Category Archives: Baseball

Baseball, Inappropriate Walkup Music 2009

Inappropriate Walk Up Music: 03.22.09

santo-shea.jpgFor previous Inappropriate Walk Up Music posts, click here.

Every day until Opening Day, Scratchbomb presents three tunes that are completely, unequivocally inappropriate for use as major league walk-up
music.

These are not necessarily bad songs–although that
certainly helps. They are merely songs that don’t evoke the fear and dread one traditionally associates with the walk-up song. In fact, they evoke the exact opposite.

Imagine yourself in the on-deck circle. Bottom of the 9th. Down by one. Man on second, two out. You hear the PA system blare, The centerfielder, number 20… The crowd roars at the sound of your name. And as you stroll to the batter’s box, you are greeted with the strains of one of these songs:

Today, on a whim, I decided to check out the Top 3 songs on the Hot 100 chart, figuring that they’d be inappropriate. Lo and behold, my instincts were right. The top three slots are currently occupied by terrible hip-hop songs with completely unoriginal beats and rhymes. Of course, lack of originality doesn’t necessarily disqualify a song for walk-up purposes. But each of these songs disqualifies itself in their own special way.

1. “Right Round”, Flo Rida
Let’s see: Terrible beat? Check. Rhymes cribbed from every “we up in the club” song recorded in the last 10 years? Check. Hilariously wack flow despite having “flo” in your name? Check. Paraphrasing lyrics from the similarly named bad 80s song while also giving work to Katy Perry? Check. Okay, I think we’re done here.

2. “Dead and Gone”, T.I. featuring Justin Timberlake
If you can find any true differences between this song and “Gangster’s Paradise”, you’ve got a keener ear than I do.

The number 3 song this week is actually “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga, which I picked in my first Inappropriate Walk Up Music post. So I have to skip down to number 4, where we find:

4. “Kiss Me Through the Phone”, Soulja Boy Tell ’em featuring Sammie
Aside from the cringe-worthy title, I swear I heard this beat/keyboard line combo in a Geico commercial.

Baseball, Inappropriate Walkup Music 2009

Inappropriate Walk Up Music: 03.21.09

santo-shea.jpgFor previous Inappropriate Walk Up Music posts, click here.

Every day until Opening Day, Scratchbomb presents three tunes that are completely, unequivocally inappropriate for use as major league walk-up
music.

These are not necessarily bad songs–although that
certainly helps. They are merely songs that don’t evoke the fear and dread one traditionally associates with the walk-up song. In fact, they evoke the exact opposite.

Imagine yourself in the on-deck circle. Bottom of the 9th. Down by one. Man on second, two out. You hear the PA system blare, The centerfielder, number 20… The crowd roars at the sound of your name. And as you stroll to the batter’s box, you are greeted with the strains of one of these songs:

Today I present the special spoken word edition. This is technically not music, but screw it. I made these rules, and I’ll bend them as I see fit. Plus, this list is comprised of spoken word pieces by musical artists. So I think it adheres to the spirit, if not the letter, of this project.

* Anything from Paul Stanley’s collection of stage banter, People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest This hit the intertubes a year or two ago, but I only recently got a chance to hear it. I shouldn’t say it’s Paul Stanley’s per se, but a collection made by a fan (or insane completist, or dedicated ironist) that compiles the KISS frontman’s best stage banter. It’s every bit as stupid as you might imagine. My favorite: this clip, in which Paul delivers outlines his battle plan for the rock n’ roll war on terror.

* Any hip hop album “comedy” track
Prince Paul has brought us much joy, but he’s also responsible for the proliferation of Hip Hop Comedy Filler Tracks in the 90s. He was the first to do it, and millions of MCs followed his lead by recording their own mini-auditions for SNL This trend allowed even the thinnest of CDs to stretch out to a respectable 37 minutes.

For ten years or so, even the best albums were interrupted by aggressively filthy bits, or outtakes of guys screwing around in the studio while extremely high. Like four minutes of garbage when you’d much rather have that precious disc space filled up by something like music. So I like the idea of a batter picking a track off of, say, The Chronic, but instead of hearing “Dre Day”, he gets one of its intensely dated, unfunny skits.

* Venom stage banter
Venom was an 80s metal band from England that dabbled in Satanic imagery. In 1986, someone thought it would be a good idea to put them and Black Flag on the same bill. Fun! Aside from providing much chuckle fodder for Henry Rollins (as detailed in Get in the Van), this tour also resulted in one of the most hilarious collections of stage banter ever.

You can get the full story (and an MP3) in WFMU’s blog here, but the short version is this: a Flag roadie (Joe Cole, probably) recorded a Venom show in New Jersey, edited out all of the music, and compiled lead singer Cronos’ cringe-inducing stage banter. Comedy gold–nay, comedy platinum!

This tape became so legendary in music nerd circles that it was even released as a single by Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label. I’d love to see a batter stroll to the plate while Cronos screams YOU WANNA HEAR SOMETHING THAT’S GONNA KICK YOUR BALLS OFF?!

Baseball

What’s In a Name? Laughs Galore!

I have no idea how this escaped my notice until now. No matter. All you need to know–if you didn’t know it before–is that MLB is hosting a Moniker Madness tournament on its minor league site. A field of 64 players toiling away in the minor leagues has been assembled to determine one thing: who has the most hilarious name in professional baseball?

MLB says, “the best name”, but obviously in this context best = most chuckle inducing. They’ve conducted this tournament for the last three years. Again, I have no clue how I missed this before. But I ain’t missing it this time.

Who will win: Chia-Chu Chen? Callix Crabbe? Lovesquiz Santana? Arquimedes Euclides Caminero? Insiders tell me the smart money’s on Sundrendy Windster.