WASHINGTON — The Washington Nationals held tryouts at Nationals Park Saturday morning, but they weren’t scouting for a new shortstop or relief pitcher; they were looking for some national anthem performers.
“This is another signal that games are right around the corner,” Nationals entertainment director Tom Davis said. “We are less than a month away.”
A few dozen participants waited out in the cold weather early Saturday morning to make sure they weren’t late to the audition.
Normally, these singing hopefuls would make their best pitch — or hit their best pitch, in this case — outdoors in the stadium. But with the subfreezing temperatures, auditions were held on the same platform manager Dusty Baker and Nationals players do their postgame news conferences.
As they would for a hitting prospect, evaluators were looking for certain things in a potential singer.
“Number one, 90 seconds is our threshold for timing. A little bit less than that is fine, but no more than 90 seconds because obviously with pregame ceremonies and everything, we are on a timed schedule,” Davis explained. Secondly, “We are in the nation’s capital, so as traditional as possible.”
Participants were excited to have the opportunity to participate.
“I love the Nationals, and I’ve been wanting to do this for a really long time,” shared Elissa Frankle. “I think this is the seventh year that I’ve been like ‘I’m going to do it this year.'”
She was actually planning to go down to West Palm Beach for spring training but had to cancel at the last minute.
“But because I wasn’t at spring training, I happened to be on Twitter when the announcement came down about the auditions and just wanted to make sure I got in as soon as possible,” she said.
Others had a difficult time believing the auditions were real.
“I actually did not know this was a thing,” Mark Sullivan chuckled. “I happened to see something on Twitter and I was like ‘Is this real?’ Even when I got an email yesterday, I was like ‘This might be fake, I don’t know.'”
Sullivan is a big baseball fan and loves to sing, so he said putting to two together is simply a dream come true.
Like the players who work their way through the system to end up on the major league squad, these hopefuls made sure they got practice.
Well, some practice.
“Oh literally, like last night, just made sure that I knew the words and watched all of my favorite performances of the national anthem on YouTube,” Brooke Nicholas said after her audition. But even that practice was too much for her.
“I got tripped up watching the fails,” she said. “I watched some of the worst ever, and that was not a good idea.”
This was her first time auditioning to sing the national anthem. She decided to go for it because she is the coach for her son’s T-ball team, and her son is obsessed with Bryce Harper.
Others stepped up to the stage with prior experience.
K.J. Jacks auditioned last year and decided to give it another go.
“I picked a different key this year. Jazzed it up a little bit, just tried to make it different, but every time you sing it it is fun.”
Others aren’t just auditioning again; some have actually performed for the team before, like Tony Dennis.
“I love the Washington Nationals; they are my favorite team, and it is just an honor to sing the national anthem anywhere you go,” said Dennis. He also has sung the national anthem at Washington Wizards games.
But singing a song that everyone knows — or a song everyone says they know — in front of about 40,000 people is not easy to do.
“One of the best pieces of public speaking advice I ever got was when you get up there to give a speech, or sing the anthem, everyone wants you to succeed; no one wants you to fail,” Frankle said. “So in that case, you have 30,000 people, plus the teams and the coaches and everybody else, there wanting you to do really well, and that’s the kind of thing that can imbue you to do even better.”
Assuming, of course, there aren’t mean-spirited visiting fans from certain cities.
Will these hopefuls be ready if they get the call?
“Oh, totally. I’m here,” Nicholas said assertively. “And we would buy out the stadium. My family and friends would buy out the stadium just to come. That would be amazing.”
Jacks would need a little more time to be ready.
“I will call my voice teacher and get very prepared for that.”
They are all hoping to get that call from the manager — well, entertainment director — for their turn to take the field at Nationals Park this season.
