‘BARR STRANGLED BANNER’ A STADIUM LOWLIGHT
One of the most memorable moments in Padres history — for all the wrong reasons — came on June 14, 1990, between games of a Reds-Padres double-header on Working Women’s Day at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.
That’s when TV star Roseanne Barr stepped up to the microphone to sing the national anthem.
Whitney Houston’s rendition of the anthem before Super Bowl XXV remains the gold standard. Barr lowered the bar quite a bit, her version generally regarded as the worst of all time.
“Barr Strangled Banner,” as a headline put it in The San Diego Tribune. Others put it in less printable terms.
Barr would get asked about the incident all the time over the years, although she was very reluctant to discuss it for the record. When the 25th anniversary of the incident approached, Barr did release a transcript on her website, roseanneworld.com, from an interview she gave to the Washington Post.
“I meant no disrespect to the country and (people) fighting for the safety and freedoms of old loudmouth Jewish women,” Barr said. “I’m sorry some saw it that way.”
No one has butchered it like Barr. Not even close. It wasn’t just the off-key screeching or the fingers in her ears as boos rang out from the crowd of 27,285. To top it off, Barr made an obscene gesture and spit as she stepped away from the microphone. Outrage was immediate. “I was embarrassed as a person and I was embarrassed for them (the Padres),” Padres pitcher Eric Show told reporters afterward. “I can’t believe it happened. It’s an insult. There are people who died for that song.”
Teammate Tony Gwynn
had similar feelings: “I thought it was a disgrace. When they said she was going
to sing the national anthem I thought something like this was going to happen.” Andy Strasberg, then the Padres’ vice president of public relations, had his concerns as well.
Recalling the incident years later, Strasberg remembered his initial reaction was: “Great. Can she sing?”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Padres owner Tom Werner, who also was executive producer of the “Roseanne” show.
“Why don’t we have her sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame?’ ” Strasberg suggested.
“She wants to sing the anthem,” Werner said.
“Why don’t we have her pre-record it so she can just enjoy herself and lip sync like everybody else?” Strasberg asked.
“No, she wants to sing it live,” Werner said.
Barr made an appearance on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” five days before she was to sing.
During the interview,
Carson said, “I understand in a couple days you’re going to be doing the national anthem. I didn’t know you could sing.”
“Of course, I can,” Barr said.
Asked to give the audience a sample, Barr sang “Kung Fu Fighting.”
It was not good. “I realized she can’t sing,” Strasberg said, adding. “We’ve got a problem here.”
Said Werner: “Don’t worry, she’s a professional.”
A professional comedian. Barr had planned to ham it up a little for the crowd, which wasn’t a bright idea. Things snowballed from there.
“It was a series of unfortunate circumstances,” Strasberg said.
On “The Tonight Show,” Carson had warned her, “Don’t start too high. Robert Goulet started too high and it was a disaster.”
She did, and it was.