It’s officially baseball season! Ben Gibbard returned to his hometown of Seattle to perform the National Anthem during Thursday’s Mariners home opener at T-Mobile Park. Fans were quick to notice how his version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” emulated the style of Death Cab For Cutie.
“ben gibbard is singing the national anthem at the mariners game and it just sounds like a death cab song,” read one tweet.
Last week, Gibbard spoke to Spin about his hopes for the Mariners in the 2024 season, predicting an 85-86 record for his team.
“If they can make it through April without shitting the bed, which they have almost never been able to do, I think they can bump that up a little and then maybe squeak in the playoffs,” Gibbard said. “For me, it’s not that it’s not that it’s make-or-break in April, of course, but they need to get off to it, they need to play above .500 in April.”
“They can’t do this thing they’ve done the last couple of seasons where they play like shit for the first six weeks and then have like a crazy hot streak and then squeak in at the last minute like they did two years ago,” he added,
Gibbard is a lifelong Mariners fan and even released a song called “Ichiro’s Theme” in 2012 in celebration of MLB legend Ichiro Suzuki. In 2020, the singer performed a cover of John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” to celebrate Opening Day amid the pandemic.
The Mariners performance comes ahead of his joint Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service tour, which starts next month. The tour will begin on April 23 in Atlanta, before stopping in cities such as Nashville, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Salt Lake City. They’ll end their tour in Portland, Oregon on May 15.
“I know for a fact I will never have a year again like 2003. The Postal Service record came out, Transatlanticism came out,” Gibbard said in a press release. “These two records will be on my tombstone, and I’m totally fine with that. I’ve never had a more creatively inspired year.”
