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The Anthem Guys
It was the start of a great adventure. That summer I performed the anthem solo on a cornet for several teams in the Southeast as my son stood next to me. From the second year on, Marcus joined me behind the microphone. He'd been playing the baritone horn in his school band and couldn't wait to perform "The Star-Spangled Banner" to kick off the games. Over the course of five summers, he and I racked up these stats: We played 70 anthems (63 U.S. and 7 Canadian) at 59 baseball parks (some were repeat performances). We logged 22,000 miles in the car and stayed in 91 motels in 35 states and two Canadian provinces. Marcus and I took to calling ourselves the Anthem Guys, a nickname given to us by a player in Fargo, North Dakota.People responded warmly to our little father-and-son road show. They gave us souvenirs, and some newspapers wrote stories about us, resulting in pleasant meetings with others who came out to hear us play.
In Billings, Montana, at a game between the Billings Mustangs and the Ogden (Utah) Raptors, Marcus caught his first foul ball. The assistant general manager asked me to leave the ball with him, and a few weeks after we got home, a package arrived for Marcus. It was the ball from Billings, covered with autographs from the players. It confirmed that those who worked in minor-league baseball weren't too busy or self-absorbed to make a memory for a little kid.
Once, in Toledo, Ohio, as we left the field after playing the anthem for the Mud Hens, an umpire approached us. As he got closer, he reached into his pouch and handed Marcus a game ball. "Great job, kid," he said.
When we did have the opportunity to play for some major-league teams, we jumped at it, of course. The Toronto Blue Jays, Detroit Tigers, Montreal Expos, Milwaukee Brewers and Boston Red Sox all gave us a warm welcome. It was as thrilling for us to walk onto a big-league field as it must have been for a rookie called up from the minors.
When we got back home after our trip the third summer -- a five-week odyssey that took us from New York to Washington State and back -- we hung a map highlighting routes we'd taken in Marcus's room. We would look at it as well as the team pennants and think of summers to come.
In June 1999 Steve Fennessy of the Rochester, New York, Democrat and Chronicle interviewed me before the tour that would bring us to his city. His story read in part: "How long will this go on? Marcus, after all, is 12. 'We'll do it together as long as he wants to do it,' Hedwig says. 'If he says "Let's take a break on this," that's cool. It's been a great joy to share together. But for now, I don't see an end to it.'"
Ironically, by the time the article ran in August, our idyll's finish was in view. That summer as we traveled around New England, upstate New York and eastern Canada on our fifth anthem tour, my son and I bickered. Sometimes Marcus wanted to skip the game and just stay in the motel. In the car, instead of chatting with me, like he'd always done, he kept his head bent over his Game Boy.
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