Members of the crowd enjoyed the valley heat and the sun in their eyes while listening to Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun.”
Behind the hip summer music lies a musical mastermind, Jim Eggert. Nicknamed “Santiago” by his co-workers, he confesses to watching telenovelas during the baseball games.
Mexican soap operas, however, do not explain his talent nor his power over the crowd. Eggert has been a disc jockey for the past 20 years, giving him an edge of experience and expertise when it comes to sound-bytes. It was no surprise for him to see members of the crowd dancing to the Village People’s “YMCA.”
Although he works as one of the backstage security officers for Centennial Garden, he has been working part-time with the Blaze for the past four years, and he continues to enjoy watching the games from the press box.
The sounds of toppling bowling pins, shattering windows, gut-wrenching screams and wailing babies were not easy to come across.
“I just sit there for hours,” he revealed, describing his process for sifting through movies such as “Shrek,” “The Nutty Professor,” and both “Toy Story” films.
Now with the Blaze under new ownership, Eggert likes having more freedom to play different songs. After the eighth inning, the loudspeakers blared William Hung’s notorious version of “She Bangs.” Eggert was clearly taking advantage of this new found freedom.
After mockingly playing a recording of a girl laughing hysterically, let’s hope the Lancaster Jethawks can forgive him.