Ownership of the San Diego Padres passed from Joan Kroc to a group of investors, led by television producer Tom Werner, on June 14, 1990.

Not a month later, Werner had a question: “What do you think about Roseanne singing the national anthem?”

The idea was to have TV star Roseanne Barr sing the Star-Spangled Banner between games of a Reds -Padres double-header on Working Women’s Day at Jack Murphy Stadium. As executive producer of the "Roseanne" show, Werner had a special interest in Barr's appearance.

One of the people the new owner asked about the idea was Andy Strasberg, then the Padres' vice president of public relations.

Strasberg recalled it recently. The first thing he said was: “Great. Can she sing?"

“Don’t worry about it,” Werner told him.

“Why don’t we have her sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame?’” Strasberg suggested.

“She wants to sing the anthem,” Werner said.

“Why don’t we have her pre-record it so she can just enjoy herself and lip sync like everybody else?” Strasberg asked.

“No, she wants to sing it live,” Werner said.

Roseanne Barr sings the National Anthem

The Padres were purchased for $75 million by the Werner group. The Roseanne show on ABC — then the top-rated program in the country — was worth five times that much to the network.

Barr's performance is still one of the most memorable moments in Padres history. For all the wrong reasons.

Whitney Houston’s rendition of the national anthem before Super Bowl XXV remains the gold standard. Barr lowered the bar quite a bit, her version generally regarded as the worst of all time.

Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of the “Barr Strangled Banner,” as a headline put it in The San Diego Tribune. Others put it in less printable terms.

Barr still gets asked about the incident all the time, although she is very reluctant to discuss it for the record. She did release a transcript Thursday on her Web site roseanneworld.com from a recent interview she gave to the Washington Post.

"I meant no disrespect to the country and (people) fighting for the safety and freedoms of old loudmouth Jewish women," Barr said. "I’m sorry some saw it that way."

No one has butchered it like Barr. Not even close. It wasn’t just the off-key screeching or the fingers in her ears as boos rang out from the crowd of 27,285. To top it off, Barr made an obscene gesture and spit as she stepped away from the microphone.

Outrage was immediate.

“I was embarrassed as a person and I was embarrassed for them (the Padres),” Padres pitcher Eric Show told reporters afterward. “I can’t believe it happened. It’s an insult. There are people who died for that song.”

Teammate Tony Gwynn had similar feelings: “I thought it was a disgrace. When they said she was going to sing the national anthem I thought something like this was going to happen.”

So did Strasberg.

Five days before she was to sing, Barr made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

During the interview, Carson said, “I understand in a couple days you’re going to be doing the national anthem. I didn’t know you could sing.”

“Of course, I can,” Barr said.

Asked to give the audience a sample, Barr sang Kung Fu Fighting.

It was not good.

“I realized she can’t sing,” Strasberg said. “We’ve got a problem here."

Said Werner: "Don’t worry, she’s a professional."

Um, yeah.

A professional comedian. Barr had planned to ham it up a little for the crowd, which wasn’t a bright idea. Things snowballed from there.

“It was a series of unfortunate circumstances,” Strasberg said.

On The Tonight Show, Carson had warned her, "Don't start too high. Robert Goulet started too high and it was a disaster."

"The echo and no musical support caused me to do just that -- I started too high," Barr said. "I knew about six notes in that I couldn’t hit the big note, so I just tried to get thru it. But I couldn’t hear anything with 50 thousand drunks (expletive) booing, screaming you fat (expletive), giving me the finger and throwing bottles at me, during the song they ‘respect’ so much."

She quickly had a problem with the split-second delay in the audio over the stadium sound system. So Barr put her fingers in her ears.

“But the perception in the stands is that people are booing and she doesn’t want to hear the boos,” Strasberg said. “And her voice gets louder and now she’s screeching.”

Boos began almost as soon as Barr opened her mouth. Perhaps it was the comedian’s instinct, when things went south, to take it over the top. Maybe she was going for a laugh when she made it so shrill, stretching out and screeching the word “free” toward the end of the song.

But that’s not what you do with this song, and certainly not in this town.

Barr's performance didn't end with the music. She grabbed herself and spit on the ground before walking off the field. It was supposed to imitate a ballplayer but from the stands it appeared more as a gesture to the crowd. Blame Padres catcher Mark Parent. A newspaper account the next day said Parent was sitting next to Roseanne in the dugout beforehand and provided the inspiration for that little portion of the incident.

“Hey, why don’t you grab your crotch,” Parent had suggested.

“Yeah,” Barr said. “Just like a player. And I’ll spit, too.”

They laughed about it.

“I’ll do it after I sing,” Barr had said. “You know how people are about the anthem.”

She had no idea.

Barr spoke to reporters briefly after she left the field with new husband Tom Arnold, who had thrown out the first pitch.

“I thought it was great,” she said. “I did well, I think. You can tell they wanted more.”

Asked about all the booing, Barr said: “That’s just because they weren’t sitting in front.”

The incident drew national attention, providing fodder for radio shows, TV commentators and newspaper columnists for weeks to come. Even president George Bush chimed in, calling it a “disgrace.”

"Had it gone better," Barr said in her Web site comments, "I would have taken a longer beat between singing and the ‘tribute’ to baseball players. But at that point, I just wanted to get out of there -- my kids were sitting in the audience and I was concerned that they would be hurt. I sent cops to retrieve them. Luckily they got out OK, and we flew home in the Padres' private jet. 'We’ve got your back, don’t worry' is the last thing the Padres and Tom Werner said, and I never heard anything from the Padres or Tom Werner after that."

Reporters tried to get to Werner in his luxury box for a comment after the incident, but he refused to come out. The team issued a statement: “The Padres understand that many people were concerned about Roseanne Barr’s rendition of the national anthem. She was doing the best she could under the circumstances of the audio delay, and she certainly meant no disrespect for the national anthem.”

The Roseanne show drew 21 million viewers a week during the 1989-1990 television season, making it the No. 1-rated show in the country. The audience dropped to fewer than 17 million viewers a week the following season. There’s no telling whether any of the dropoff was due to Barr's singing, but it couldn’t have helped.

Asked if she had any regrets, Barr said: "Do I regret that the next day all of my projects were cancelled and I had to have LAPD stand on my roof and protect my life and my kids for two years? Do I regret not being able to go out in public for about one full year without being spit on in restaurants, 7-11, etc? Do I regret Rolling Stone selling T-shirts with my picture in the middle of a gun target during Desert Storm? Do I regret that every ‘feminist’ in Hollywood ran the other way when they saw me at Hollywood functions, to avoid taking a picture with me? Do I regret my cartoon, little Rosey, the only female protagonist for children being cancelled despite good ratings and replaced with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Do I regret President George Bush 1 calling me disgraceful on television as he unleashed Desert Storm? Do I regret not one person in Hollywood defending me? Do I regret becoming aware of the toxic anti-semitisim in this country through the dozens of death threats I received?

"Actually, no, I don’t regret any of it. It was the catalyst I needed to re-connect to my Creator, who is my Source. Two years later, I was able to escape from a horrible marriage, and was in a new marriage and pregnant with my youngest son. I have sung the national anthem much better since then at various baseball games around the country. I also recorded a kids album. I’m glad that I still love to sing and that I improved as a singer since 1991."

Barr has been through several ups and downs since, but it’s obvious she never completely put the incident behind her.

Barr took another crack at the national anthem four years ago. She received voice instruction from a friend, singer Bonnie Bramlett, before belting it out at a girls softball game near her home in Hawaii. This rendition drew cheers after Barr finished the final note.

She had it all chronicled for TV in an episode of her Lifetime reality show “Roseanne’s nuts.”

During an interview on the show, Barr said, “Singing the Star Spangled Banner the first time ruined everything.” But she wanted her grand kids to know you can always try to make things right.

“Even if you’ve made a bad mistake, nobody can stop you from trying to correct it,” Barr said. “I’m a patriot of this country. I have a right to sing the Star Spangled Banner, and I’m going to do a much better job than the last time.”

That, she did.

Of course, she couldn't do any worse.