IT WAS THAT MOMENT just before the start of a sporting event when the crowd sets aside its anticipatory frenzy and quiets down for that most American of communal rituals.

But on that cold February night at Briggs Cage, there was no crackly 45 to blare the National Anthem through tinny speakers. There was no sugar-sweet soprano behind whom fans could mumble the timeworn lyrics.

There was only Danny Ramos and a two-bit marching band.

Ramos now says he didn't intend to butcher "The Star Spangled Banner" that night. And he certainly didn't intend to be dismissed summarily from his job as announcer for the women's basketball team as a result of his performance.

But that's exactly what happened.

He had lured about 20 of his closest friends to the Yale game with a sterling promise: he would croon the national anthem as he had one earlier in the season. The friends showed up, but so did the Harvard Band.

That's when the trouble started.

When Ramos had volunteered to sing the anthem earlier in the season--the record player was broken--he had done it a cappella and performed admirably.

But this time, the band accompanied Ramos, and he didn't hit a single note. "By the time I got to the bombs bursting in air, my lungs were bursting in my chest," the Kirkland House senior recalls.

Both basketball coaches were upset. An assistant athletic director was incensed. Some of the players grumbled.

Ramos was fired on the spot.

Friends say that the Rosanne Barresque rendition of the Anthem was vintage Ramos--a spirited, clownish performance meant to attract more people to a women's basketball game.

"It was really a funny sight because the kid can't sing, but he was giving it his all, moving his arms around," says three-year friend. Timothy J. Burnieika '91. "He was just doing it to be Danny--grabbing the microphone to sing the national anthem in a screechy, high-pitched voice because he can't do any better. That's him."

RAMOS HAS SPENT much of his life on the periphery of the action, cheering it on with a passion few can match. He draws his strength--and, ironically, his individuality--from groups. "People always say, 'Danny, are you ever down?'" Ramos says. "Maybe I am, but that's when I'm alone. When I'm with people I just can't be down."

He is a graduate of William S. Hart High School in suburban Los Angeles, where he and and 20 friends founded the "Terrible 21," an organization whose only mandate was school spirit and good old-fashioned hell-raising.