Baseball’s back. America’s pastime is here again. The rain and cold of the most brutal winter in Los Angeles history is over. The fire and heat have not yet set in. The mountains are green and lush, not brown or ash. Some of them are sprinkled white. The river has water. The clocks have sprung. The season has shifted, the way baseball players no longer can. The organs are loud.
Dodger Stadium organist Dieter Ruehle is one of the most underrated musicians alive. A valley boy with a unique coupled passion of sports and an uncool instrument, Ruehle played organ at Lakers games from 2001 to 2016 before taking over for the Dodgers following Nancy Bea’s retirement after 27 years. These were big keys to fill. Some might say a Major Key Alert. Bea was a beloved local icon, especially as she worked into her early 80s. Baseball, compared to other professional sports, is resistant to change. Dieter Ruehle is so good at the organ, his transition to the stadium’s musical helm was as smooth as the opening chords to “Still D.R.E.” he smacks out through the park on a daily basis.
Smooth is the best description of Ruehle’s organ play style. Nancy Bea had a lot of flair, a light touch and some sweet pizzazz. She was incredible at the artform. But Ruehle is like the Shohei Ohtani of organists. He can do it all with no effort. Doesn’t seem to mind that playing the organ isn’t going to win him any sort of prestige or championship. He wins World Series Game 7 every time he sits behind the keys. He is the greatest of all time. The roar of the crowd is his confirmation.
We’ve been pumping pressurized air through pipes for much longer than we’ve been singing take me out to the old ball game. The history of the organ, from a quick Wikipedia education, dates back to Ancient Greece. Third century B.C. Hundreds of years later, in pre- and medieval times, organ pipes blasted out of cathedrals and blared through entire villages. Because these early models were so massive and used in worship, the instrument has a close connection with spirituality. I call Ruehle the greatest organist of all time but I don’t have much to compare it to aside from the other major sporting events I’ve attended as well as Catholic mass from when I was a kid. I know, from other communal experiences such as those, that the loud, heavy tones of an organ seem to possess a natural power at mesmerizing a large group of people. I think it’s because the keys produce melodic tones but also vibrate in a low, deep, almost percussive way that pleases our bones and bodies. The organ can be a direct connection to God, whether God takes the form of a flavorless wafer or a Super Dodger Dog.
Despite the organ’s roots and lengthy history, the instrument has adapted to modern times. Ruehle isn’t playing the kind of pipes the Ancient Greeks were. He plays a Roland AT-80S, which has a touchscreen on it. Organs have been synthesized. If you have GarageBand or Logic Pro you could tap out organ sounds using your laptop keyboard. But at baseball games, the sound of key-driven wind pipes wields an undeniable ancient power. The organ captivates an eager audience as they celebrate together. Or, as Ruehle said in a recent tweet, “live organ can add a subtle vibe, little fillers and buildups, positive energy.”
Baseball has changed, like the organ. Batters walk up to Bad Bunny or Rick Ross. But no hitter’s choice hit song can get the crowd going as quickly and efficiently as three pumps on the organ keys. “Doo, dah (lower), Doo!” is all it takes to get a crowd of blue-capped fans marinating in sunshine, beer and meat stench to call out together, “Let’s Go Dodgers!”
Baseball has changed a lot, from last season to this one. It still has the same power of providing family-friendly entertainment and leisurely Americana that it’s had for over a century. At Dodger Stadium, at least, you’ll still hear the organ. But, I found out after attending Sunday’s opening weekend matchup with the Diamondbacks, the game has made rule (not Ruehle) changes as seismic as the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
The most significant change this season is the pitch clock. Behind home plate and in the outfield, in between every pitch, a basketball-style shot clock (or football-style play clock) counts down. With no runners on base, pitchers have 15 seconds to throw the ball at the batter. With a runner on, they have five more seconds to stare them down and keep them closer to their base, which by the way is bigger now. Batters need to step into the box by the time there’s 8 seconds left on the pitch clock. A pitcher can also now only step off the mound to throw to a base, take a break, or fake throw twice per at-bat.
These rule alterations, implemented in the minor leagues before being introduced in the majors, are intended to speed up what otherwise has become the DJ Screw-esque pace of MLB games. The game I attended ended in a little over two hours. I had been expecting to be sitting out there in the sun all day. By the time I went to the bathroom and got a Dodger Dog and got back to my seat, it was already the 5th inning and I’d missed both runs. Fantastic.
Because baseball is so tied to American youth, and traditions carry over from generation to generation, I am generally wary of any attempts to change the game. I hated when the family of rich assholes took over the Cubs and added video screens in the outfield of Wrigley Field, the league’s second oldest ballpark (Dodger Stadium is the third) that has lifetimes of folklore and mythology associated with it. I did like that the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, though. That was nice.
I also like the pitch clock. Games were too damn slow. Now, attending a major league baseball game is like watching a Lil Baby YouTube video at 1.5x speed. Undeniably better.
Two of the albums I’ve been listening to most consistently for the past few weeks are slowthai’s UGLY (which I have a piece coming out about on passionweiss.com soon) and JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown’s Scaring the Hoes (which many people on Twitter correctly described, immediately upon its release, as a “2023 Madvillainy”). These albums have nothing to do with organs, baseball, or Dieter Ruehle. I bring up those topics just because I went to a baseball game today, which doubled as a Dieter Ruehle concert, which ruled. Thinking about the long, changing history of the organ, and its relationship to the long, changing history of baseball, I thought about the current state of music-that-I-like. Change and evolution, while frightening, is good. Sometimes the game changes to the point where the changes are palpable but the game is unrecognizable. Like this new fast-paced form of baseball. But the fundamentals are there and it is still beautiful, like the still-green mountains around L.A. County. Scaring the Hoes is not smooth at all, but it’s somehow the Dieter Ruehle and New Baseball of underground hip-hop. I don’t care if my connections don’t make sense. But I’m going to shift now like MLB players no longer can, and talk briefly about that album and the other one I already mentioned.
The other day I texted my brother, who came with me to the Dodger’s game, that I was starting to like slowthai’s album a little less after listening to it over and over again, but I still thought it might be the best LP release of the year so far. He told me that he liked Scaring the Hoes better, because UGLY is doing something that’s been done before whereas JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown did something totally new.
Nothing is totally new, obviously. Ruehle isn’t doing anything that Nancy Bea or Ancient Greeks didn’t do before him. All musicians are indebted, like baseball players, to the greats that came before them. Scaring the Hoes is being called the 2023 Madvillainy because it’s an avant-garde hip-hop album featuring production and lyrics from two legends of the modern underground. UGLY is different from slowthai’s first two albums in that it utilizes live instrumentation and favors post-punk sounds over grime or hip-hop, but it’s also melancholic and poppy in ways The Pixies or Nirvana did decades ago. People compare JPEGMAFIA’s production style to 100 Gecs, a group I’ve never listened to, but his best attribute is his ability to subvert listener expectations. To blend styles and samples and rhythms in ways that shouldn’t make sense but do. His and Danny Brown’s album is catchy while purposefully being the antithesis of pop.
I recently had an obvious epiphany: I like music that impacts my head more than music that impacts my body. I’m the guy at the concert who’s standing there, enthralled with the sounds and spectacle even if it doesn’t cause me to move a muscle. A friend played an old Yves Tumor album that blew my mind on a rainy drive through Glassel Park. I didn’t even nod my head but it impacted me on a deep level. I’ve heard that Yves Tumor’s more recent stuff is more post-rock-y, and I’m not sure which album my friend played, but it was great. UGLY is an album about slowthai’s psyche, and the piece I wrote for Passion of the Weiss goes into how Tyron covers the duality of emotions in a relatable, honest manner. It’s a rare album that made me think, a lot, both about the music and the lyrics. But over time and repeated listens, it hasn’t shattered my psyche the way Tyron’s apparently was during the making of the album. Scaring the Hoes offers a simultaneous assault on both body and brain. It’s so complex yet so natural that it’s overwhelming. I can’t process why I enjoy it but I do. Just like an organ. I enjoy it without thinking, because I feel it in my entire body, including my brain, the way I might Pavlovianly yell out “Let’s Go Dodgers!” after three organ pumps. I also know that when I eventually pay closer attention there will be so many subtle details for me to unpack. Listening to Scaring the Hoes is like standing in center field with a big wad of chewing tobacco in your lower lip, a routine fly ball hovering like a car chase helicopter somewhere in the clear blue sky. If you zone out for a second, the ball will come down and crack open your skull. If you stand there and listen, the music will do the same thing.
I’m not writing about this album in anything but vague terms, at least for now. It’s a collection of tracks that will take a while to appreciate. Or maybe they will get stale after repeated listens, like UGLY. My enjoyment of this collaborative LP is undeniably impacted by the hype. By the strength of the artists and the album title, and the way it sounds so insane. I don’t know exactly how yet, but I feel like this album is demonstrative proof of a fundamental shift in music. Like just the fact that this style of music is relatively accepted on a mainstream level is indicative of who we are as a human species, thousands of years after the organ first dropped in Ancient Greece. No matter how much music changes, though, the core elements of what make it captivating will always be there. The Ancient Greeks had it figured out. Pump some air through a pipe and the people will go nuts for it. Dieter Ruehle isn’t doing anything different, he’s just doing it in a newer, better, smoother way. slowthai isn’t doing anything different either, but he’s doing it hella well. JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown might not have created something out of nothing, but it sure as hell seems like they did. If Dieter Ruehle is the greatest at his craft but not necessarily an original, I don’t know what that makes them. But I know that I am scared.