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Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Updated: August 3, 1:08 PM ET
At-bat songs: Minnesota Twins

Page 3

If you're a quick thinker, you can probably figure out the logic behind most of the Minnesota Twins' at-bat music.

Sometimes, you've got to match up the batter's first name with the singer's first name. Sometimes, it's that the artist and player are from the same locale. Sometimes, it's the theme of the song matches the player's background.

And then sometimes, it gets really complicated: Like the time, former Twins first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz allowed a radio-station contest to pick the music that would help him break out of his slump.

AT-BAT MUSIC: MINNESOTA TWINS
Player Song Artist
OF Shannon Stewart "Yeah!" Usher
3B Michael Cuddyer "Overnight Celebrity" Twista
SS Cristian Guzman Tracks from the album "Sexy Latin Beats"
Four seasons ago, the music guy was asked to come up with some Latin music for Guzman. He grabbed two tunes from a generic CD called "Sexy Latin Beats." The Twins shortstop started hitting, and he has used it ever since.
OF Lew Ford "Free For All" Ted Nugent
The tune has a great riff, but the real reason the music guys selected it is quite bizarre: Nugent is from Detroit. Detroit is where they make Fords. Lew's last name is Ford. There truly is a science to all this.
C Joe Mauer "The Hardest Button"
"Life's Been Good"
The White Stripes
Joe Walsh
Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good" has double meaning. First off, the first-round pick and Walsh share the same first name. Second, well, according to the Twins music guys, "So far, Mauer's life has been very good."
3B Corey Koskie "Joy"
"Tom Sawyer"
John Buller
Rush
Some more logic from those wacky Twins music guys: Rush is from Canada, and so is Koskie.
OF Torii Hunter "Be Easy" 50 Cent
Hunter came out last season to Bonecrusher's "Never Scared." If you've seen his head-first, diving catches, you understand why.
OF Jacque Jones "Slow Motion"
"Game Over"
Juvenile
Lil' Flip
To Jones, walk-up music is very important. He likes to hear his songs in a particular order and changes them with great regularity.
DH Matthew LeCroy "The South's Gonna Do It Again" Charlie Daniels Band
LeCroy originally came out to the "The Sopranos" theme ("Woke up This Morning" by Alabama 3), but the tune never really fit his personality. So, the music guys, aware that LeCroy was a Good Ol' Southern boy, switched to the classic from the Charlie Daniels Band. The first night he came out to the song, LeCroy went 2-for-4 with a run and an RBI. He hasn't changed the tune since.
2B Luis Rivas "Freek-A-Leek" Petey Pablo
Rivas prefers not to hear any music at the plate. He went through all of 2003 without using a single song. After a season of silence, the Twins music guys went ahead and played some anyway. He has been accompanied by an instrumental version of Petey Pablo's "Freek-A-Leek," but does not love it.