The author singing during a performance in 2012 – Photo by Bob Hakins, © 2012 – Owned by Gentry Bronson
I stand alone on the shimmering green grass of Oakland Coliseum, between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. Blazing bright floodlights pour down through the night sky and illuminate the field. My legs quiver when I look up anxiously at the rows of people in the stands. Soon, there will be a pitcher, batter, catcher, and an umpire in my place, but for this moment, it’s just me.
When I bring my right hand to my chest over my pounding heart, my veins pulse like tribal drums. I feel the same driving rhythm in the fingers of my left hand as I bring the wireless microphone up to my mouth. My body is an electric wire that races with current, while everything in the coliseum seems like it’s slowed almost to a stop.
As one drop of sweat rolls down the side of my face, I take in a deep breath and begin to sing. Music vibrates out of my lungs, throat, and mouth into the 35,000 seats filled with baseball fans.
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The Oakland A’s were playing the visiting Texas Rangers that night. It was a warm and pleasant June evening in 2012. Perfect for a game of Major League Baseball.
I had loved baseball since I was six years old when my family brought me to see my first game. The Minnesota Twins played the Kansas City Royals at the Met just outside Minneapolis. Before the Metrodome was built with its indoor air-conditioning, I watched Rod Carew play against George Brett under the stars. Little me with my baseball cap pulled down low just the way I liked it.
Scraping melting scoops of ice cream off a wooden spoon with my teeth while I checked for splinters with my tongue, I watched the game intently. Waiting to quickly put on my glove to catch a fly ball or a home run. The slow splendor of the game under lights. Big and bold and beautiful.
It was my first time experiencing the romance, the drama, and the glorious rhythm of baseball. Played at its own tempo with no time limit. No clock. Just nine players on a field versus the other players at bat, on base, or waiting in the dugout. Like music, baseball was played, but instead of a song, players used their talents to play a game.
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By young adulthood, I no longer followed baseball. All my baseball cards were destroyed in a fire and my life was swept up by music. But I still got excited when I went to a game.
I watched Kirby Puckett and the Twins win the World Series twice. I caught the Diamondbacks while I was performing on tour in Arizona. And I celebrated the Giants when they won the Series for the first time in San Francisco. Every time, I savored the melody, beat, and beauty of baseball.
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When that June night at Oakland Coliseum arrived, I had become an award-winning songwriter and musician with six full-length records, three EPs, and numerous singles and music videos. I had a discography of over 100 songs, I’d toured throughout the United States several times, and recently completed a sixth European tour. My career was on a high.
A friend of a friend of a family member who worked for the A’s knew who I was. He’d heard about the galavanting international piano guy, thought I might be good at singing the national anthem, and asked me to send a demo to the team. I jumped at the opportunity. So, I booked time at a studio I worked out of, sang a quick a cappella version of the anthem, and sent it off.
The A’s sent me an email a few weeks later. They wanted me to sing for them and I was elated. I became an excited six-year-old again, soon to return to the magical, mystical, romantic world of baseball, but this time as a singer. And the coliseum would be the largest venue I’d ever performed in.
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Suddenly, spinning in a sea of nerves, with imposter syndrome rearing its head, I questioned myself. Why me? Why had I been allowed to sing at home plate?
My confidence shook further when I questioned the material. I’d never been a patriotic person; I was a counterculture, anti-authoritarian punk. The press called me the barefoot punk pianist, and now I was going to open the game by singing the U.S. national anthem.
What made me feel more secure was that Barack Obama was president, and I loved him. As a Progressive from birth, I would proudly sing the Star-Spangled Banner when America had our first Black president who was also an articulate, intelligent, and great leader.
Imposter syndrome remained. Could my voice do the task? I was a songwriter first; a pianist and a performer second. My voice — heavily influenced by other non-trained-yet-successful singers like Tom Waits, Michael Stipe, and David Gray — was merely a tool I used to tell the stories in my songs. I knew that my voice would be on display by itself.
And the Star-Spangled Banner was difficult. It jumped musically in strange ways, so it was important to choose a key that worked for low and high registers.
If I was Beyoncé, it wouldn’t be an issue. But I got my start singing on stages behind barns in Midwest farm fields and punk rock stages fronting alternative-rock bands, so I rehearsed constantly for a couple of weeks.
As I practiced, I realized that the song’s lyricist, Francis Scott Key, had written some complicated stanzas. I understood that it was a poem from 200 years ago, but we don’t use words like ramparts in common language or lyrics anymore. Also, I discovered that it was in 6/8 time. That meant the song was sung in threes, as a kind of waltz or pub song.
Despite my overthinking, I knew that none of that crossed the minds of half-beer-drunk, peanut-gobbling adults or six-year-olds with baseballs sparkling in their eyes. After the anthem’s singer had sung and disappeared from the Jumbotron screen, fans could take their hands from their hearts, watch the players take the field, and wait for the umpire to yell, “Play ball!”
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That June afternoon, as I drove deep into Oakland on Interstate 880 with the coliseum rising in front of me, I was the one who’d be on the Jumbotron.
I arrived with my longtime drummer and friend, Alex, along with Cindy and Cameron, my media duo. After we entered the coliseum, the three of them were shown their way to their seats, and I was whisked back into the bowels of the great and expansive building.
My only experience at the coliseum up to that point had been seeing The Rolling Stones in concert. Now, I was deep inside the buzzing Major League Baseball rooms and offices. Signing paperwork, receiving payment, and being given my assignment.
The young woman behind the desk was pretty and blond and all-business. She’d done all this before. I was just another singer.
She said, “Okay. So, we’ll bring you out on the field while autographs are being signed. That’s when they’ll take your photo.”
“Where will I be for that?” I asked.
“On the field. By the mound.”
The pitcher’s mound, I thought. Oh, man. I was giddy.
Dressed in dress slacks, a button-up shirt, and black dress shoes — wardrobe as requested by the A’s — I was used to performing without shoes. As the barefoot pianist, it was part of my schtick.
“Are you sure I can’t sing barefoot?” I asked, trying to persuade her.
“No.” Her answer was quick and sharp. “It’s time to soundcheck.”
A view of the field from above at Oakland Coliseum – Photo by Matt Dodd
She escorted me through rooms that went through doors that went into halls that went into other rooms. A labyrinth. Large groups of fans appeared and disappeared as I was escorted by people in baseball uniforms and past others in giant, furry hot dog costumes. There were ice machines, racks of baseball bats, and janitors pushing carts of trash. Then, down some stairs and back up a ramp that led onto the field right between the dugouts.
The lights were like the sun. Electricity pulsed. My heart was pumping like a locomotive, and my mind was shoveling coal into the furnace of my anxiety. Nerves mixed with excitement and that added to the complete psychedelic irrationality of where I was.
On my left from the dugout, I heard players call out in succession:
“Hey, man!”
“Singer, what up!?”
“¡Oye, cantante!”
It was the A’s. All in uniform. Green and gold and white. Josh Reddick and Yoenis Céspedes. Jemile Weeks and Kila Ka’aihue. Even Craig Gentry was there, sharing my name and ready to play against the Rangers.
I didn’t know if the players were greeting me or poking fun. It didn’t matter. Jocks had often teased and bullied me for being the piano-playing geek, and I still felt partially like that person. I may have been a baseball fan, but I was a horrific player, and, as a kid, I’d generally been picked last for most teams. But that night, I would be the one starting the game.
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A sound tech greeted me and brought me out between home plate and the pitcher’s mound. I turned around and looked up through the netting at the thousands of people in their seats while she put monitors into both of my ears and gave me a wireless microphone.
“We’re going to need you to sing some after we get the monitors working,” the tech said, smiled at me, and added, “You’re gonna be great.” Then, she walked back into the coliseum.
My head spun, but that was quickly interrupted by my ear monitors. They cracked, buzzed, shorted out, and came back in.
Then, I heard, “Yeah, ready to sssss…”
The sound was in my right ear, then my left, then both ears.
“Soundcheck ready.”
Silence.
Then, “Wait…okay. Go.”
It was all instinct. I knew how to soundcheck. So, I started singing the first stanza of the Star-Spangled Banner.
My voice resonated in my monitors, and then it echoed out into the 35,000-seat outdoor space and returned. I heard myself bounce off the coliseum five seconds after I sang, and my voice crossed over what I heard in the monitors packed into my ears. It was disconcerting.
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Soundcheck ended and I walked around on the field with Stomper the Jolly Elephant and a two-legged palomino horse named Rangers Captain. Mascots for both teams. Children were sandwiched together with extra large bank checks. Graying men in dark suits smiled, shook hands, and looked serious. I found my friends and media crew, Alex, Cindy, and Cameron, in the stands and waved.
Everything was in slow motion and fast-paced at the same time. One moment, I was taking photos, smiling, and posing like I had a thousand times before at my shows, then I was in a small room, by myself, waiting to be brought back out onto the field.
There in the room, I ran the lyrics over and over in my head. Americans had all been trained to know the words to the Star-Spangled Banner, but did anyone really know them? When faced with singing the song for a massive coliseum filled with baseball fans, the words “O’er the ramparts” seemed like a foreign language. An alien tongue.
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Rapidly, I was escorted back out and under the explosively bright lights that lit up the field of green with straight lines of brown dirt and white paint. Colors that seemed to be from another planet, and I was the astronaut who had landed there. About to sing in the language of the planet’s creatures.
I stood beside the Ranger’s dugout, careful not to look at the visiting team, and watched the first pitch being thrown by a middle-aged man with a smile the size of the sky. He was extremely excited to be there and his pitch bounced before it made it to the catcher.
I felt a gentle shove, knew it was time, and I walked out to the space between the mound and home base. My legs were rubber. It was like I was getting ready to take a swing on a three-two pitch with bases loaded and down by three runs at the bottom of the ninth. But I was ready to play ball. To play music. To use my voice and sing.
The announcer returned and said, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, to honor America…please rise and remove your caps for our National Anthem…as performed by Gentry Bronson!”
I took my stance, held my right hand to my heart, pulled the microphone up to my mouth with my other hand, and began.
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My breathy baritone was purposefully low at first. Time slowed, words slid from my mouth, and I heard the lyrics bounce back seconds later.
Careful not to be thrown off, I gained momentum when I sang, “…and the rockets red glare…” Then my left ear monitor started crackling. But I knew to never stop in a performance — not even if something went wrong — so I carried on without a pause.
When I got to, “…land of the free…” I heard my left ear monitor disappear completely. But I was nearly there, nearly to the finale, and I held out the word “free” for a good long exaltation of achievement. The crowd cheered. And I touched back down to earth when I reached “…and the home of the brave.”
With applause and whoops raining down, I lifted my arm to the sky, looked up into the stands as if I’d just hit a home run, smiled, waved, and started off the field.
I hadn’t knocked it out of the park. It was more of a ground ball single, but I’d made it safely on base. Instead of an operatic aria, I’d given an alterna-rock everyman performance that was all me, and I’d proudly given it all.
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That night, when I walked off the field, my baseball heroes and musical inspirations came together. George Brett and Tom Waits. Rod Carew and Michael Stipe. Kirby Puckett and David Gray.
Under the big, bright lights in Oakland, I sang the national anthem in front of thousands of people and brought together my lifelong love for music and the game of baseball.
As I made my way past the dugout, up the ramp, and into the coliseum, I heard the umpire yell, “Play ball!”