Welcome to The Rotation! This is a weekly column, written by yours truly, that talks about the wonderful blended worlds of baseball and music. These two have been staples of Americana for centuries and are as big a part of our culture as apple pie and Chevrolet. My goal is to pick a different topic between the beautiful, unified world of baseball and music and write about it each week.
Apparently, the San Francisco Giants have a tradition of allowing shortstop Brandon Crawford to pick walk-up songs for everyone in the final game of the season. Crawford can be particularly savage about it, often using inside jokes and other attributes to pick the tunes.
Below is a list of the five best walk-up songs, as chosen by Crawford for the 2018 season finale.
DJ Brandon Crawford’s Top Five Selection (2018)
No. 5: Gettin Jiggy With It – Will Smith (Will Smith)
Sometimes the best joke to make is the obvious one. Smith actually enters to Stranglehold, by Ted Nugent, but you can’t fault Crawford for picking the low-hanging fruit on this one.
No. 4: MMMBop – Hanson (Alen Hanson)
Maybe not the most original joke, but I love me some MMMBop, so this makes the list.
No. 3: I Got a Beard – The Beards (Casey Kelly)
I suspect Crawford didn’t know Kelly all that well, so he went with the obvious joke here. Kelly, of course, has a beard. Picking a walk-up song for 30-something guys is hard, so I give BC some slack here.
No. 2: I Need a Doctor – Dr. Dre/Eminem(Brandon Belt)
Belt only played 112 games in 2018, hence the song selection. I told you Crawford could be savage.
No. 1: Break Stuff – Limp Bizkit (Hunter Strickland)
You know, because Hunter Strickland broke his hand punching a wall after blowing a save earlier that season? Perhaps the most savage of all of them. Well played, Brandon, well played.
Honorable Mentions: Hips Don’t Lie – Shakira (Buster Posey); Panda – Desiigner (Pablo Sandoval); and Cowboy – Kid Rock (Madison Bumgarner).
Walk-Up Songs of the Week
Note: If you want a playlist of all the walk-up songs of the week, go to Spotify and search “Pitcher List Walk-Up Jams”
Hitter: Bryan Holaday, Holidae Inn (Chingy)
Yes, Bryan Holaday, yes. Not only does this song have his name in the title, but it’s spelled the only way that’s weirder than the way Holaday spells it himself. Chingy is the exact kind of rapper I would expect a white dude from Dallas to use as his walk-up song, and the fact that his own name is in the title is all the more sweeter.
Party on, Holaday.
Pitcher: Chris Archer, Black and Yellow (Wiz Khalifa)
Way to rep the brand, Chris Archer. I don’t know if the Pirates make sure someone on the staff is contractually obligated to use this Wiz Khalifa track or not, but they should be. At least for now they can relish Archer’s use of the tune—although his relationship with the Pirates may not be as rosy as it could be.
(Featured Image by Justin Paradis (@freshmeatcomm on Twitter)
Headline: “DJ Brandon Crawford Is a Savage”
Body: “Sometimes the best joke to make is the obvious one”…”Maybe not the most original joke”…”he went with the obvious joke here”.
Ok.