"Baseball’s (US) opening day is Thursday. If your friends are like mine, at some point they’ll ask you what your batting walk-up song would be. My goal is to help you hit this question out of the park.
A batter’s walk-up song is played as he walks from the on-deck circle to home plate. Though just a 15- to 30-second clip, the right song is important. Songs like AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” or “Narco” by Blasterjaxx & Timmy Trumpet are conventional favorites for America’s pastime—but we scrappy Americans didn’t beat the spread at Yorktown by thinking conventionally. Dig in before answering, and think outside the batter’s box.
A good walk-up song calms the batter, rattles the pitcher, or plays to the home fans."
I know many of you have never been to a US baseball game (I have never seen Cricket myself) , but think outside the box and try to imagine. What is your walk up song?
I will go first. “Skin Game” , the highlight of the Ry Cooder (and John Hiatt) soundtrack for the movie “The Border”. Circa 1982.
My IT team were experiencing “some problems” so I was invited to the Customer Services convention to explain why - they were very hostile. I knew I couldn’t bullshit them, so my walk on music was the beginning of Anarchy In The U.K. got applause and cheers, after which could say anything.
The next was the introduction of a new Billing System (sexy yes?), which as you can guess was boring sell. The whole company were there, plus our new American owners. I came on to the last minutes of Won’t Get Fooled Again. The audience, which included the new owners, went berserk. One of my working triumphs, even if egoistic.
As a New Yorker, I may be biased about this, but the best Walk Up Song is the Run In Song, for the greatest relief pitcher in baseball history, Mariano Rivera (not biased about that). Here it is:
When I used to do (in a fashion!) MTB racing years ago, it was always REM End of The World on the way to the race and before the start…not exactly ‘walk on’ but it certainly gee’d me up through pre-race nerves.
Not to make too fine a point about it, but isn’t that Enter Sandman by Metallica? Or am I missing something? (I’m a New Yorker too, btw, and I miss Mo).
Not having any interest in baseball, nor rounders nor cricket, the context is meaningless to me - but as an equivalent, when I used to do a mobile rock disco back in the 1980s, my lead-in piece (in darkness) was invariably Suppé’s Light Cavalry overture, at the end of which I fired thunderflashes and went straight into Gillan’s high energy rock number Secret of the dance or for variation Deep Purple’s Speed King, with full sound-to-light effects blazing. *Light Cavalry is the perfect overture, somehow making you really feel something is coming. The thunderflashes startle and as the noise fades the fast heavy rock through the smoke tells people in no uncertain terms what they are in for. I made sure that no-one who experienced my show forgot it!
