MLB has been saturated with closer entrances, and like Josh, I find it to be tiresome. Good closer entrances, like any other enduring cultural bit that baseball has to offer, work because they are organic, spontaneous, and sincere – rooted in the fan experience, or at least embraced by fans, instead of being forcefully planted by management to drive “engagement”. Making every darn closer have an entrance defeats the purpose of having closer entrances in the first place; it is the antithesis of originality,
and of fun.
However, I do love music, and Josh’s article got me thinking about the unexplored potential of music at the ballpark. A major problem with the vast majority of songs used for closer entrances is that there’s not much thematic and emotional variety among them. Most if not all songs serve as fight songs, highlighting the entering pitcher’s prowess and signaling the opposing team’s doom. That’s fun when it works – Enter Sandman and Hells Bells are the obvious examples – but when you start assigning tunes to every closer, it becomes increasingly difficult to make each song and each closer stand out, and you end up with a gelatinous mass of rah-rah music that pleases no one.
So the problem, it seems to me, is twofold. One is that the current crop of closer entrance music fails to celebrate the individuality of each closer. Some closers are overpowering, while some get by on guile; some are utterly dominant, but some just aren’t that good. This diversity should be reflected in the music associated with them. The second is that the songs cover an extremely limited range of emotions, even though baseball can elicit a wide variety of feelings. Sure, belligerence, adrenaline, and bravado are part of the game – but so is sadness, or levity, or cruel irony, or childlike joy. There is a profound humanity that we can access when we let baseball move us. Pretending that only certain emotions are valid is a disservice to ourselves and the game.
It is in this spirit that I propose giving every Yankees reliever a closer entrance. If MLB is hell-bent on making entrances a thing for every team, then why not go a step further and make it a thing for not just closers, but every bullpen arm? Yes, the vast majority of them will cycle in and out of the majors without ever making a mark. That does not mean they are worthless. In a collective sense, they are indispensable, as every MLB team needs a boatload of arms to navigate the 162-game season. And as individual athletes, they deserve recognition for having made it, however briefly, to the highest echelon of the sport.
So, without further ado, here are the songs I chose for every Yankees reliever who was on the big league roster on Opening Day, with an attendant blurb explaining my choice. Some already had strong walkout songs, in which case I did not assign them new songs, only writing a blurb on why I liked their song. I present them to you in reverse alphabetical order, for the sole reason that this way I get to start with Ryan Yarbrough and work my way to David Bednar.
Ryan Yarbrough
Current: Sade – Smooth Operator
Verdict: No change needed
In terms of aura, the lanky, unassuming, workmanlike Yarbrough couldn’t be further from the slick lover boy who is the protagonist of this song. But when you consider the amount of deception that Yarbrough employs to survive in the majors with 1st-percentile velocity, the song becomes a perfect fit. I propose that Yarbrough should walk out to this wearing a white tux and a bowler hat over his uniform, and slowly shed the tux as he approaches the mound.
Cade Winquest
Current: None
New: Intro – The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest
You can tell I put a lot of thought into this one. Maybe I’ll revisit this once we learn more about Winquest this year, but for now this will have to do.
Tim Hill
Current: 2Pac – So Many Tears
Verdict: No change needed
I didn’t clock Tim Hill as a 2Pac fan, but it makes sense given his upbringing in Los Angeles. The song choice was surprising too, as 2Pac’s bars deal with some heavy, heavy stuff – poverty, violence, and suicidal thoughts. However, it’s not like Hill has lived a carefree life. After losing his father to colon cancer at the age of 16, Hill himself was diagnosed with the same illness during spring training of 2015, missing the entire year and enduring a brutal round of chemotherapy to recover and fight his way to the bigs. Who am I to tell him he can’t enter games to 2Pac?
Brent Headrick
Current: None
New: BEYOOOOONDS – Hooke No Housoku (Hooke’s Law)
As with Cade Winquest, I know next to nothing about Brent Headrick. Unlike Cade Winquest, Brent Headrick does not have a fun surname that I can make a stupid pun about. I spent hours staring at a blank page before I found salvation on Headrick’s Baseball Savant page.
Extension is the key to Headrick’s success, the reason why his fastball is so effective despite its pedestrian raw velocity. And I know just the song to remind him of that.
Japanese idol group BEYOOOOONDS’ 2024 single “Hooke no Housoku (Hooke’s Law)” is a funk workout dedicated to Robert Hooke, the English polymath who posited the empirical law that the force needed to extend (or compress) a spring is proportional to the distance of the extension. While this law has nothing to do with extension in the pitching sense, the song paraphrases the law in such a catchy manner – “As extension, so is power!” – that it reads like a pitching slogan. Heed BEYOOOOONDS’ message, Brent, and keep on extending!
Camilo Doval
Current: Antonio Aguilar – El Hijo Desobediente
Verdict: No change needed
I’m woefully uneducated on Mexican culture and history, but I only needed to listen to this once to ascertain that was a straight banger. Frantic Google searches revealed that this is a traditional folk song, and the performer of this rendition, Antonio Aguilar, was a giant not just musically but in many facets of the Mexican entertainment industry. If any of you know more about this song or the artist, please sound off in the comments and educate me.
Fernando Cruz
Current: Carmen Twillie & Lebo M. – The Circle of Life (from The Lion King)
Verdict: No change needed
Per Cruz’s own words, from this New York Daily News story from last year: “My favorite animal is the lion. I love ‘The Lion King.” Well, I’ve certainly heard worse reasons, and I’ve definitely heard worse walkout songs. Keep grooving to “The Circle of Life”, Fernando – just make sure you stay within the Circle of Trust too.
Paul Blackburn
Current: Travis Scott – WHO? WHAT!
Verdict: Not really feeling it
New: Beethoven – Piano Sonata No.8 in C Minor, Op.13 – “Pathétique” 2. Adagio Cantabile
I’d never really listened to Travis Scott before, so I gave ASTROWORLD a spin. The first half of that album is amazing – melodic, moody, imaginative. However, the second half falls off quite a bit, with both the beats and the rhymes sounding rather trite and uninspired. Unfortunately, “WHO? WHAT!” belongs to the latter half. Besides my misgivings towards the song itself, nothing about it even remotely signifies “Paul Blackburn” to me. So, I took the liberty of replacing it with one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of classical music that I know.
This isn’t me trying to be mean to Blackburn. “Pathétique” does not mean “pathetic”; rather, it means “tragic” or “moving”. It seems to me like the piece’s understated emotion is the perfect companion to the Paul Blackburn Experience. Because – let’s be real – at this point in his career, Blackburn’s utility lies in eating innings, not actually helping his team win games. Him entering a game means that either the outcome has already been decided, or that no other arm was available. Imagine working all your life towards reaching the majors and staying there, only to find that the only role you can currently carve out for yourself is at the bottom of the bullpen pecking order. What is that if not tragic? Yet Blackburn does not ask for our sympathy; he seems to have accepted his transition to relief duty in stride, and hasn’t expressed any qualms about his generally low-leverage usage. I think that there is profound beauty in that, and that “Pathétique” perfectly encapsulates both the sadness of Blackburn’s situation as well as the dignity he exudes in accepting it.
Jake Bird
Current: X Ambassadors & Jamie N’ Commons – Jungle
Verdict: Ew
New: Charlie Parker – Ornithology
I’m sorry Jake – the kindest thing I can say about your current walkout song is that it would be great for a Nissan Pathfinder ad. You have a last name that opens up all kinds of possibilities; why not lean into that? Maybe you’re not a huge jazz guy, and neither am I, but a Bird in New York sounds like a ripe opportunity to honor the great Charlie Parker. And what better way to hammer home the feathered pun than his breezy “Ornithology”?
David Bednar
Current: Styx – Renegade
Verdict: Could use a new one
New: My Morning Jacket – The Bear
I get the whole “Renegade” thing, I do. It reflects Bednar’s Pittsburgh roots, the song being commonly played in Steelers games, and it was a cool way to display regional pride during his Pirates tenure. But I have two qualms; one, he’s in New York now, and two, Bednar himself doesn’t really give off renegade vibes. I mean, look at him –
This is the face of a guy who knows the pain of having to wait in the checkout line in the supermarket while his kids bug him about getting sweets and the guy in front of him engages in heated conversation with the no-nonsense cashier about the validity of his Super Shoppers card.
That suburban dad energy, along with his newly acquired nickname “El Oso”, given to him by his Spanish-speaking Yankee teammates, has led me to assign him My Morning Jacket’s “The Bear”, off of their 1999 debut album. I don’t know whether Bednar has yet to experience the midlife crisis that this song addresses reassuringly, but when he gets to that fork in the road, I hope he takes this song’s chorus to heart: “There’s still time/For you to change your mind/Or whatever else you do”.
