hadn’t seen Santo leather it up, you had no idea how good he was. But that’s why I now make sure to take a closer look at EVERYONE who appears on the Hall of Fame ballot. During the time Santo was in the big leagues, he not only led all third basemen not nicknamed “Brooksie” in assists, double plays and total chances. He set or tied National League records for most years leading the league in every one of those categories. He won five straight Gold Gloves, in an age when the only other third baseman who did that was Robinson. So he didn’t just have a GOOD glove. He was the dominant glove man in his league at his position.
4) We shouldn’t be keeping Ron Santo out of the Hall of Fame just because his team was allergic to October. No team in most of our lifetimes has been more creative in finding ways to avoid the World Series than the Cubs. But that didn’t keep Jenkins, Banks or Williams from barging into Cooperstown. So what’s the excuse for using that argument to keep Santo out? The only reason to factor that in is that poor Ron Santo never got the opportunity to use that stage to show the masses how good a player he was. And that had a lot more to do with the guys who pitched for his team than with the third baseman who would have given up deep-dish pizza for life to win it all just once.
It’s now more than three decades since Ron Santo played baseball for the Cubs. He’s still as beloved a figure as anybody who has EVER played for the Cubs. In part, I know, that’s because he became the voice of the Cubs. But there is more to that phenomenon than a radio microphone.
Santo may have been “the fourth-best player” on those Cubs. But really, says Ned Colletti, “he was the leader of those clubs. Yeah, he had Williams on one side of him and Banks on the other side, so he was protected in that lineup. But HE also protected THEM. If you want to win, you have to have players who lead. And nobody on those teams played harder, competed harder or cared more than he did. They wouldn’t have been the same team without him. He defined the personality of the club. He was the one everyone looked to.”
Even after he took off that uniform, not even the men who were still wearing those uniforms could possibly have cared more whether the Cubs won or lost than Ron Santo. There is a classic scene in “This Old Cub,” the riveting documentary on Santo’s life, that takes us back to the final week of the 1998 season: Cubs leftfielder Brant Brown dropping a ninth-inning fly ball with the bases loaded. The Cubs losing a game in Milwaukee that they once led, 8-7. And the voice on the radio — Ron Santo’s voice — is summing up the moment in two eloquent words — “Oh nooooooooooooooooooo.” After the game, Santo’s partner, Pat Hughes, heads for the clubhouse. What he finds, he says in the film, is “something that probably has not been ever seen before in a big league clubhouse. I saw the MANAGER trying to cheer up the BROADCASTER after the game.”
All right, I know the compassion many of us feel for Ron Santo — at that moment, at every moment — has nothing to do with whether he’s underrated or not. But I’ve already established that the guy was one of the great all-around talents of his time. His real story, though, is about something larger than that.
For a lot of people in this world, the Cubs are a walking laugh track, a Comedy Central compendium of collapses and calamities and bad billy-goat jokes. But there’s a human side to that tale. And no one embodies it more than Ron Santo. All those great seasons. All that passion. For all those years. And now here he is, in his mid-60s, still waiting for his just reward. He has had to have both legs amputated because of diabetes, a condition he battled his whole career. He has survived cancer and a quadruple bypass. There isn’t much more he asks out of life. Just to see the Cubs win a World Series one stinking time. And to have his amazing lifelong dedication to his team and his sport recognized by the Hall of Fame.
Many years ago, a talk-show caller convinced me to look at Ron Santo’s career from a different, more enlightened place. Hopefully, this tiny slice of baseball literature will cause a lot more people to do the same.
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