San Diego Padres closer Mason Miller has a new entrance song that's gone viral, and it didn't come from a player.
Veteran players tend to have a lot of time on their hands near the end of spring training, and sometimes different things happen as a result. For the San Diego Padres, that thing was a new entrance song for reliever Mason Miller as he stepped into the role of the Padres’ new closer.
That song is now a viral hit, and there’s been a lot of curiosity as to exactly how it happened. Dennis Lin of The Athletic looked into this, and he ended up with a very entertaining story as a result.
The song, as many fans know by now, is Korn’s “Blind,” and the Padres debuted it last Saturday night when Miller made his entrance against the Detroit Tigers lats Saturday night. The minute-long clip features the song’s killer riff, and by the time Miller struck out Tigers rookie phenom Kevin McGonicle the intro had been picked up by both baseball and music sites to the point where it went completely viral.
So who was responsible for all this? That would be Padres clubhouse attendant TJ Laidlaw, who helped this happen with what Lin called “a friendly tussle over a Bluetooth speaker.”
That requires an explanation, so let’s go there. A few weeks ago, starter Randy Vasquez commandeered the Padres clubhouse sound system, so Laidlaw needed a counter-song that would retake the room.
“I saw the Woodstock version of it over the winter at one point,” Laidlaw said. “I just saw this video’s, like, unreal.”
The song got played over and over, to the point where it gained a presence in the Padres clubhouse during spring training. Laidlaw and his fellow clubhouse attendants count doing the uniform laundry as one of their many chores, and that was when the light bulb came on.
“What a song to come out to,” Laidlaw remembers thinking aloud.
What Laidlaw didn’t know, according to Lin, was that Miller had been crowdsourcing among his fans and asking for song ideas, with one important caveat: he didn’t want a song from another closer, either past or current.
Miller wasn’t a Korn fan, but he was intrigued, based on the tense opening followed by lead singer Jonathan Davis’ iconic “Are you ready?” The reaper graphic didn’t hurt, either.
“It was a little scary, for sure,” Miller said. “It kind of captures a good, ominous vibe coming into the game.”
Laidlaw learned that Miller was going with it on the Wednesday before it debuted, but very few people knew it would debut on Saturday.
“I was, like, super critical of it because I kind of helped him choose this, so I was definitely worried about it,” Laidlaw said. “But I’m glad he got the save. That was the biggest thing, obviously.”
Miller has enjoyed the reaction, too. “It’s been cool to see how much it’s kind of been blasted everywhere,” Miller said. “You know, you always want to have people enjoy the song.”
What Miller needs now is more save opportunities. The song needs more viral moments, and the Padres could definitely use a few more wins.