Who Can Really Say?

Eddie Layton, the organist at Yankees Stadium since what seems like the invention of dirt, has died. He also played at Madison Square Garden for the Knicks and Rangers, and later at the Nassau Coliseum. From his NYT obit.

When he was hired in 1967 to play for the Yankees, Layton had never been to Yankee Stadium and knew nothing about baseball.

"I thought that a sacrifice fly had something to do with killing an insect," he recalled in an interview with National Public Radio, shortly after his retirement at the end of the 2003 baseball season. "I didn't know where first base was or third base. But I quickly learned within a week, and I started doing the famous chants, the hand-clapping things, and the dun-dun-dun-dun-da-dun."

"And I was the first guy to do that," he said of the "charge."

. . . .

If the occasion fit, Layton would depart from his standard fare. When the Yankees' Alberto Castillo got a hit in mid-May 2002, after going 0 for 14 to that point in the season, he played the "Hallelujah" chorus.

When a Rangers opponent went to the penalty box for slashing, "If I Had the Wings of an Angel" might accompany him.

. . . .

Layton was not supposed to play during the baseball action, but he told National Public Radio how once "I just got lost in the moment" with the Yankees' Reggie Jackson at bat.

"I kept playing and playing and playing and playing," he remembered. "And Reggie looked up at the booth, and the umpires looked up at the booth. Reggie threw down the bat and he started dancing at home plate."

But there were also somber times. When the Yankees played the Baltimore Orioles on Sept. 11, 2002, the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Layton played a slow, poignant version of "Ave Maria" after a moment of silence at 9:11 p.m.

. . . .

As the summers passed, recorded music pumped in through speakers cut into Layton's musicianship at Yankee Stadium.

But he expressed no regrets.

"I've had my day," he told The New York Times in October 2003 as he closed his career. "Playing with 50,000 watts of power, what rock star has an amplifier like that? I play for up to 56,000 people a night. Not even Madonna has done those kind of numbers."

The NPR interview mentioned in the Times is here.