In most sports and for many athletes, music can carry more weight than just something that is played during warm-ups and breaks.
The baseball team, for example, has walk-up music — songs chosen by players that play when they walk to home plate. Players select songs for a variety of different reasons — some do it as a joke to get everyone laughing, while some use the song as a form of motivation.
Getting in the zone is hard enough, so music helps players get their mind in the place it needs to be before facing off against the pitcher.
“It just helps me get focused, you know, walking up there,” said freshman Wade Gulden. “This is my at-bat. This is my time. I know it doesn’t really apply too much to baseball, but at the same time it just pumps me up.”
Gulden’s music choice is a song titled, “I Don’t Get Tired,” which he uses as a message to the pitcher he’s about to face. He said he wants the pitcher to understand his mentality at the plate and that his song outlines it. He said he wants all the pitchers he faces to know that it’s not going to be an easy out.
“I guess that I play loose,” he said. “They might think of me as a fun guy.”
Though Gulden said his song has some special significance, other players say there really isn’t any deep meaning to choosing a tune.
“There is no significance to me as a person,” said sophomore Hunter Simmons. “It depends, I guess, for different people. For me, baseball is a grueling game and there is so much stress, so if I have a song and I listen to it and it’s relaxed … It makes me feel like it’s just a game.”
He said that during the summer months, he hears songs and thinks to himself whether they would be good songs to use during the season. Simmons has songs titled “Oh Boy” and “That’s That” which have catchier beats and a feel-good persona attached to them.
Simmons credited his culture and where he grew up with why he chooses his music. He said he had plenty of friends in his time in high school that influenced his music selection on a consistent basis.
“[My friends] always listen to this type of music,” he said. “So growing up, I always listened to it and it kind of just touched me and it gave me goosebumps. Every time I hear these songs, I put my mind in their shoes and feel what they’re saying and I feel what they’re feeling. It’s like confidence.”
Gulden said that some of the players are more laidback than others with their music choice and that players go after whatever puts them in the right mindset. He also said there are plenty of guys with good music, but his favorite is junior catcher AJ Young’s 1995 classic sung by Shaggy titled “Boombastic.”
Simmons said one of his favorites on the team was Gulden’s song and said many of the players relate to it. Simmons also mentioned how he often finds himself singing along to the words of sophomore pitcher Dylan Drachler’s music “New World.”
Head coach Bill Kinneberg, who has been coaching baseball for over 30 years, even had a song that he would use for his walk up.
“I’m a classic rock guy,” he said. “It was by the Allman Brothers — ‘Midnight Rider.’ ”
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