A bit of awesome we missed during Tuesday night’s Midsummer Classic – 71-year-old broadcaster Tim McCarver paying retirement homage to iconic Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera with a reciting of Metallica‘s ’91 bedtime thrasher, “Enter Sandman.” Adopted as his walk-on theme song by Yankees staffers before the turn of the millennium, Rivera has for better or worse been trotting out to the tune for the twilight of his career.
But to hear McCarver slow its ominous chorus down to a sermon married with American’s favorite past-time, it elicits a breed of happiness we can’t articulate. Especially considering the song’s about a kid’s worst nightmare. Please let this be the first of many more ballpark lyricisms to come. Props to former SportsGrid‘er Timothy Burke for the edited video of fellow American League’er Prince Fielder’s triple aside Rivera’s clappy-face:
