{"id":688,"date":"2009-11-09T12:58:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T16:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clients.chrisvanpatten.com\/theatreaficionado.com\/2009\/11\/kelli-ohara-sings-god-bless-america.html"},"modified":"2009-11-09T12:58:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-09T16:58:00","slug":"kelli-ohara-sings-god-bless-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=688","title":{"rendered":"Kelli O&#8217;Hara sings &quot;God Bless America&quot;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It made the Broadway press circuit late Wednesday afternoon that <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">South Pacific <\/span>star Kelli O&#8217;Hara would be singing &#8220;God Bless America&#8221; at the seventh inning stretch of World Series Game 6. As I am a big Yankee fan, I was excited that I would be seeing one of my favorite Broadway talents performing. However, the seventh inning stretch came and went over the course of a long commercial break. The dips at Fox decided that it was more important to see a commercial for DJ Hero instead. Turns out they don&#8217;t like to air the segment, and only did for the first game, where a decidedly mediocre singer from West Point did the honors. (The games aired on the YES Network always air the segment).<\/p>\n<p>After 9\/11, the Yankees have supplanted &#8220;Take Me Out to the Ball Game&#8221; with &#8220;God Bless America,&#8221; a tradition that has remained in place. For most regular games at Yankee Stadium, they play an abbreviated version of Kate Smith&#8217;s rendition. However, for special games such as opening day, Irish tenor Ronan Tynan would sing the song. But he got in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/10\/17\/sports\/baseball\/17pins.html?em\">trouble<\/a> a couple weeks ago for making a bad anti-Semitic joke and the Yankees were having none of that, so they canceled his booking for the rest of the 2009 season.<\/p>\n<p>I checked Twitter trending topics to discover folks at the game saying things such as &#8220;Best rendition ever heard at the Stadium,&#8221; and other rave reviews for the stunning soprano. Least of which, the Yankees won the Series that evening. Now, better late than never is a clip of O&#8217;Hara singing &#8220;God Bless America,&#8221; taken by someone in the stands at the stadium that evening (so there are some non-Kelli O&#8217;Haras singing, but I do enjoy the one person who says &#8220;Ooh, what a voice!&#8221; midsong).<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/QBqWs-Imj2A&amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;color2=0xcfcfcf&amp;hl=en&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;fs=1\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/QBqWs-Imj2A&amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;color2=0xcfcfcf&amp;hl=en&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It made the Broadway press circuit late Wednesday afternoon that South Pacific star Kelli O&#8217;Hara would be singing &#8220;God Bless America&#8221; at the seventh inning stretch of World Series Game 6. As I am a big Yankee fan, I was excited that I would be seeing one of my favorite Broadway talents performing. However, the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=688\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Kelli O&#8217;Hara sings &quot;God Bless America&quot;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1667,2179,2407,2408],"class_list":["post-688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-kelli-ohara","tag-miscellaneous","tag-world-series","tag-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}