200 years later, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ still has emotional power

My colleagues in the press box think I’m a kook and they’re probably right.

Before every baseball, football, hockey and basketball game I’ve covered the past 57 years, a band or a famous singer or perhaps some new wannabe has sung “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“Look at him, he’s singing The National Anthem,” Pat Caputo, the great Detroit sports radio voice and Oakland Press columnist, would announce to all.

Guilty. Emotionally guilty!

I stand, put my hand over my heart and sing along. In my monotone.

That is when I’m live at the games.

My colleagues all know that and OK, I’m a bit eccentric.

What they don’t know is that when I’m home and TV actually shows the rendering of “The Star-Spangled Banner” instead of jumping to a big-bucks commercial, I stand up and sing along, too. Hand over heart.

Instead of slouching in my seat.

My late wife, Nancy, and my late lady friend, Arlene, would look at me and they, too, would think I’m a kook.

Still guilty.

That is my ritual and I do it because I want to and because I am stirred every time I sing along to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

On Monday night, ESPN actually permitted its audience to see and hear — and feel proud — when The United States Naval Academy Choir presented The National Anthem as a prelude to the Lions game.

I sang along. In my monotone.

This time I was extra proud. I served three years in the United States Navy. I am second generation Navy. I was proud of all those Naval Academy youngsters, men and women, future officers.

They sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” the way it was meant to be sung. No screeches and no histrionics. It was a beautiful rendition, harmonic and clear.

Proud old banner

Sunday marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore. It was near the end of another war with Great Britain — the War of 1812. The young United States of America was fighting for its survival against its former colonial masters.

British Redcoat troops had burned down our White House in Washington. They had imprisoned our sailors, seizing them off American ships. They had some American patriots battened down in cells in the holds of British navy ships in Chesapeake Bay.

Under a white flag, a young lawyer, Francis Scott Key, went aboard an English ship to negotiate an exchange of prisoners. A deal made, the British told Key the Americans could not yet leave for freedom. First the British were going to end the war by bombarding Fort McHenry in the Baltimore harbor by knocking out the American flag flying above the fort.

The British ships fired their fusillades throughout the night. An admiral of the Royal Navy claimed that the flag and its mast had been hit numerous times.

But when daylight came, through the smoke, Francis Scott Key looked from the deck of the British ship at Fort McHenry. He saw the American flag. The center was shredded by British shellfire. But the American flag still fluttered above Fort McHenry.

And Key started to write a poem: “Defence of Fort M’Henry.”

“O say can you, by dawn’s early light,

“What proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,

“Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight

“O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming

“And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

“Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there . . . “

Key’s four stanzas ultimately were set to music — ironically, the tune composed in Great Britain — and became the American national anthem.

I have stood and heard “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by famous celebrity singers — the late Whitney Houston at a Super Bowl, Robert Goulet at the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship in Maine. They didn’t quite know the words. I did.

I heard Jose Feliciano sing the first adulterated version of The National Anthem before Game 5 of the Tigers’ World Series at Tiger Stadium in 1968. He delivered the words with the lilting, pop stuff, falsetto that is so common nowadays. It was utter disrespect for our Anthem, for Americans who had served their country in the armed forces. For those of us who still care.

It was appalling, but Feliciano set a fashion.

Super bad

Paul Zimmerman, Sports Illustrated’s former pro football professor, managed to bring humor to the annual botching of the Anthems at Super Bowls. Paul would time the preening artists as they shrieked and squealed through the powerful — and prolonged — lyrics of the first stanza.

Then he would announce to us all: “four minutes, seven seconds” or whatever.

And we’d all laugh.

At the most recent Super Bowl, opera diva Renee Fleming reversed the trend, I was told. I was there in the press box, but Roger Goodell’s minions had turned off our special sound system. It was obviously a glorious and proper rendition. Looking out toward the stage set up on the field, Renee’s passion and emotion for “The Star-Spangled Banner” came through — amid our enforced silence.

She had sung it in the right style — and when she was finished and walked off the field you could see that she was pumped up and proud. As pumped up as the demonstrative and emotional Pete Carroll would be on the field that evening.

Saturday morning I found Renee Fleming’s rendition on YouTube and heard her singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at last February’s Super Bowl for the first time.

Guilty. I stood and sang along with her voice on my computer.

This Sunday — 200 years after the American flag withstood the British naval barrage at Fort McHenry in Baltimore on Sept. 14, 1814 — expectations are that I’ll tune into an array of games. I’ll stand, cover my heart and sing along again with the chosen singer of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

In my monotone.

Jerry Green is a retired Detroit News sportswriter. Read his web exclusive column Saturdays at detroitnews.com.