Jock Itch Facing the music at Coors Field

Music snobs beware: If you go to a Colorado Rockies game next season (their latest fantastic run ended in a 5-4 loss yesterday to Philadelphia), you are going to be bummed out. The music used to introduce the players when they come up to bat is just fucking horrible, and while I can admit that I hadn’t heard most of these songs outside of the games, they are now permanently in my head. And that sucks.

At-bat music is a relatively new phenomenon where bad tunes are picked out by the players to be pumped into the stadium (and your ears) for a few seconds as they take their last practice swing and head over to home plate. It’s supposed to get the player pumped up, but really it serves as a way to energize the fans and keep them focused on the game. When Troy Tulowitzki steps up to a crucial two-out situation and Montgomery Gentry’s “Roll With Me” is blaring through the speakers, keeping you from having a conversation with the person next to you—who wouldn’t start paying attention?

Now, I’ve never heard of this Montgomery Gentry before, but after I listened to a clip of it, I started to really question Tulowitzki’s musical taste. He may be one of the best shortstops in the game, but his love of this lame, hackneyed country song makes him seem like an MVP of suck.

Outfielder Ryan Spilborghs was walking out to Survivor’s “Eye Of The Tiger”— which anyone can attest is the No. 1 song to go out and kick ass to—but the other night he switched back to the flaccid “The Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani. A few seasons ago, when I found out what Spilborghs was trotting out to, I just about crapped myself, and I can’t think of a worse song for a power-hitting outfielder to make a grand entrance to than the “Woo-hoo!” that starts that track.

A lot of the Rockies use a mish-mash of new hip-hop and reggaeton ass-drippings that shifts from the likes of Timbaland to Daddy Yankee. All horrible shit indeed, but infielder Omar Quintanilla actually has the balls to walk out to Akon’s “I’m So Paid.” All the Q-tips at Walgreens can’t undo the damage of having to hear this song, and what’s more horrifying is all the people who have actually been buying Akon’s music over the last couple of years. With the exception of Dexter Fowler, who walks out to Jay-Z’s “Run This Town,” everyone's selections from this genre are super-duper bad.

The shitty music isn’t localized to just hip-hop. There’s bad hard rock and metal as well: Brad Hawpe comes out to Nickelback’s “Rockstar,” and I’m convinced that’s why he’s been so awful lately. If Nickelback is what gets you psyched up, its suckiness is going to rub off on you at some point.

To turn this thing around, I would suggest anything by Slayer or NWA. Metallica, too, because it’s always a nice crowd-pleaser. I know they only use 15 seconds or so for at-bat music, but the first 45 seconds of “Hit The Lights” is what Todd Helton should walk out to, not the feeble nü-country track “These Are My People” by Rodney Atkins.

But the Rockies are just jocks, after all, gifted in the art of the hardball and not in the area of judging what constitutes crappy tunes. Really, these are not the kinds of decisions these guys should be making. Sports culture may pretend it’s a purveyor of hipness, but it’s really a status quo bland machine, cranking out safe middle-class fun for people who don’t like to think too much (and don’t mind listening to crappy music).