Why Guardians' Oscar Gonzalez has 'SpongeBob SquarePants' walk-up music
NEW YORK — Oscar Gonzalez doesn’t remember which song he almost chose that day in Class AAA in Columbus, Ohio. Much like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards enrolling at the same primary school in southeast England, any alternative has long since become unimaginable.
Who can say what would have happened if the 24-year-old rookie outfielder had chosen an ode to something other than nautical nonsense to herald his arrival at home plate at Progressive Field this year. Who knows where the Cleveland Guardians would be if Gonzalez had grown up watching “Teletubbies” instead — or if he were a big “Flintstones” guy. As has been said since the days when credible choices for walk-up music were limited to Beethoven’s Fifth or a Sousa march, baseball is a game of inches.
But as fate would have it, Gonzalez was not a “Fairly OddParents” fan during his childhood in the Dominican Republic. He didn’t revel in “Scooby-Doo.” No, Gonzalez loved “SpongeBob SquarePants.” So when he needed to choose a song, it was the SpongeBob theme that slid to the front of his mind.
Advertisement
“The song came to me,” Gonzalez said this week through team interpreter Agustin Rivero. “I thought that was something the kids would love, so that’s why I chose it.”
Maybe, just maybe, the song chose him, too. Because it was that song that played before Gonzalez delivered one of the most important home runs in the history of Cleveland baseball, his 15th-inning walk-off homer in Game 2 of Cleveland’s first-round win over the Tampa Bay Rays.
Gonzalez did not begin the season on the major league roster, didn’t break into the big leagues until May. He did not hit cleanup until June. He was hitting fifth Saturday when he hammered a Corey Kluber pitch deep to left field to give his upstart Guardians an unlikely win courtesy of an unlikely hero. He said this week his life hasn’t changed much because of the homer. But he has changed others’.
Advertisement
Take, for example, devoted Guardians fan David Hrusovsky, who started wearing an old SpongeBob Halloween costume to Guardians home games and ended up on national television just before the homer, a showing that earned him an interview on local television in Cleveland.
Or think, for a moment, about the Guardians franchise, enduring the longest active title drought in Major League Baseball. Gonzalez’s home run gave Cleveland a shot at the New York Yankees in the division series, the latest stunner from a team that used 17 rookies this season and had the lowest average age of any team in the majors at 26 as it won the American League Central over more experienced teams such as the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins. They are one of the last American League teams standing despite the fact that outside star third baseman José Ramírez, people outside Cleveland probably would be able to name more Krusty Krab staff members than Guardians starters.
Gonzalez was by no means destined to be a part of either group when the season began.
Advertisement
He hit .208 with a .585 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in the Dominican Winter League last year. He was a free-swinging, power-first slugger who could not find his way onto the Guardians’ 40-man roster last winter as the team protected more heralded prospects from selection in the Rule 5 draft. Because of the lockout, MLB canceled that draft last year. Because it did, Gonzalez began spring training in the Cleveland system. He hit .282 with an .813 OPS in 41 games at Columbus to start the season.
Guardians President of Baseball Operations Chris Antonetti and General Manager Mike Chernoff decided it was time to call him up, knowing full well what the decision meant musically, undeterred by any dignity-related consequences.
“There are lots of things we think about when we call up players,” Antonetti said this week. “Walk-up song is not one of them. That didn’t cross the threshold for consideration.”
To be clear, Antonetti was in no way concerned about Gonzalez’s choice. He was impressed when Gonzalez stuck with it instead of changing to something more mainstream for the big leagues.
Advertisement
“I thought it was awesome,” Antonetti said. “He’s so comfortable with who he is that he didn’t change it.”
Some of his teammates might have been more comfortable if he had changed it. Veteran catcher Austin Hedges said many of them, particularly the few older players who hadn’t played with Gonzalez in the minors, thought it was a prank. Hedges admitted he found it shocking. He wasn’t the only one.
“I thought it was terrible. I’m not going to lie. I think everyone has voiced this concern,” pitcher Triston McKenzie said with a smile. “But it worked for him. He came up and hit .300 the first two weeks and everyone was like, well, if it works for him …”
If McKenzie thought he and his teammates were stuck with the song then, they are certainly stuck with it now; it was that song that filled Gonzalez’s ears on his way to the plate for one of the biggest at-bats in his team’s history. And as corny as it sounds, the fact that Gonzalez felt comfortable enough to choose that anthem means Hedges and fellow veterans such as Ramírez are facilitating the kind of clubhouse they hoped would accelerate the progress of the young players on which this team relies.
Advertisement
“I think it’s the culture of leadership from everybody,” McKenzie said. “When guys come up, they may not be comfortable talking to José Ramírez, but when they see him joking, being lighthearted, talking to everybody, it makes people feel like they can be themselves, they don’t have to hide from anybody.”
At 6-foot-4, Gonzalez isn’t exactly capable of blending in anyway. He said his teammates joke with him about the song sometimes but that he doesn’t really care if they do.
“To be honest, what matters to me is that the kids like it and that I like it,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t care what other people say.”
And besides, Gonzalez’s march to the plate is less about what other people say than it is about what they sing. And what they sing — especially in the Guardians’ dugout a few times a game these days — is a song about the resident of a pineapple under the sea, absorbent, yellow, porous and utterly unforgettable.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMCxu9GtqmhqYGd%2FcH2PaGhuZ5%2BosKK%2BjKCmp7KRobK7edKppqeflZe8o3s%3D