By Barry Porterfield
Pauls Valley’s Ezra Poe, and more specifically his voice, will soon step back into a patriotic spotlight now familiar to him for years.
Poe will tap into his experience of once singing America’s national anthem before major league spring baseball games to do the same a little closer to home in just a matter of a few days.
His next turn at the anthem will come this Wednesday, July 25, before the start of an Oklahoma Redhawks’ minor league baseball game in Oklahoma City’s Bricktown Ballpark.
The act is not new to Poe because of the years he sang before spring training games when he lived in Florida.
Poe has since returned to Pauls Valley, where he was born and raised.
“They have open auditions in March,” Poe said, referring to the anthem and the Redhawks.
“They had about 250 people audition for about 70 to 75 positions, and I was one of those selected,” he said.
In this particular case positions means the number of people and groups that will perform the Star Spangled Banner before the Redhawks’ home ball games this season.
“They have different performers every night. Every once and a while they’ll have a person do two but not very often,” Poe said.
After the song is done Poe can then choose to take advantage of the four free game tickets he receives for singing the anthem.
Although Poe hasn’t done this before with the Redhawks he did sing the country’s anthem before games from 2000 to 2005 when he lived in Florida.
He resided only a handful of miles away from the spring training facility of the major league Florida Marlins.
So, Poe decided to try something new and take part in an open audition to sing the anthem before 17 home games for the Marlins during their training period that year.
With as many as 200 others going through the audition, Poe was twice selected to sing the anthem.
The next year the Marlins left and the Montreal Expos, a team that has since moved to Washington and became the Nationals, then started using the Florida facility for spring training.
Not having to audition at that point Poe contacted the Expo team about his anthem singing and was simply assigned some spring games for a couple of seasons.
Later, after the Expos turned into the Nationals, Poe used his vocal talents to sing the anthem before some Nationals’ spring games and three or four a year during the season for their minor league team.
“They would have me sing for the fireworks nights and things like that,” he said.
“That’s when the big crowds were there, so they wanted somebody they could depend on to do it right.”
According to Poe, he got those assignments because of his traditional renditions of the national song.
“I know how to do it. I sing it the way it’s supposed to be sung. I’m very traditional. I don’t play around with it to do it in my own style,” he said.
