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Well, Red Sox fans: At least we have Josh Kantor on the organ
“Can you imagine Fenway Park without an organ?” former Red Sox pitcher and New England Sports Network baseball analyst Lenny DiNardo asked recently. I certainly can’t.
When I was a kid, I relished the sonorous sound of the late John Kiley, who manned the Fenway organ from 1953 to 1989. Kiley inexorably wedded the game to the instrument for me. Hearing the organ at the park these days can bring me back to childhood memories. Of course, not all of them are good, including many a pre-1967 three-game series my parents took me to. We’d drive seven hours from central Maine to Boston, where the hapless Sox would inevitably lose two of three or get swept. I’d cry and that would be that.
But then came the last two games in 1967 against the Twins, where the Sox won the American League pennant. I was 11 when I saw shortstop Rico Petrocelli catch the pop-up that would ultimately clinch the pennant. I ran onto the field, joining the throng jumping about in celebration and collected infield grass and dirt from the pitching mound in my mom’s cellophane cigarette pack lining. (There was no noticeable security or police presence back then. No crowds had ever stormed the field before.) The success of ’67 ushered in an era of hope. Hey, we thought, maybe we can be winners every year. Or at least some years.
Being a Red Sox fan, baseball player, and lover of rock music was a good part of my youthful identity. I was youth league All-Star, but my baseball career skidded to a halt after senior year of high school. I played pretty solid third and first base, and was a line drive hitter, batting about .290, but I had no speed. And I’m certain I couldn’t have handled college-level velocity or breaking pitches.
Ultimately, my interest in rock music served me better than baseball. A collegiate attempt at learning to play bass guitar failed miserably; I had no dexterity or patience. But I wrote oft-irreverent rock pieces for my university paper, The Maine Campus, and more conventional rock writing as a weekly columnist for the Bangor Daily News. When I joined the Boston Globe in 1979 as music writer, first as a freelancer and then eight years later as a staff writer, to get paid reasonably well for this thing I loved felt like a dream.
Nearly 1,300 miles away, another kid — Josh Kantor — played Little League ball in Athens, Georgia, and fantasized for a few years about playing in the majors. “But,” he says, “I was always an average player at best, and by the time I was 13, I knew that I would never make a high school team, let alone any team beyond that.” Coincidentally, Kantor was also interested in music and played in what he calls “lousy garage bands.”
“As a kid I wanted to be a rock star, but then I think by the time I was 20 I had sort of figured that wasn’t in the cards, which is maybe ironic given that while I’m not a rock star, I’ve played with a lot of rock stars for the last 15 years or so and that’s been fun.” Indeed, Kantor has accompanied the Jon Langford’s The Waco Brothers and played with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Mike Mills in the Baseball Project.
But the reason you probably know him is that he’s been the man behind the double-deck Yamaha organ at Fenway Park for 21 years. And today, when the Red Sox play this season’s home opener, it will be the 1,699th consecutive game for the 52-year-old keyboardist from Cambridge.
While virtually no one expects the Red Sox to be playing in October, in a certain sense — sonically at least — all will be right with the world at America’s Most Beloved Ballpark™ with Kantor in his spot on the fourth level of the park, just below the press box. His music is a touchtone for many of the Fenway faithful.
Kantor plays “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at every seventh-inning stretch. But he also takes request via X, formerly known as Twitter. These could be well-known standards by the likes of Aretha Franklin or the Beatles. But they might also be Kantor’s spin on songs by Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, the Ramones or Dead Boys. Or bits from Boston groups like the J. Geils Band, Aerosmith and Letters to Cleo.
The old songs take me back, but Kantor’s renditions of newer rock and pop selections bring me fully into the 21st century. And I don’t think I’m alone there. Sometimes, Kantor will try and link the song to what has happened or is about to happen in the game. Nine years ago, when the Oakland Athletics’ Pat Venditte, the first switch-pitcher (meaning he was ambidextrous) in the American League in 120 years, made his major league debut at Fenway, Kantor played ‘Both Sides Now,’ an old Judy Collins/Joni Mitchell song and people loved it.
Can you imagine Fenway Park without an organ?
Lenny DiNardo
Visiting fans are saluted with songs from their hometown — Twins fans, for instance, may get Hüsker Dü or the Replacements. If the Red Sox batter gets a clutch hit, Kantor might play “Just What I Needed” by The Cars, who hail from Boston.
If Kantor notices — or is alerted to — the fact that a musician’s in the house, he’ll often play some of their music. I took The Rascals guitarist Gene Cornish to Fenway in 2013 and Kantor played two of the band’s songs. Cornish’s face lit up. It was his first game at Fenway and the diehard Yankee fan found himself rooting for his arch rival as the game unfolded.
The season has gotten off to a spectacularly good start. The Sox went 7-3 on a West Coast road trip. Who’da thunk it? It’s spring and hope springs eternal. But what if the season goes — well, let’s be frank — as poorly as virtually every pundit and prognosticator has predicted? “My love of baseball runs deep,” Kantor says. “It’s still fun even when they’re not winning. Just going to Fenway puts the pep in my step.”
Is it fun for me when they’re not winning? Eh, not so much, to be honest. I’ve written about how I nearly didn’t renew my season subscription this year. But Fenway Park is part of the fabric of my life and Kantor’s clever mind and musicianship is one of the best parts of the season. Victories preferred, losses tolerated. And they’re both probably better if Kantor plays ABBA’s “I Have a Dream” somewhere along the way.
