Question for Detroit Tigers/Brandon Inge/The Hollies fans
jrboles
Posts: 566 ✭✭
in Sports Talk
In early 2013 I met up with an old friend with whom I had seen several White Sox games at Sox Park over the past 17 or so years. Over the course of several drinks we reminisced on the White Sox game 4-5 years ago where Nancy Faust played "Bus Stop" by the Hollies each time Brandon Inge walked to the plate. We were both in the bag but remembered this explicitly. Any insight as to why this might be pertinent for Inge?
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Not easy to say Na, Na, Goodbye to Sox organist
By Burt Constable
Organist Nancy Faust walked away from the White Sox with a World Series ring, a personalized bobblehead of her in action at the keyboard, a fan letter from President Obama and 41 years of great memories. Today, for the first time since 1969, Faust will take in the White Sox home opener from somewhere other than her organ perch at the ballpark.
“There is a great likelihood I’ll be in front of the television set,” Faust says from her home in rural Mundelein where she lives with her longtime husband, Joe, and a menagerie that includes their dog, Patches; Harold the rooster and his hen, Black Raspberry Jam Jenkins; perennial visiting Canada geese, Ringo and Starr; and Faust’s beloved trained donkey, Mandy. An avid animal lover, Faust took home her first donkey after no one claimed the living prize in a contest hatched by colorful Sox owner Bill Veeck.
Like most legends who retire from baseball on their own terms, Faust, 64, admits to being torn.
“Sometimes your heart and your head conflict with each other,” she says. “Sure, I’ll miss it.”
She and her husband still operate Faust Organ Rental and Faust plays for private events (“I’m learning ‘Heartbreaker’ for a 40th birthday party”). She hasn’t played her trademark version of the song she calls “Na, Na, Goodbye” since she wowed a Lions Club convention in Itasca a couple of weeks ago. But she can’t shut off her baseball talent. When she hears the name of new Sox outfielder Lastings Milledge, her head and heart command her to play “This Will Be the Last Time.”
As a cute, 22-year-old blond hired by Veeck at the start of the 1970 season, Faust reinvented the role of a ballpark organist by incorporating rock and pop songs into her repertoire.
“I remember sitting there, thinking, ‘This is the greatest job in the world,’” says Faust, a psychology major and music minor with a great memory, quick wit and able fingers. “I had the right outlet for the one thing I could do.”
She credits her husband and fans with helping her think of clever songs. Sometimes her song fit the player, such as when she serenaded Sox all-star Dick Allen in the early 1970s by playing “Superstar.” Other times, Faust’s tunes were riddles requiring the fans to play along. Fans laughed and felt in on the joke when they figured out the song “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” was a play on the name of player Pete Incaviglia, or that Faust’s rendition of “I Could Have Danced All Night” for Chone Figgins was a “My Fair Lady” reference to the character Professor Higgins, which rhymes with Figgins. Faust drew bilingual chuckles when she greeted visiting Cub Henry Blanco with “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
Always available to fans, Faust took requests. Acquiescing to tastes beyond the literary library of most baseball fans, Faust once followed a fan’s suggestion to welcome Detroit Tiger Brandon Inge with The Hollies’ song “Bus Stop” in reference to the classic work “Bus Stop” by playwright William Inge. The next day, two fans excitedly rushed up to Faust to tell her that connection was brilliant.
Doug
Liquidating my collection for the 3rd and final time. Time for others to enjoy what I have enjoyed over the last several decades. Money could be put to better use.
Holy cow