One of AU’s own plays nearly every game at Nationals Park—but you won’t find him on the field.
Perched high above home plate in a former radio booth behind the keyboard of his cherry-red Viscount Sonus 60, Matthew Van Hoose is the Washington Nationals’ all-star organist. For 15 years, the College of Arts and Sciences musician in residence has helped provide the soundtrack to more than 1,000 ballgames—from pitcher Stephen Strasburg’s highly anticipated debut in 2010 to a storybook 2019 World Series run.
Van Hoose, who can play by ear, works in tandem with the DJ to “to provide some extra energy in key moments and get the crowd hyped up.”
Before each game, Van Hoose jots down a playlist of 30 to 40 tunes, ranging from “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” by Katy Perry and “Industry Baby” by Lil Nas X to “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen and “Rock Lobster” by the B-52’s—a longtime favorite. He might pull out the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” following a rain delay or Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” when the home team is trailing late in the game.
“It’s [about] trying to find that balance between getting [the crowd] going and not doing too much at certain times,” he says.
The longtime baseball fan took his first swing at the big leagues as an undergraduate at Oberlin College. But he missed his audition with the now Cleveland Guardians because he had a piano recital.
When the job with the Nats came open, Van Hoose kept his eye on the ball. He sent a demo CD featuring a Bach prelude to the front office and was invited to join an elite roster of just 13 organists across Major League Baseball.
After Ray Nelson played the first strains of organ music ever heard at an MLB game in 1941 at the Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field, the organ—which Mozart dubbed “the king of instruments”—began popping up at ballparks across the US, from Fenway Park in Boston to Ebbets Field, onetime home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
It’s a nice tradition—“like popcorn and Cracker Jacks,” Van Hoose says. “Even if all 30 teams had organists, it would still be special. I want to uphold this standard, so to speak, that’s been set by organists before me.”