Psyched Up by Daniel McGinn

Author:Daniel McGinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-05-22T11:18:17+00:00

5.

On a Monday in late April, TJ Connelly enters Fenway Park’s production booth at 2:30 P.M., to get ready for batting practice an hour later.

Connelly has flowing dark hair and a long beard. He’s dressed in a ratty black golf shirt and gray checked pants. He stands before a Yamaha soundboard, black headphones around his neck, clicking on a laptop that holds more than thirty-five thousand songs. In front of him, a breeze blows in through a large open window, and below, Red Sox players congregate around the batting cage.

A few minutes into batting practice, he’s playing rap songs like “Super Disco Breakin’” by the Beastie Boys. Many of these songs contain expletives, so Connelly has painstakingly edited “clean” versions with the profanity excised. He keeps meticulous records of what he plays, to avoid repeating songs too frequently, all the while noting the players’ reactions. During today’s batting practice they hear nineteen songs by artists including Jay Z, Cypress Hill, and Kendrick Lamar. The visiting team, in contrast, will conduct batting practice to organ music.

Some of the musical cues at Fenway are routinized. Connelly always plays the intro from the TV show Cheers fifty minutes before game time, and “Sweet Caroline” always marks the middle of the eighth inning, with the crowd singing along.

Connelly puts little thought into those preprogrammed choices. Instead, he obsesses over finding songs that fit the tone and moment of game situations. He keeps ready an entire folder of songs for rain delays, including “Here Comes the Rain Again” and “Invisible Sun.” He has a song ready in case a fan reaches out from the stands to interfere with a ball in play (“Keep Your Hands to Yourself”), or if a fan jumps onto the field during play (“What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor?”).

Tonight’s game quickly gets ugly. Four minutes after the first pitch, the Red Sox are losing by a run; eleven minutes later, they’re down by three. There is no music playing, because there’s nothing for hometown fans to celebrate.

As each Red Sox player comes to bat, Connelly queues up the batter’s walk-up song. The practice of playing specific songs for certain players dates to the 1970s, but according to a history of the practice by Daniel Brown of the San Jose Mercury News, it grew rapidly after the 1993 Seattle Mariners began playing a walk-up song for each player. For some stars, the musical introductory number becomes a key part of their identity: A generation of Yankee fans can’t hear Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” without recalling closer Mariano Rivera’s entrance from the bull pen.

Players have different motivations in choosing their walk-up songs. Connelly recalls one player using a Miley Cyrus song, because it made him think of his daughters, and he drew a connection between succeeding at the plate and being able to provide a good life for his family. Some players don’t care much about the music and let Connelly play whatever he likes. Connelly recalls relief pitcher Andrew Miller, who

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