The national anthem: Love it or leave it alone
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But my money is on singing the national anthem. As a big sports fan (blog readers--be prepared for a lot of baseball items, especially with my beloved Cubs in first place), I get to hear a lot of amateur anthem renditions and it’s pretty obvious that the anthem is a song best left to real professionals, even though they often have some embarrassing moments too.
All of these thoughts came to mind reading a typically funny post the other day from Ken Levine, who as host of ‘Dodger Talk,’ the Dodgers post-game show on KABC radio, gets to hear lots of anthems. (A talented TV writer, Levine has also spent years doing play-by-play for the Orioles and the Padres, so he really has put his time in at the old ballyard.) When it comes to the anthem, Levine is unabashedly Old School, admonishing the anthems many misguided modernizers:
Yo! The National Anthem is also not a hip-hop jam. Do not sample “Happy Together” in the middle of it. Do not shout out “Clap your hands, y’all!” when you’re near the end. It is not meant to be whistled, beat boxed, played on spoons, washboards, ukuleles, kazoos, or sung in Klingon.
The big question: Why is the darn song so hard to sing?
The simple answer is that we’ve heard the anthem so many times that we automatically think--how hard could it be to sing that? As Roseanne Barr and many others have found out, it’s harder than it looks. Marvin Gaye (above) probably has done the all-time best version, performed at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game. His rendition works, not just because he was a great singer, but because he found a way to make his singing style fit the song.
One of the problems with the anthem is that it’s often treated as a novelty item, given over to C-list celebs or rank amateurs who have no business taking a whack at it in the first place. The Cubs, who had a 1948 Throwback Day yesterday, celebrating the first WYN telecast of a Cubs game, handed over the anthem to the Trinity Lutheran Church Handball Choir, who performed the entire song wordlessly, with their handballs carrying the melody. The end result sounded more like a mellow Christmas carol than an anthem.
On the other hand, at least no one forgot the words, something of a regular occurrence with amateur anthem crooners. My friend Bob Elisburg sent along a wonderful video of a young girl going mute in the middle of the anthem at a Portland Trail Blazers playoff game until Maurice Cheeks, the great Philadelphia 76ers guard who was then coaching the Trail Blazers, takes charge and helps, well, coach her through the song.
I give the last word to John Schulian, a sports columnist turned successful TV writer, who has clearly listened to all too many anthems in his day. He e-mails:
‘No self-respecting sportswriter thinks much about the quality of the national anthem before a game. All he or she wants is for it to be over in a hurry. Paul Zimmerman, now of Sports Illustrated, once of the New York Post in its blissfully liberal days, used to haul out his watch and time performances, rooting just as hard for a singer to bring it in at a minute-15 or a minute-20 as he rooted for a good story. (What, you think a sportswriter cares who wins a game?)
Of all the anthem renditions I’ve witnessed, the one that sticks in mind is Linda Ronstadt’s at the 1977 World Series: Dodger Stadium, a perfect afternoon, and there was Ronstadt in center field looking way beyond yummy. She sang like a dream, too -- the lady has great pipes -- but the overwhelmingly male sporting press barely noticed. It was far more important for those ink-stained droolers to grab a pair of binoculars and gaze at Ronstadt for the minute-and-whatever she was out there. I know, I was one of them. That isn’t the best story I have to tell about the national anthem, though; that one concerns Red Smith, the greatest newspaper sports columnist ever, as he boarded the elevator for the ride up to the Yankee Stadium pressbox before a World Series game. The only other passenger was Robert Merrill, the tenor from the Met, who had just performed the anthem. ‘You were in fine voice tonight, Robert,’ said the ever courtly Red. Merrill smiled broadly and said, ‘Sang the [expletive] out of it, didn’t I?’