As a native Clevelander, I was nearly brought to tears over the weekend during the MLB All-Star festivities. It was so great to see the entire baseball world descend upon Cleveland for one of the best weekends in sports. Luckily, I had the opportunity to head home and soak it all in. From the best Home Run Derby ever to an awesome celebrity game where I got to hang out with JR Smith for five hours, it was an incredible weekend from start to finish.
During the trip, I was able to stop by the adidas activation and party where they were rolling out their brand new "Iced Out" pack, which was debuted during the Home Run Derby and All-Star game by Alex Bregman and JD Martinez.
All-Star weekend parties are always a good time, and this was no different, though I just had one thing on my mind: how much do MLB players love Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road?" This is was all I could think about. "Old Town Road" is one of the biggest songs we've ever seen and has completely taken over pop culture. But do baseball players love it? That's what I wondered while wandering through this party. Fortunately, I was able to talk to some guys about the song, and get to the bottom of this mystery.
Red Sox All-Star JD Martinez was very candid about the track, and even revelaed to me that some of his teammates were't fans right away. "We were in Seattle playing the Mariners and I had heard the song and I saw it was beginning to go viral, so I came to my clubhouse and I turned it on," JD said. "Everyone's like, 'JD, what the heck is this? This is brutal. This and that.' I go, 'You guys watch. This thing's going to go viral, this is going to blow up."
Might be time to give JD Martinez an A&R job, folks. He was very correct about the song's future success, and interestingly enough, JD said that reigning AL MVP Mookie Betts was also quick to give a co-sign.
"Eddie Rodriguez was like, 'You're such a liar. This and that. It sucks. Whatever, whatever, whatever,'" JD recalled. "Mookie's like, 'This song kind of rides, like a little bit, you know?' And then we got back to the house and everyday that song on the radio. Every single day it was on the speaker system. And then Eddie Rodriguez, first day back, put it on as his walk out. I said, 'Eddie, I thought that this song sucked?' 'No, I like it, I like it.' So it was funny."
Much like casual music fans, baseball clubhouses were divided on "Old Town Road" before ultimately coming around on the track to propell it to the success it has today. Accoridng to Cleveland Indians pitcher Clevinger, there wasn't really a fight in the clubhouse for who go to use the song as their walkup music, but that the team did get sick of it quickly.
"No. No there wasn't a fight, but I do recall Jake Bauers pulling out the song ASAP and then after about three weeks, it was wearing pretty thin on everybody, because obviously you can pick three different songs or four different songs just because you have four at bats, but he only picked 'Old Town Road' for every at bat. So when he had games, he had six ABs. We're like, 'Bro, you have a switch it up.' You're wearing us out."
"Old Town Road" continues to dominate the charts and has blocked a number of artists from going No. 1 on the charts. With the way it's still getting played everywhere, that isn't going to slow down anytime soon.
And while my main goal of the weekend was figuring out how popular "Old Town Road" is in baseball clubhouses, I also found out that JD Martinez agreed with my take that the last season of Game of Thrones sucked.
"I hated it. I was all about it. I thought it was great at the first three or four episodes I thought damn this is going to be a good one," JD said. "And then I was just disappointed. Eight seasons of hype to fight the walking dead, the Night King and all that. And it ends on one episode. And then they made the queen look like the bad guy in the end. Like come on dude."
Told y'all that they should have let me write season 8.
