Barr Defends Her Rendition of the Anthem : Baseball: “That’s how I sing,” she says. Spitting was a baseball joke, she insists. “I didn’t spit on the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ ”

TV star Roseanne Barr defended her abrasive rendition of the national anthem at a San Diego Padres baseball game, saying the club knew they were not inviting an opera star to perform.

“They didn’t ask me to sing because I was Beverly Sills,” Barr said in a telephone call Thursday night to Los Angeles television station KCAL-TV. “They knew and everyone in that crowd also . . . they know I can’t sing. Or rather, that’s how I sing, not that I can’t sing, because I can.”

The comedienne was booed lustily after she screeched her way through the “Star Spangled Banner” before the second game of a double-header between the Padres and Cincinnati Reds Wednesday night.

The incident touched off a furor.

After her 53-second performance, part of a special “Working Women’s Night” promotion, Barr spat on the ground and grabbed her crotch, which many people considered an insult to the national anthem.

“I was sitting in the dugout before the game and the players and my husband said, ‘Why don’t you scratch yourself and spit like all the players do?’

“They said, ‘Go out there and do it,’ and I go, ‘No, I wouldn’t dare do it before the song, but I said I’ll do it after.’ And they’re all giving me the high five and going, ‘Get out there and scratch yourself and spit and say: Let’s play ball.’

“I may have done it a little too close to the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ but I was trying to get the hell out of there. I was getting booed by 35,000 people. I was getting cheered by a hell of a lot of people too. . . . I didn’t spit on the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ ”

Asked if she would do it all again, gestures included, Barr told the television station, “Yeah, but I’d try to do it to a hipper crowd.

“I’m sorry that people are appalled and that this is the worst thing they’ve ever heard,” Barr continued. “You know, if this is the worst thing they’ve ever heard, then their lives have been pretty easy.

“There’s a lot of people that sing like me in this country and they sing the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ too. And I’ll tell you right now, I’ll sing that ‘Star Spangled Banner’ whenever I want to, wherever I want to and however I feel like singing it, because I’m an American and that is my national anthem too.”

On Thursday night, before their game against the Houston Astros, the Padres played a taped version of the national anthem performed by the Marine Corps. The crowd gave it a rousing ovation.

President Bush today critized Barr’s performance.

“My reaction is, it was disgraceful,” Bush told reporters aboard Air Force One during a flight to his summer home in Kennebunkport, Me. “That is the way I feel about it, and I think a lot of San Diego fans said the same thing.”

“Francis Scott Key must be spinning like a lathe,”Johnny Carson quipped on his “Tonight Show” Thursday night. “The closed sound I heard was when I got my cat neutered.”