Congratulations–Because Of You, They Play One Good Song At Nationals Games

Dan Gibson | April 3, 2008 5:30 am

With your help, Chuck Brown’s “Bustin’ Loose” is the official home-run song at the Washington Nationals’ home games. Unfortunately, the rest of the music you’ll hear while at Nationals Park sucks.

My visits to the Cubs spring training home last month were a nice moment of nostalgia for sports venue days gone by, with an actual organ player playing the short musical interludes which seem to have taken over every major sport. Phoenix Suns games are like being forced to take a long drive with someone who has the worst possible taste in popular music. If you can believe the Washington Post, with the exception of Mr. Brown, Nationals games aren’t much different.

Nationals Park isn’t exactly a giant iPod dock — which is to say, it’s not an NBA arena, where just about every nanosecond seems to be filled with noise — but it’s hardly a temple of solitude, either.

“It’s somewhere in between,” says John Guagliano, the team’s vice president of marketing and the man in charge of overseeing music at the new ballpark. “We’re all here to watch a baseball game, but we also have to keep our fans entertained. . . . As ticket prices go up, people’s expectations go up.”…

And all that music, from Fergie, Keith Urban and Fall Out Boy to Madonna, the Who and a who’s who of disco stars. Also: a whole lot of Smash Mouth, whose radio-friendly 1999 hit, “All Star” — the one that goes “Hey now, you’re an all star/Get your game on, go play” — was played no fewer than five times on Sunday.

“We try to stay away from extremes: nothing too loud or too soft, too mellow or hard-core,” Guagliano says of the park’s playlist. “Wedding-type music is probably the best way to describe it. It’s music for everyone.”

While I don’t like to player-hate on the guy from Smash Mouth (get that paper, son), if we’re going to have to put up with “All Star” becoming the new “Rock And Roll Part 2,” I might have to consider finding a sport played in musical silence. Guagliano seems right on with his description of “wedding-type music”, but does anyone really like the music played at weddings? I had to threaten bodily harm to the DJ at our wedding to keep him from playing the Grease Megamix, after all. I’m not asking for Blitzen Trapper tracks to be featured (really, I’m not, I promise), but can we reach a happy medium? After all, there are unemployed organ players out there just waiting by the phone hoping for work.

A Swing and Another Hit [Washington Post]