A good day for Veteran's Day

Inside stadiums all across the United States this Sunday, sports franchises, players and fans all heartily celebrated Veterans Day.  Sports play a tremendous role in our country's make-up and in these uneasy times of a divided nation, it was appropriate that November 11th, this year, fall on a Sunday.  Kudos to all the pro sports leagues who honored our nation's veterans today with well-deserved ceremonies.

Any given week, the NFL can be seen putting on a patriotic pregame show with a giant American flag sewn in the dimensions of a football field.  Or at a NASCAR race, where pre-race warm-ups include whipping the crowd into a frenzy with an F-14 flyover at the climax of the national anthem.  The NBA will do the same, and although the arenas and crowd are much smaller, the message rings loud and clear.  Baseball, Americas pastime, would certainly pull out all the stops if it's season were still going on through Veteran's Day.  It still blows my mind that a professional baseball great like Ted Williams actually missed a couple of seasons to go fly fighter planes in WWII.  I mean, who would do that today?  Pat Tillman, maybe, the all-pro safety who left a multi-million dollar contract on the table with the Arizona Cardinals to go fight for his country in the middle east.  Men like that are few and far between, however.  Pat Tillman lost his life in that cause. 

It's not just about that though.  Soldiers don't expect to die... they expect to go and serve for the better of our country and return home to their lives.  Their homes and families.  Their freedoms.  Their sports teams.  It is always fun to see video of our troops over in Afghanistan - or wherever they may be serving us - cheering on a game here in the U.S. that they have the opportunity to watch together.
They are in foreign lands fighting not only for us and our country and our families, but for the Dallas Cowboys and the Utah Jazz and for Brad Keselowski or for their beloved Crimson Tide.  A lot of veterans and current soldiers alike would probably tell you something like Vin Scully's voice got them through it all.

For those of us who have never served in the military, it seems a moot gesture at times to thank a veteran of war for their sacrifice.  We want to be sincere, but how do you really put as much gratitude behind that thank you as it probably deserves?  The most, and the best we can do is simply say thanks.  Be there for them.  Sports organizations do a tremendous job at this like they have done again this weekend.  We can only continue to show our nation's vets respect any way we can.  If that means supporting our local sports teams and celebrating the closest thing to military camaraderie that we civilians know of, then that is a good place to start.