Sure, the New York Yankees — clean-shaven, short-haired, sharp in corporate stripes — are not allowed to listen to music in their clubhouse. Perhaps that’s one reason they’re losing so often lately. (And, to be fair, who’d want to listen to anything but funeral marches after debacles like these?) But the Boston Red Sox, those bewhiskered freaks and hairies, swigging Jack Daniel’s and slugging with jacked bases, are about as rock and roll as a baseball team can be: Harleys ... tattoos ... guitar solos ... sharing stage time with heavy-metal bands. This is a group with widely varying musical tastes — 25 guys, 25 iPods? — but it’s one that wouldn’t be without its post-game soundtracks. When you see Johnny Damon, long-haired and shirtless, getting interviewed on NESN after driving home the winning run, there’s invariably some song blaring loudly or thumping suggestively in the background. Maybe, just maybe, that’s what this team feeds on: that adrenaline rush brought on by a booming drum fill or a well-struck power chord, the loosey-goosey libidinousness of the rock-and-roll lifestyle. Maybe that’s why they win. The team’s most well-known rock-star wanna-be, of course, is pitcher Bronson Arroyo. The high-kicking stringbean came of age in the early-’90s grunge years, and it’s those bands — Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots — whose sound he channels and whose songs he covers on his forthcoming album, Covering the Bases. (It’s slated for an All-Star Break release.) Arroyo is a serviceable guitar player and has a deep and resonant Vedder-esque croon. He’s put those talents to work backing up the Dropkick Murphys and dueting with Martha’s Vineyard groovesters Entrain. There’s even been talk of pairing him with erstwhile Yankees center-fielder-cum-smooth-jazz-guitarist Bernie Williams — an unlikely example of Sox-Yanks harmony. His pal and fellow pitcher Lenny DiNardo is a guitarist, too, although he’s got somewhat better taste in influences than Arroyo. Favoring indie-rock avatars like Pavement and the Pixies, the lefty reliever is that rare thing in big-league locker rooms: a cerebral music fan. In fact, there was a rumor during spring training that DiNardo was in the clubhouse introducing his teammates to the knotty guitar adventures and reedy vocal mannerisms of ’70s post-punkers Television. At the annual "Hot Stove, Cool Music" event at the Paradise last winter, DiNardo got to live a dream by backing up Boston’s pulchritudinous indie legend Juliana Hatfield on a cover of the Pixies’ "Where Is My Mind." You don’t get to do that in Pawtucket. Johnny Damon looks the part, of course. But his instrumental prowess is rudimentary. Instead, he lives the lifestyle, surrounding himself with nu-metal dudes like Sevendust drummer Morgan Rose (a Yankees fan!), Alter Bridge, and American Hi-Fi. AC/DC howler Brian Johnson even sang at his wedding. Supersize pitcher David Wells hobnobs with rock royalty, too. He doesn’t really play (only "hacks"), but his Tampa Bay living room is hung with dozens upon dozens of autographed axes of every shape and size, each signed by megawatt rock luminaries like Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. In his Yankee days, Wells had been known to hang out with the Boss. (Springsteen, not Steinbrenner). Speaking of Springsteen, how can we forget Rally Karaoke Guy? The fall of ’03 was ultimately a tragic one, but the summer of ’03 was a magical one, due in no small part to a scrawny blond dude pumping his fist on the center-field JumboTron. Asbury Park’s favorite son himself staged shows at the "lyric little bandbox" that September, belting "No Surrender" and "The Promised Land" into the thronging stands. But it was a young Kevin Millar who was the real boss that summer, his lip-synched "Born in the USA" cheering the crowd and spurring his team on to greater glories. Whether it’s general manager Theo Epstein noodling on guitar in his own band, Trauser, or Arroyo and Gabe Kapler convincing Keith Foulke to switch his ho-hum entrance music to an appropriately knee-quaking number by Danzig, this is a team that takes its soundtrack seriously. It always has. Way back in 1903, those rabid fans the "Royal Rooters" were raising their voices in an old vaudeville chestnut, "Tessie," in the hopes of unnerving their opponents. One hundred and one years later, the Red Sox front office enlisted Boston-Irish punks Dropkick Murphys to revamp and amp up the very same song. If it’s become just a mite overplayed since then, "Tessie" did the trick once again, helping goad the Fenway faithful — and just maybe the team itself — to our first World Series victory in a long, long time. It all makes sense. Boston is as much a music town as it is a baseball town, after all, and it’s about as big a baseball town as there is. Whether it’s Fenway Recordings, the indie label whose In Our Lifetime compilations can change its title now that we’ve actually seen it happen, or Sully’s Tees, many of whose Sox T-shirts take their design cues from the typography and sloganeering of Boston punk bands, hard rock and hardball often seem to find common cause here in the Hub. And while the women at Fenway may love to ba-ba-ba along with Neil Diamond’s syrupy "Sweet Caroline" in the eighth inning at Fenway, give me the stomping garage-rock yowl of the Standells’ "Dirty Water" any night of the week. Hearing those four primitive chords, after all, means the good guys won. "Sporting Eye" runs Monday and Friday on BostonPhoenix.com. Mike Miliard can be reached at mmiliard[a]phx.com
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