Possibly thanks to the involvement of Netflix, the MLB Opening Day game at Oracle Park Wednesday night featured a drone pyrotechnic show during the national anthem, with the American flag — ironically? — going up in smoke.

If you noticed a certain loud fighter jet flyover across the city Wednesday evening around 5:14 pm, you may have thought, "We're under attack from Iran," or you may have put two and two together and figured out that this was part of the opening ceremony for the Opening Day game of Major League Baseball, which was being played between the San Francisco Giants and New York Yankees at Oracle Park.

The game, for the first time, was being carried only on Netflix, which definitely irked some fans. But it might have been that Netflix money that provided the pyrotechnic drone show that produced this terrific, if unintentionally symbolic, disappearing smoke image of the American flag over McCovey Cove.

Here's a more up-close version, apparently shot from a kayak in McCovey Cove, in which you hear someone shout, "Awesome! Thank you, Netflix!"

As noted by Yahoo Sports, reactions on social media include "Was that the greatest national anthem of all time?” and “Straight chills. Best way to start the 2026 season!"

It wasn't the most auspicious start for the Giants' 2026 season, however, with the Yankees trouncing them 7-0.

And The Athletic notes that among the fans who did tune in — and who didn't just go on social media to complain about needing a Netflix subscription on top of five others to watch baseball games this year — many noticed glitches in Netflix's airing of the actual game that need to be fixed. These included "the tiny scorebug, the ad overlays causing jerseys to glitch and weird in-game cuts."

But the broadcast featured appearances by Giants legend Barry Bonds, WWE superstar John Cena, and NFL QB Jameis Winston, in addition to the flashy pre-game show, and the anthem sung by retired US serviceman Generald Wilson.

Wilson's rendition got good reviews, which is more than we can say for original-cast George Washington from Hamilton, Christopher Jackson, who seemed to forget the order of the lines in the anthem when he sang it Thursday at the Mets' Opening Day game.