Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan Throws First Pitch at New York Mets Sport: Watch

Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan threw out the primary pitch at Citi Area in Queens, New York, at the moment earlier than the Main League Baseball recreation between the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. Watch it go down beneath.

“Please welcome guitarist and vocalist Ira Kaplan from the group Yo La Tengo, who’ve been one of the critically acclaimed bands in American music for nearly 40 years” the Mets’ public handle announcer mentioned because the musician took the mound. “A lifelong Mets fan, Ira and bandmates just lately celebrated the discharge of their seventeenth album, This Stupid World. Our ceremonial catcher is Mark Vientos. All proper, Ira, it’s your pitch!” Kaplan, standing on the rubber, delivered a terrific, bounceless pitch to the Mets third baseman. The house staff went on to defeat the Phillies 4-2.

Yo La Tengo kick off their summer tour in assist of This Silly World on June 9 in Jersey Metropolis, New Jersey. Discover the band’s tour dates beneath.

Yo La Tengo have an extended and storied historical past of Mets fandom. The band attracts its title got here from an anecdote from the Mets’ inaugural season in 1962, when heart fielder Richie Ashburn realized the right way to name fly balls in Spanish (“¡Yo la tengo!” or “I received it!”) with a purpose to keep away from collisions together with his Venezuelan teammate, shortstop Elio Chacón. Their teammate and left fielder Frank Thomas missed that memo, and, after crashing into Ashburn, requested him, “What the heck is a Yellow Tango?”

Kaplan—a “long-suffering” Mets fan who was 5 years previous when the staff debuted—first encountered the story in Roger Angell’s 1977 baseball ebook, 5 Seasons. The story was later immortalized in Ken Burns’ foundational 1994 docuseries Baseball, although Kaplan now believes it to be apocryphal.

In 2006, the band coated the staff’s battle tune, “Meet the Mets,” for the covers LP Yo La Tengo Is Murdering the Classics, that includes recordings from eight years price of fundraisers for the unbiased New Jersey radio station WFMU. The compilation additionally features a rendition of the Nightmares’ 1985 observe “Baseball Altamont,” a tune about Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez bumming a cigarette from pitcher Dwight Gooden as he watches followers riot in Shea Stadium, the staff’s former residence that’s additionally referenced by Yo La Tengo of their 1997 observe “Moby Octopad.”