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The National Anthem at Sporting Events - is it too much?

At seemingly every sporting event in this country, the game is preceded by a singing of the National Anthem. I've often times wondered, especially in baseball (162 game season), if players and/or coaches either get sick of hearing the song or if they learn to just drown it out and focus on what they need to do that day to help their team win.

I guess my question is - is it too much? When something is spoken too frequently, it begins to lose meaning. The word, the phrase, may have been magical at the start, but with each and every repetition within a short duration of time, that magic slowly starts to fade.

Often times the magic of the holidays is because a group of people get together for the first time in a while. That's what makes that day (those days) stand out from the rest. If every day were like that, Christmas (or another major holiday) would be just like any other day. The word "love" can begin to lose significance if spoken too frequently, especially if that word or phrase ("I love you") follows a mistake. Sure, the other party may believe you love them after that first mishap, perhaps even the second or third, but that word will definitely begin to lose its luster before long and become just like any other word.

For the Anthem to be sung at every major sporting event in this country, I have to imagine it become just like any other song for a lot of people. The words are heard, perhaps sung, but they're only words to these people after a while. There isn't that feeling, that emotion, that passion behind them as there was at one point. It'd be nice to believe that the majority of people could feel that same passion upon singing the Anthem for the 233rd time as they had the 1st, but that seems all but impossible, unfortunately.

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