The following is an excerpt from an Oct. 29 New York Times story about Wichita State University alumna and renowned opera star Joyce DiDonato singing the National Anthem at Game 7 of the World Series.
The Royals starter Jeremy Guthrie was not the only person with Kansas City ties who spent Tuesday fervently hoping for the opportunity to perform on Wednesday at a World Series Game 7. The opera singer Joyce DiDonato, who grew up in Kansas City as an avid baseball fan, got the call from Major League Baseball to sing the national anthem for the game, should it be necessary.
DiDonato, who performed at Carnegie Hall on Sunday, was first asked if she could appear on short rest in Tuesday’s Game 6, but she said that she was committed to teaching a master class for four middle-school students in New York on Tuesday. "I thought about it for two seconds," DiDonato said Tuesday, "but I just couldn’t do that to the students. If I was 13 like them and the class got canceled, I would cry for a month."The push to include DiDonato, a renowned mezzo-soprano who won a Grammy in 2012, in the anthem rotation began with a social media petition with the hashtag #letJoycesing and gathered momentum when she emerged as the top vote-getter in a poll on The Kansas City Star’s website. DiDonato, 45, was in Paris performing in Handel’s opera “Alcina” on the eve of Game 1 at Kauffman Stadium.