Pearl Jam and the best semi-official baseball bands | This is the loop

FULL DISCLOSURE: Your humble author attended three of Pearl Jam’s five shows at Wrigley Field and openly mourned over four of them. This usually happens when Eddie Vedder performs “All the Way”, the monolithically serious acoustic sea song he wrote in 2016 when the Cubs won their first World Series since 1774, the year they validated all of our hopes, the year I was able to call. my 93 year old grandmother and tell her the Cubs won it all, the year faith in the universe was restored for about 20 minutes until the election.

Either way, “All the Way” is the culmination of years of the North Vedder native’s Cubs fan, seen in the 2016 concert film “Let’s Play Two” wandering past his. Wrigley Cathedral in his 1992 skater shorts and -years grunge four-shirt and sobbing on the concrete of Progressive Field in Cubs VIP box GM Theo Epstein when the Cubs won it all in Cleveland. He also (checks papers): sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” 400 times, staged Ernie Banks, Jose Cardenal and Ron Santo’s family, sang for the Cubs when they won the NLCS, karaoke with Kerry Wood and essentially competes with Bill Murray as the Cubs’ most desperate fan. (The band is still close to the Seattle Mariners, obviously, and guitarist Mike McCready stops by to play the anthem on a semi-regular basis. But, come on. JOSE CARDENAL.)

Pearl Jam may offer one of the most visible connections to baseball and music – especially if the Cubs cling to the NL’s best record – but there are plenty more:

Metallica and the San Francisco Giants

This summer marked the sixth– sixth ! – Back-to-back Metallica night at AT&T Park, in which the initially enduring rock band essentially took over the park for the night, performing the national anthem, throwing the first pitch, dragging out mid-round shenanigans and generally doing a loads of things you might not have expected when you think of the kids wearing “Kill ‘Em All” shirts in your high school. (Typically, these kids didn’t like baseball or detergents.)

Jason Isbell and the Atlanta Braves

Isbell and his bands, spouse, and friends are all responsible for making amazing music pretty much all the time. But he has also become one of MLB’s most trusted Twitterers, as evidenced by this, the Internet’s best response to Jose Urena’s first attack on Ronald Acuna Jr. He and the Braves share a mutual love: he and his Unit 400 play post-game concerts in Atlanta, and the Braves tweet support for his records. Good news everywhere.

Billy Joel and the New York Mets

In 2015, en route to their eventual beating at the hands of the Kansas City Royals, the New York Mets began playing “Piano Man” in the middle of games. It’s a curious choice because of the way it is (checks notes) a semi-pathetic bar rat who’s stuck playing bad songs for drunkards, but people keep laughing at him. “Better Man”, so whatever. Either way, it stuck, partly because your dad is right and “Piano Man” is a REALLY GOOD SONG to sing along with a crowd of 50,000 other half-dressed jumpers, and because Billy Joel is a real New York guy who is still I’m not done with the Madison Square Garden residency he has played since 1947. Plus, the Mets are terrible, and if this song helps them get through the day , good for them.

Nelly and the cardinals of Saint-Louis

Wiz Khalifa and the Pittsburgh Pirates

“Black and Yellow” wasn’t about Pirates until everyone decided they were Pirates, so now it’s Pirates! Sure why not. Presumably Wiz is MLB’s most regularly cooked fan, even though he wouldn’t even be in the 2/3 of the NBA’s top players. You know it, we know it, but obviously the Pirates didn’t know it, because they invited him to launch the first pitch at the end of last year and then got angry when he did something with weed. Because, you know, when you want your musical mascots to be clean and sober, you go with someone like Billy Joel.

Chance the rapper and the Chicago White Sox

Scott Stapp and the… Marlins, I guess?

At this point, making a Marlins / Stapp joke is considered cruel and unusual. But, Scott knows the Marlins don’t fly, does he? IDK, maybe fish can fly to heaven.