when did they start singing god bless america at baseball games
Seventh-inning stretch In baseball in the United States and Canada, the seventh-inning stretch is a tradition that takes place between the halves of the seventh inning of a game â€“ in the middle of the seventh inning. Fans generally stand up and stretch out their arms and legs and sometimes walk around. It is a popular time to get a late-game snack or an alcoholic beverage as well, as vendors end alcohol sales after the last out of the seventh inning. The stretch also serves as a short break for the players. Most ballparks in professional baseball mark this point of the game by playing the crowd sing-along song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". Since the September 11 attacks, many American ballparks complement or replace the song with the playing of "God Bless America." If a game goes into a fifth extra inning, a similar "fourteenth-inning stretch" is celebrated (as well as a possible "twenty-first inning stretch" or "twenty-eighth inning stretch"). In softball games, amateur games scheduled for only seven innings, or in minor-league doubleheaders, a "fifth-inning stretch" may be substituted.
God bless you The practice of blessing someone who sneezes dates as far back as at least AD 77, although it is far older than most specific explanations can account for.[9] Some have offered an explanation suggesting that people once held the folk belief that a person's soul could be thrown from their body when they sneezed,[9] that sneezing otherwise opened the body to invasion by the Devil or evil spirits,[10][11] or that sneezing was the body's effort to force out an invading evil presence.[9] In these cases, "God bless you" or "bless you" is used as a sort of shield against evil.[12] The Irish Folk story "Master and Man" by Thomas Crofton Croker, collected by William Butler Yeats, describes this variation.[13] Moreover, in the past some people may have thought that the heart stops beating during a sneeze, and that the phrase "God bless you" encourages the heart to continue beating.[9][10][11]