HLN's Robin Meade did it before last year's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Sonoma, CA. Her HLN teammate, Christi Paul, did it before a Braves' game at Atlanta's Turner Field. Next Thursday, CNBC's Darren Rovell will do the same before a Rays' game at St. Petersburg's Tropicana Field prior to their home game vs. the Blue Jays. What am I referring?
The answer is singing the National Anthem. In Rovell's case, here's the background. Like yours truly, Darren has a Twitter account. Rovell tweeted his desire to sing the Anthem in an MLB ballpark about 2 months ago. The offers came in from the White Sox, Dodgers, Rays, Tigers and Pirates, and the offers were very tempting.
In the Pirates' case, Rovell wrote on his "Sports Biz" blog at CNBC.com that the Pirates would get '80s singer Huey Lewis. He was supposed to sing the Anthem prior to a game vs. the Mets and then perform a postgame concert at Pittsburgh's PNC Park. Lewis had to get ready for the concert and couldn't accommodate Rovell. The Tigers offered a full Motown experience, complete with the legendary Four Tops giving Darren a tutorial.
In the end, the Rays had the best offer for Rovell to sing both our National Anthem and the Canadian National Anthem prior to a game. As it turns out, it'll be a full blown social media day at "The Trop" prior to the August 4th matinee vs. the Jays. Rovell will sing the Anthems prior to the 11:10a (CT) start time, plus will tweet from different locations inside Tampa Bay's home ballpark during the game. It remains to be seen if Rovell will be as good as Meade and Paul, let alone if his rendition will be among the worst that 670 The SCORE's "Boers & Bernstein" have ended many of their shows with.
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