You Botched the National Anthem…. Now What?

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Courtney Talley
July 17, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

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Monday night’s MLB Home Run Derby kicked off in a lot of the ways that you would expect. 

Players warming up, long lines for ballpark glizzys, a kid on his his 4th helmet of Dippin’ Dots, a mom sweating through her shirt and…

A botched National Anthem performance?

Scared Sutton Foster GIF by TV Land

I cannot look.

Ingrid Andress, four-time Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter, missed more than a couple of notes as she delivered the Star-Spangled Banner at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.

In a world with live televised events and Twitter, unfortunately high-profiled misses don’t fly under the radar for long.

The internet’s response was ruthless.

Fergie is somewhere popping champagne in delight that someone finally took her crown for all-time bad anthem performance. 

(Still nothing tops the reaction videos from that I swear.)

I want to be clear: this isn’t an opinion piece. The national anthem at the HR derby by Andress went less than ideal, objectively. 

I would hug her if I could. 

I can’t do that. But what I can do is share with you our mindset around mess-ups and that is this:

The only people not messing up doing the thing are the people who aren’t doing the thing at all. 

You know who has never had a post get 0 likes? People that don’t post. 

You know who has never had anyone unsubscribe from their newsletter? People that don’t write a newsletter. 

You know who has never had a catastrophic tech mess up on a webinar? People who aren’t doing webinars. 

You know who definitely hasn’t missed every note in the National Anthem during a highly televised MLB event? All of us. Because we probably haven’t sang the National Anthem during a highly televised MLB event.

Theodore Roosevelt’s Man in The Arena will hang on our office walls until it can’t hang anymore:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt, The Man in The Arena

We love you, Ingrid. 

I hope she gets another chance and I hope she absolutely kills it. 

In the arena with you. 

Xo, The Salesgirls 

Ps. After writing this article, we’ve seen that Ingrid has announced she’s been struggling with substance abuse and will be seeking treatment. We wish her the very best. 💘

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