Baseball and Music

The 1989 movie Major League may have started a trend all throughout Major League baseball. The movie which was released 20 years ago, sparked the phenomenom of entrance music for relievers and at-bat music for position players. In the movie, Charlie Sheens character Ricky Vaughn becomes the closer and gains the nickname "Wild Thing." From that alone, the song of the same title was blared every time he came out to close. In the first movie, Sheen came out to the original version and in the second movie, Sheen came out to a remake by Joan Jett.

From there, two of the most recognizable closers followed suit. Trevor Hoffman (of Padres fame, but now with the Brewers) started using Hells Bells by AC/DC shortly after arriving from the Florida Marlins. Mariano Rivera (Yankees) would come out to Enter Sandman by Metallica, because of his ability to make opponents "go to sleep" in the ninth inning. From these two pioneers, almost every reliever and position player comes out to music, perhaps channeling their inner wrestler.

In professional wrestling, the Fabulous Freebirds were the first wrestlers to have their own theme. From there, other wrestlers followed suit and now when people watch wrestling, their favorite wrestler can simply be identified by their music. Most of these cases are purely unmistakable such as this, and this.

This may sound weird, but baseball is becoming the same way. Just looking at the Twins, you can tell when the players are coming to bat just based off of their music. Joe Mauer has come up to "What You Know" by T.I. Justin Morneau shows off his love for AC/DC by coming up to "TNT." (Although I'm stunned he didn't come up to the opening chords of Rock N' Roll Train) Then there's Joe Nathan...

See, at least Brewers fans have something to fire them up for when Trevor Hoffman comes out. They can play those infamous bells and you know the game is almost over. However, Nathan chose to be a little bit different. Instead of coming out to something awesome like "Indestructible" by Disturbed or "Stand Up For Rock And Roll" By Airbourne. (Or any song off their "Runnin' Wild" CD. If you haven't heard this yet, you really need to.) Instead Nathan chose to be a little bit different, which is cool and all, but I just think it's too generic. Nathan starts out with "Stand Up and Shout" By Steel Dragon segwaying into "Boom Boom Boom" by Big Head Todd and the Monsters. C'mon Joe, you're better than this!

The main thing about this is that it's awesome. Not only does it get you fired up to see your favorite player, but also you get to know them a little bit. You can tell that Denard Span likes hip-hop, but you probably wouldn't have guessed that Joe Mauer was a big T.I. guy, so thank you Mr. Vaughn and Fabulous Freebirds, your impact on the sport of baseball will not soon be forgotten.