DIAMOND NOTES...AND LYRICS

So I was, um, busy at work today and stumbled upon a cool feature on the ESPN Magazine section of the network's Web site. Evidently, some people with a lot of free time on their hands tried to track as many MLB players' entrance songs as possible and listed them, also providing links to hear segments of the tunes (which I'll admit I haven't tried yet, but probably will at some point).
For some reason, things like this really intrigue me...probably because it's a combination of sports and music, my two biggest vices. I guess it's also a cool way to view players differently, see who's into what, who likes to rotate songs, see some that make you go, "Yeah, that's a good one", etc.
The most noted trends I could find from the 20 or so teams I scanned through:
- It's a decent mix of rap and rock, of course. Godsmack, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne and "Black Betty" tend to be favorites
- I was amazed by how many guys used some form of Justin Timberlake. I just never would have guessed such a "tough guy" sport would pump out the JT to get going, but whatever works for you
- Ditto for Nickelback popping up frequently...although I guess in a lot of ways MLB is a sport of sellouts
- The Cubs don't use anything other than organ music, while the A's don't use specific songs for players. Maybe that helps explain the World Series futility for one and poor attendance for the other.

Feel free to check it out for yourself if you have some down time: http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3608544

Oh, and of course, my choices....I always love answering this question:
- If I was a batter, I would probably choose a rotation of "Plowed" by Sponge, "Shoot Frank" by Cage and either "Way Away" by Yellowcard or "Deliverance" by Bubba Sparxxx (or at least those were the ones I no joke used to hum in my head when stepping up during softball)
- If I was a pitcher (and those of you who really know me already know I want to come back in my next life as a Chad Bradford/Brad Ziegler style submarine reliever), it's definitely "Where the Streets Have No Name" by U2...no doubts about it

JC