It's Game Five of the 1968 World Series.
The Detroit Tigers are down, three games to one, against the St. Louis Cardinals--the defending champs, no less.
And a blind, twenty-something Puerto Rican takes the field armed only with a guitar...and the biggest set of huevos Tiger Stadium has ever seen.
(Prince Fielder not included.)
What follows--the first ever personal rendition of our national anthem on a large stage--is a plangently strummed, plaintively sung lament that nearly costs him his career.
Mired in the Vietnam fiasco, the 53,000 persons in attendance (and the millions more watching at home on NBC), wanted something to lift them up.
Instead, Feliciano tore them--and an entire country--down with its very own theme song.
The Tigers didn't seem to mind though; Detroit came back to beat St. Louis in seven games.
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