Country superstar Brad Paisley made history Monday night—and this time it wasn't going to be a platinum record.
The singer sang the national anthem during the iconic World Series game, an 18-inning game between Los Angeles Dodgers And Toronto Blue Jays. The Dodgers won 6–5 on Freddie Freeman's homer to end Game 3 nearly seven hours after Paisley pitched.
This marathon set the record for the longest World Series game, and Paisley performed the anthem before the previous one. It was seven years and one day ago that the Dodgers beat the Boston Red Sox, also in Game 3. He also performed the anthem before the 11-inning Game 2 of the 2017 World Series and the 10-inning Game 1 in Los Angeles last year.
In an interview with The Associated Press via Zoom on Tuesday, Paisley called himself “Mr. Baseball” and talked about his love for the Dodgers. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
AP: How did a country superstar from West Virginia become a Dodgers fan?
PAISLEY: We lived here for a while, married an actress – we got married in 2003, we had a little place in Santa Monica and then a place in the Palisades, the first place we ever bought together was in the Palisades and since then it burned down this year… I've been investing here ever since. And it was a club that, as you know, is a local team from one of the places where we live. It's like we have nothing in Nashville other than the Sounds (Triple-A team), who are great. It's fun, but it's not the big league. And yes, I would take my children to these games. I met a lot of people there. … It was just an easy transition into it. I grew up playing pirate games. My father liked Indians.
To have a team to invest in and then to become really good friends with Clayton Kershaw and Justin Turner and those guys… they're great people. Dave Roberts became a good friend of mine. Many of the front office people, Andrew Friedman…we've had adventures together. … It's a slow progression to the point where you become addicted to something. And I got there pretty quickly a while ago.
AP: And now you hold the record: You sang the national anthem at the two longest games in World Series history.
PAISLEY: I have a friend who introduced me to Johnny Bench (Hall of Fame catcher) a while back and I got to know Johnny a little bit. And I said, “Hey, tell Bench I've got one in the record books with him.” But it's strange. It's actually a great feeling to be a footnote in something.
It's nice to know that I sang the anthem at a couple of the four Dodger games that ever happened. The other two were still before me. … And especially one that was 18 innings.
And last night, around the 16th inning, I thought, “There's no way this is going to happen again.” And here we go. And it was really neat. When it ended last night, I sat in the seat and just looked, “Okay, what does this even mean?” And I didn't even realize then that until today, when a couple of these statisticians started collecting data, I had never done this, and it didn't go mainstream. That's why today I said that I am also ready to participate in football matches. If someone wants to, you know, knock another quarter or two out of their team.
AP: Given your track record, did you expect there to be more innings in yesterday's game?
PAISLEY: No, I fully, I fully expected this to actually end at nine, maybe for the first time in a long time, you know.
I'm cursed. No, I don't think so. … It's wild. It's fun. I think it's a really funny thing.
AP: Not a curse, but a trend.
PAISLEY: Yeah, let's definitely not call it a curse, because to me it's definitely one of those weird fun facts that baseball is famous for. It's so strange. Just like last night, there's always something you've never seen before. For example, (Shohei) Ohtani gets on base nine times. This must have happened for the first time in history.
This is what Brad Pitt says in Moneyball. It's like, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”
PAISLEY: I should be Mr. More Baseball. Here's the new nickname.
