Coming back to a baseball stadium, especially in his hometown of Atlanta, makes Zac Brown feel like a kid again.
Brown was a kid when he performed the national anthem for the first time in front of a large audience. It just happened to be before a Braves game at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in the 1990s.
"I was nervous then," Brown said in an interview on Overpromised with Covino & Rich prior to Tuesday's MLB All-Star Game. "It's pretty easy now."
Brown and his eponymous, Grammy-winning band belted out a beautiful rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" before the 95th Midsummer Classic at Truist Park. That may have been business as usual for Brown. But getting to meet some of baseball's biggest stars? That is always thrilling.
"My son just met Elly De La Cruz and that just made his day, because we've been watching that dude's highlights," Brown said. "Man, he's an absolute alien."
Brown never played baseball growing up, but he loved the game. Dale Murphy and Bob Horner were his favorite Braves as a child, and he was actually in attendance for Horner's four-homer performance in 1986. Brown also got paid in baseball cards while working at a card shop in nearby Cumming, Ga.
"Baseball cards were my life," said Brown, who mentioned that an Eric Davis rookie card was his most coveted.
"They printed, like, nine billion of those Topps cards," he joked. "They are still around. You can still get the piece of gum out of there and break your teeth on it. ... Those cards, when I look at [them], it takes me right back to when I was a kid."
Nearly 40 years later, Brown and his band are preparing to release their eighth studio album, "Love & Fear," this December.
"Thanks to Major League Baseball for helping us to spread the word [about the album] and to be such an incredible partner," he said. "Such incredible people, and for helping out with 'Hop' as well."
"Hop" is John Driskell Hopkins, a founding member of Zac Brown Band. Hopkins was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, in 2021. The following year, he began the Hop On A Cure charity to help fund ALS research.
"MLB has been incredible, helping to spread awareness for that as well," Brown said. "So, amazing people. Just stoked to be a part of it."