SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Nothing says “new era of women’s pro baseball” quite like an 85-year-old Motown legend and two backup singers going full karaoke train wreck on “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Martha Reeves, yes, that Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas fame, stepped up to the mic Saturday night at Robin Roberts Stadium for the Women’s Pro Baseball League’s inaugural game and promptly murdered the national anthem in cold blood.
What should have been a proud, goosebump moment for the first women’s professional baseball league in generations instead became a viral comedy of errors. Off-key. Off-tempo. Occasionally in three different keys at once. The three women sounded like they had rehearsed in separate zip codes.
Camera cuts to the stands told the whole story: fans biting their lips, covering their mouths, staring at the ground as if they’d just witnessed a baby seal get clubbed to death in the Arctic. On the field, players fought valiantly to keep straight faces. One San Francisco Fireballs player looked like she was about to swallow her own tongue trying not to laugh.
Reeves, a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, eventually took the wheel near the end and belted out the final lines with some leftover Motown fire. The crowd rewarded the survivors with polite applause that felt more like mercy than admiration.
The actual baseball? Almost an afterthought. The Los Angeles Queens rallied for a wild 10-8 win over the New York Heights in rainy conditions. Historic night. Historic league. Historic howler of an anthem.
Somewhere, the ghost of Whitney Houston is shaking her head. And somewhere else, Roseanne Barr is finally sleeping better.
