Oh, say can you sing?

“If you do nothing else in your life, don’t ever sing the national anthem at a ballgame.”

-- Nat King Cole, after a flawed attempt

“As we sta-and here waiting / For the game to be-gin....

-- Albert Brooks’ opening lyric in

“Rewriting the National Anthem”

Sonia and Sabrina Millen have prepared all their lives for a chance to slay this beast. The 16-year-old twins have been harmonizing since they were 3 months old. They’ve taken on the beast at lesser venues -- minor league baseball and basketball games in their native New Jersey. But this is the big time. This is why their parents moved the family to L.A. in June, to get the sisters a shot in the spotlight.

They’re about to try to slay the beast of public performance challenges in front of 10,672 L.A. Clipper fans in Staples Center.

First, though, let’s go back 2 1/2 weeks, to a public audition at which the Clippers searched for that rarest of human beings: someone who can sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” without messing up.

If you’ve ever wondered just why it is so hard to master Francis Scott Key’s poem of battle, written during the War of 1812, and its melody, taken from a traditional English drinking song, this audition is the place to be. One by one, more than 80 contestants compile a textbook of all the elements that have to jell -- and almost never do -- if a singer is to conquer the national anthem. They struggle to achieve the right pitch (start low because you have to climb a 1 1/2-octave mountain), diction (you’ve got “night,” “light,” “twilight,” “bright” and “fight”), timing, pace, harmony and memory. (Robert Goulet is still mocked for singing “by the dawn’s early night” at a title fight in ’65.)

The Millen twins, and most of the others who attended the open-air audition on a recent Saturday at 10 a.m., fantasized that they would be discovered at a Clipper game by a season ticket-holding record industry exec.

“It’s an appeal to the gatekeepers,” says Angela Moore Hodge, a physician’s assistant and occasional performer under the name Angela Denise, who is the first contestant to arrive -- at 5 a.m. She is confident about her chances. “All you gotta do is feel it. And I’m an American.” Jessica Leyva, 15, is there because her mother went out and got the sheet music and CD the night before. A.J. Harwin, a recent law school graduate, is there because he did some singing in college. Patrick Minner is there because he’d sung the anthem at a Portland Trailblazers game.

Most national anthems are booked through professional connections, but Laura Martin, the Clippers’ promotion and events coordinator, figures that, in a town dripping with talent and wannabes, she can pluck a few talented wannabes out of a crowd and garner a little goodwill for L.A.’s longest-suffering sports franchise at the same time.

Martin, an anthem traditionalist (she minored in music at East Texas Baptist University), instructs contestants to finish their a cappella versions within 90 seconds, a workmanlike pace. Many fail this test because they are inclined to soulfully stretch a handful of key syllables. Their stubbornness reflects the lasting effect of Whitney Houston’s dramatic gospel-influenced performance at Super Bowl XXV in 1991, sung during the Gulf War and re-released as a single after Sept. 11, 2001. It is also a reminder of how different Houston’s vocal range is from everyone else’s.

Some contestants are too operatic. Some swallow a crucial word. Some change keys during the song (usually at “and the rockets’ red glare”), unable to follow the challenging range. Or they’re too shrill. Or their voices crack. Or they call the stars (instead of the stripes) “broad.” Or they groan, “Woooa’hhh, say does that star-spangled banner” instead of the proper phrase, “Oh, say....” Or they sing “for” the land of the free instead of “o’er.” Or they slow the pace so drastically -- one woman sings it in 2:03 -- that no virtue can compensate.

(There have been longer versions, and one is arguably the most flamboyant national anthem ever sung: At the 1983 National Basketball Assn. all-star game at the Forum, Marvin Gaye turned the crowd into swaying, hand-clapping churchgoers with a 2:35 arrangement modeled on his idiosyncratically languid R&B; style, with only the slightest hint of the song’s true rhythm.)

These flaws make the rare complete version even more powerful to the audition audience, which consists of the contestants and a handful of friends and family.

They are awed by the eighth contestant, a grade-school girl whose command of the song brings applause the moment after she cuts loose on “the land of the freeee....” The 22nd candidate, a young man in a yellow University of Michigan football jersey and baggy jeans, draws shouts and screams too, for his precision. The Millen twins go 37th, dressed in matching red sweaters, trading solo lyrics, then bonding on the back end of the song, nailing the ending as if it were an Olympic gymnastic routine.

A couple of contestants are simply unable to raise their vocal range at the appropriate moment and give up. “That’s OK!” the crowd shouts. “Take your time! Keep going!”

After more than two hours of this, the plaza is nearly deserted and only a couple of entrants remain. There is a small moment of spontaneity as two friends who registered to sing separately as candidates 78 and 79 throw their hat into the ring as a duo and make a lasting impression. An on-duty LAPD officer gives the day’s last rendition.

Martin and three assistants retreat to the Clipper offices and hash over the contestants, often ruling that one flaw outweighs an otherwise acceptable performance. (“She changed keys, that means she can’t carry it.” “He used several wrong words.” “She had a great voice but ....” “She kept looking down, looking around.”)

They love the grade-school girl, 11-year-old Emma Hunton, who, unbeknownst to them, had performed in a touring performance of “Les Miserables” for a year and a half. They’re sold on the guy with the Michigan jersey, Ronald Hodge Jr. They like the makeshift duo of Manya Gulen and D’Andrea Glass, who’d performed near the end of the day. They decide to book each for a Clipper regular-season game and add the Millen twins to the list for an exhibition, which was scheduled for the fourth Wednesday of the month.

Not only is the game meaningless, it is competing with Game 4 of the World Series, leaving the arena barely half filled -- a bad night if you’re expecting music execs. But this is the hand the girls have been dealt, and they play it. Their parents, Steve and Mary Millen, who have left (but not yet sold) their home in an Atlantic City suburb, gambling on their daughters’ talent, watch nervously. Steve snaps pictures from courtside.

Mary, sitting underneath the basket, finds her view blocked by the Clipper and Milwaukee Buck players who stand on both sides of her daughters. She tilts her head up and watches them, in burgundy evening dresses, start in low register, singing their individual verses a little uneasily but blending beautifully on the back half. The applause is politely enthusiastic, no more.

Where will this lead? Nobody knows. “A great experience,” Sonia says. “This music business is not an easy thing. We have to strive for the best and keep in the race.... I wasn’t nervous. I love big crowds.”

Here’s hoping Emma Hunton, the 11-year-old who’ll perform before the Nov. 24 Clippers-Houston Rockets game, does too. Just in case, though, a pro like Emma has a backup plan: “Sometimes when I think I’m going to be nervous, I wear bigger pants so nobody can see my knees shake.”

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Memorable anthem moments

1968: Before the fifth game of the World Series in Detroit, Jose Feliciano, accompanying himself on guitar, performs the anthem in a Latin-folk style, at the time a shocking departure from tradition. NBC gets 400 complaint calls, but a single of the performance hits No. 50 on the charts.

1969: Guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, a former Army paratrooper, applies his sonic distortion to the anthem at Woodstock, creating a powerful wordless protest against the Vietnam War.

1983: Marvin Gaye, dressed in mirrored shades, puts the anthem into another groove at the NBA all-star game in Inglewood. The crowd, first stunned, grooves along.

1990: Roseanne, apparently bent on career suicide, sings the anthem off-key at a San Diego Padres game, spitting and grabbing her crotch for emphasis. Then-President Bush calls it “a disgrace.”

1991: At Super Bowl XXV, against the backdrop of the Gulf War, Whitney Houston and the Florida Orchestra lip- and finger-sync their way through an emotional recording of the anthem in Tampa. Royalties bail the orchestra out of a financial jam.