Oh ,s ay c anyou see? Our flag is upside down
One of the excuses from a spokesperson for the U.S. Marines was that the young marines involved in the fiasco “… might not ever have seen the flag before.”
Besides being an incredible indictment of both the U.S. education system and the American military’s How-to-IdentifyYour-Allies manual, it might also explain one of the most memorable incidents from a most memorable (if you were Canadian) World Series.
The 1992 World Series was a bit uncomfortable for U.S. baseball. It was the first time a city outside of the United States was represented in the annual finale of ‘America’s Game,’ and in some ‘patriotic’ quarters there was a sense of losing their identity. And Canadian fans at SkyDome sang the American anthem enthusiastically, and word-for-word, before the first World Series game played north of the 49th, while before the first game in Atlanta many local fans didn’t even know if O Canada had words.
And until after the Game 2 anthems had finished in Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium, nobody in authority and hardly anybody in a press box filled with writers who’d crossed the border many times, noticed this:
The Canadian flag was flying upside down.
It had been attached to the staff incorrectly and hoisted that way.
One American writer actually said to me: “But doesn’t a leaf hang from the maple tree that way?” Made some sense … in a Trump-ian way.
So much happened that night that we sometimes forget the flag flip, and the ultimately ohso-Canadian manner in which we handled it.
At first there was national outrage — all post-season, Canadian fans had suspected umpires and MLB itself of anti-Canadian prejudice — and rampant conspiracy theories.
Baseball officials admitted in advance that they were worried about the reaction of the live audience during the official ceremonies, which would open Game 3 back in Toronto. But Canadian fans belted out the U.S. anthem and deafeningly applauded a Buffalo-based Marine Corps which presented the Canadian flag. The Marines had requested another chance after the Game 2 disaster. That kind of transborder regret and forgiveness seems like it was from another century which, in fact, now it was.
Canadian writers covering Game 2 in Atlanta noticed the flag gaffe right away and were mortified, then we killed ourselves laughing. There’s nothing journalists love more than utter chaos.
Strangely, I got what the Marine spokesperson said, because I’d actually been there when somebody hadn’t seen the flag before, then hoisted it upside down. But whoever that was, and I really do forget, he or she had an excuse. It wouldn’t officially be our flag for another couple of weeks.
The deja-vu originated at my high school, the brand new Newtonbrook Secondary School, on the very northern edge of Metro Toronto. It was mid-to-late January 1965, a week or so before The Queen proclaimed the Maple Leaf as our flag, and a month before Parliament agreed with Mum and moved us from the Red Ensign to the red Leaf.
Lester B. Pearson, then prime minister of Canada and lead proponent of our first home-created national flag, was at the school for its official opening. His father had been the minister at a local church some decades earlier and still had ties to the little neighbourhood.
When the flag was run-up the staff and unfurled itself, the leaf was hanging the way it would off a maple tree. That is to say, upside down. That is to say, wrong. There are still faded pictures of it around, but not clear enough to print here.
We were teenagers, which is like being sportswriters, so we howled and slapped each other, but the teachers and principal and Pearson’s handlers, were appalled.
Not as appalled, though, as were those officials on the field in Atlanta. The Newtonbrook malfunction wasn’t broadcast to dozens of other countries.
That game in Atlanta was decided by Toronto’s Ed Sprague, a late, two-run pinch-hit homer off Jeff Reardon, who at the time was baseball’s all-time saves leader. It was one of the top five homers in Jays history.
But what I’ll never forget is the start of the game, seeing that flag upside down and trying to find a lede — newspaperese for the first line of a story — that would match the moment.
When it did come to me, I laughed aloud, and a couple of friends from U.S. papers came by to see what the noise was about. They laughed, too, and asked if they could borrow the line; and since the internet wasn’t involved yet, I readily agreed.
But the line never made it into my own paper. Somehow, in the excitement of the Sprague homer, somebody had changed the lede to be less specific and more generic. It didn’t happen often, but it happened that night.
So, for posterity, here it is for the first time in The Spectator. And remember that these were trained military personnel who screwed up so badly:
“How’d you like these guys to pack your parachute?”
Veteran Spectator columnist Steve Milton has pretty much seen it all in 40 years covering sports around the world. And, in Being There, he will relive special moments from those stories, from the inside out, every Friday. If there’s a memorable sporting event you’d like Steve to write about, let him know at smilton@thespec.com. Chances are, he was there.