Rebooted Pro Ball League Went of the Rails the Moment a Motown Legend Butchered the National Anthem

Fergie turned the national anthem into an NBA punchline back in 2018.

A Motown legend just walked into the same minefield at women's baseball's historic return.

What happened next left players fighting not to laugh on live television.

Rockford Peaches Legend Watched the Anthem Unravel From the Pitcher's Mound

The Women's Pro Baseball League finally arrived Saturday night at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois.

It was the first professional women's baseball game played on American soil in nearly three decades.

The Los Angeles Queens and New York Heights packed a sold-out 4,000-seat stadium for a night three decades in the making.

Then Martha Reeves stepped to the microphone.

The 85-year-old Motown icon, best known for fronting Martha and the Vandellas on hits like "Dancing in the Street," was joined by two other singers for "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Nobody was ready for what came next.

None of the three singers landed on the same key to start, and the gap between them never closed.

By the second verse the harmony had fully broken down, with one of the two backup singers falling silent altogether.

Sports reporter Kendall Baker posted the clip on X, writing that nothing could have prepared him for what he'd just witnessed at the ballpark.

The video pulled in nearly two million views by Sunday morning.

Cameras caught the real story sitting in the stands and standing on the field.

One couple in the crowd smirked and fought back laughter as the anthem dragged on.

A player on the field bit her own tongue trying to keep a straight face.

More than once Reeves stepped back from the mic like she needed a breath, then carried the anthem's final line by herself while the stadium went quiet, finishing the song alone before the applause finally broke the tension.

The crowd erupted in applause anyway, more out of relief than admiration.

Reeves Joins a Long List of Anthem Legends Who Learned the Hard Way

America has been here before, and the 65-and-up crowd remembers every one of these disasters.

Roseanne Barr butchered the anthem at a 1990 Padres game so badly it became a national scandal.

Carl Lewis, the Olympic sprinting legend, delivered a version at a 1993 NBA Finals game that still gets ranked among the worst ever.

Then came Fergie in 2018, whose sultry, off-key rendition at the NBA All-Star Game had Draymond Green and half of Staples Center struggling not to laugh on camera.

Fergie later admitted to TMZ that her "risk" backfired badly.

"I'm a risk taker artistically, but clearly this rendition didn't strike the intended tone," Fergie said.

Reeves has not issued any statement responding to Saturday's reaction, and her decades of Motown hits will likely outlast one rough night in Springfield.

https://x.com/kendallbaker/status/2083732108166533276“>https://x.com/kendallbaker/status/2083732108166533276

A 99-Year-Old Rockford Peach Delivered the Night's Real Moment

The anthem stumble threatened to overshadow something far more important happening on that same field.

Maybelle Blair, 99 years old and seated in a wheelchair, threw the ceremonial first pitch to San Francisco Firebells captain Kelsie Whitmore.

Blair played for the real Rockford Peaches in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the 1940s and '50s league immortalized in A League of Their Own.

Fans who grew up on that movie drove in from as far as Minnesota and Missouri just to watch her throw it.

The Queens went on to erase an early deficit and win the league's first-ever game 10-8.

Maggie Foxx recorded the WPBL's first hit, and Danae Benites launched its first home run.

Rain fell through most of the night, but nobody in that stadium left early.

The Anthem Flub Won't Be What People Remember in a Decade

Nobody's grandfather is going to remember the score of Game 1.

He's going to remember Martha Reeves pulling back from that microphone and a ballplayer biting her tongue trying not to laugh on live television.

Anthem disasters have been a running joke in American sports for decades now, and Springfield just added the newest chapter.

Women's professional baseball waited three decades for a comeback, and it got one bookended perfectly, a 99-year-old Rockford Peach who lived the league's first chapter, and a national anthem that instantly joined the history books for all the wrong reasons.

Sometimes the moment that goes viral isn't the one anybody planned for, and that's exactly what makes it unforgettable.

Sources:

• Cassandra MacDonald, "MUST SEE: Nothing Can Prepare You for the Women's Pro Baseball League Opener's Shockingly Strange Rendition of National Anthem," The Gateway Pundit, August 2, 2026.
• "Women's Pro Baseball League gets started with brutal national anthem rendition," OutKick via Fox News, August 2, 2026.
• "1st Women's Pro Baseball League Game Includes National Anthem Blunder, Iconic First Pitch," TODAY, August 2, 2026.
• "First pitch arrives in Springfield for Women's Pro Baseball League: 'We're ballplayers, too,'" Chicago Sun-Times, August 1, 2026.
• Morgan Evans, "Roseanne Barr says Fergie's national anthem performance was worse than her 1990 rendition," Fox News, February 19, 2018.
• Adrienne Gibbs, "National Anthem All-Star Game Fergie Apologizes for Subpar Star-Spangled Banner NBA," Forbes, February 20, 2018.