Stephen Saharic, center, is pictured on the set of WFAN’s Boomer & Carton show, which is hosted by former NFL star quarterback Boomer Esiason, left, and Craig Carton.

w15_IMG_20141106_105527_r1_inline.jpg

Stephen Saharic, center, is pictured on the set of WFAN’s Boomer & Carton show, which is hosted by former NFL star quarterback Boomer Esiason, left, and Craig Carton.

Photography: 
Al Dukes

Stephen Saharic was getting steamed as he inched along Route 78 during his morning commute to Rutgers, listening to his favorite sports radio talk show, Boomer & Carton, on WFAN in New York. The traffic was no help—but neither was cohost Craig Carton’s critique of the choice to have operatic mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato perform the “Star-Spangled Banner” before game seven of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals.

Saharic, a junior who is  a vocal performance major  at Mason Gross School of the Arts, thought an opera singer was the perfect choice—as  he himself knew, having sung the national anthem in his  deep baritone before a New Jersey Devils hockey game at Newark’s Prudential Center in January 2014. “The comments aggravated me a little because  I believe opera singers can sing the anthem well,” says Saharic,  a national finalist at the Classical Singer Vocal Competition in San Antonio, Texas, last May. “It’s nice to bring a classical idea to the song, to sing it in the way  it was sung when they first  finished it.”

And Saharic did just that when he phoned the radio station, made it on the air, and belted out the “Star-Spangled Banner” for the show’s hosts, while fellow commuters cast disbelieving glances at the guy in the Ford Explorer singing with such gusto. Next thing Saharic knew, he was invited to visit the studio in November, where he demonstrated an easy rapport with Boomer Esiason and Craig Carton, singing operatic versions of rap songs and poking fun, in song, at New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez’s history of steroid abuse. His larger mission, though, was to persuade the well-known hosts to change their opinion.

“I don’t understand why people in the sports world would find classical music negative, and vice versa,” says Saharic, who played defensive end and offensive tackle at North Hunterdon High School in Clinton Township, New Jersey, before a hip injury sidelined him for good. “I wanted to say to Boomer and Carton: ‘I came from both worlds, and I’ve  done it.’”