Music has a place in the fabric of baseball. Ballpark personnel play walkup songs before batters step into the box. Other songs get played at traditional stages of a game, like pregame national anthems; “Sweet Caroline” before the bottom of the eighth inning in Boston; or “God Bless America,” “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and “The Cotton-Eyed Joe” for the Rangers’ seventh-inning stretch. Musical entertainers sometimes throw out ceremonial first pitches. The Rangers often host mariachi bands on the Globe Life Field in Arlington concourses.
We saw the two disciplines come together Thursday night thanks to a man who dearly loves both: longtime Rangers announcer Eric Nadel. In recent years, he’s taken to holding his birthday party as a charity concert event. This week marked the 14th such gathering and the radio icon’s 75th b-day. He had held it at the Kessler Theater until it outgrew that venue and now puts it on at Dallas’s Longhorn Ballroom.
In his opening remarks, Nadel talked about turning his friends onto bands they might not have previously known about. I had a rudimentary awareness of Chuck Prophet but didn’t know he played live under Chuck Prophet and his Cumbia Shoes. And Sammy Rae & The Friends burst onto my radar as the headliner. You’ve quite possibly relied on Nadel to inform you about newly-promoted Rangers prospects or elevated pitch counts, but perhaps didn’t know he could also enlighten you regarding exceptional singers and guitarists.
Speaking of pitch counts, both of those words fit into both musical and baseball lexicons, and they’re not alone. We might call a fastball up and in “chin music.” Knuckleballs are said to dance. Position players and players of instruments both seek hits. From banjo hitters to bandboxes to a 1-2-3 double play (which some have called a “Lawrence Welk” after the late band leader), baseball and music share terminology. Former Major Leaguers George “Piano Legs” Gore, “Fiddler Bill” McGee, and Steve Sax make the association even more plain. Hardball and hard bop seem to be pretty complementary.
We sometimes say baseball has a rhythm to it. One of the favorite commercials I ever created during my time working for the Rangers involved a music video in which we handed instruments to players from Central and South America for a “Latin Rhythm” theme designed to show Hispanic fans how deeply their cultures were embedded in the fabric of the club. The players didn’t have to actually be able to play the trumpets, congas, or guitars, by the way – magic of TV.
Sometimes we say a hitter or pitcher looks to throw off the rhythm of his opponent. That concept speaks to the mental side of the game, and might serve as a metaphor for another element of Thursday’s Eric Nadel Birthday Benefit: its proceeds go toward a mental health nonprofit. Grant Halliburton Foundation looks to promote better mental health, including by providing resources to young people. They also work to prevent suicides, a tragedy that took the life of the organization’s namesake. Baseball, too, has lost current and former players to suicide, including former Rangers Doug Ault, John Rheinecker, and Hideki Irabu.
As a Hall of Fame baseball play-by-play man, Eric Nadel is a master communicator about the sport of baseball. He has also been open about needing to pay attention to his own mental health challenges and uses his birthday event to communicate about that issue masterfully as well. And, of course, he loves to spread the word about bands he admires through this gathering, too. He certainly gave me plenty to think about. I came home and looked up both the bands in question as well as the charity.
For those of us who love the national pastime and also truly appreciate great base pl-, excuse me, bass players, like those in Thursday’s lineup, music and baseball in combination are pretty great, at the ballpark and beyond.
