Blowfish drop the ball on history
July 6, 2009
If there’s one thing South Carolinians keep tabs on, it’s history. That’s what made the choice of uniforms used in a color guard procession at the July 4 Columbia Blowfish baseball game perplexing.
In honor of Independence Day, the Blowfish put on a variety of festivities, including a fireworks show, for its Coastal Plain League game with Ashboro Saturday evening. Prior to the game, they had a color guard march across the field. Surprisingly, the guard was wearing the uniform of Union Civil War soldiers.
Now, no matter what your thoughts on the War Between the States, to have Union re-enactors carrying flags on Independence Day seemed on odd choice.
If the Blowfish were determined to use re-enactors, American Revolutionary War troops would have seemed a better fit, given that the first Independence Day was celebrated in 1776.
Another option would have been to have current military members do the honors, or perhaps veterans or World War II, Korea or Vietnam.
But to go with Union re-enactors made no sense. Could Blowfish management possibly be unaware that Union troops burned Columbia, then unarmed and undefended, to the ground in the waning days of the war?
Does anyone bother with research any more, or is just dressing up folks in anything from the past good enough for our historically illiterate age?
