As loyal fans, young and old, watched the Texas Rangers claw themselves out of the basement over the years, the notes of the ballpark organ have filled their ears. Iconic tunes like “Charge!” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” were played, always, alongside modern pop hits rendered old-timey by 37-year-old Dustin Tatro’s organ.
There wasn’t else much to enjoy.
Following brutal World Series losses in 2010 and 2011, the Rangers saw a precipitous drop in performance near the end of the decade. It was around this time that the team took Tatro on as the team organist, and during his reign, the Rangers flipped a 68-94 record in 2022 to an improbable World Series victory in 2023.
Did Tatro’s ballpark tunes whip the crowd into such a frenzy that it willed Adolis Garcia to bash 39 homers and postseason hero Corey Seager to hit .327?
Who’s to say. It’s irrelevant anyway. After the season, Tatro was unceremoniously dumped, without answers.
“No explanation, no apologies, nothing,” Tatro told The Barbed Wire.
As the 2024 playoffs were winding down, The Barbed Wire chatted with Tatro about the state of the organist in 2024. Tatro, who still proudly wears his Rangers jersey with ORGANIST emblazoned on the back, doesn’t see his ouster as evidence that baseball organists are a dying breed — although they are — or that it portends a future in which every ballpark eventually replaces its organ music with guitar solos and jock jams.
To him, the issue was a localized one, the folly of a team driving blindly into the future and forgetting about the past, the tradition of baseball at the ballpark.
Still, he’s got some rhetorical questions.
When the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, did they boot Gary Pressy out the door? When the Yankees won it seven times did they ever take the organ out?
“It’s very strange,” Tatro said. “We’re the only team in baseball that has ever won the World Series and got rid of the organist.”
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On April 26, 1941, the first organ note in Major League Baseball history rang out above Chicago’s Wrigley Field as the St. Louis Cardinals took on the Cubs. This was a big deal, and the stunt warranted a fair amount of press.
But organist Ray Nelson had to cut out the racket before the first pitch, according to a story in the Chicago Tribune. The team, it seems, hadn’t worked out music licensing yet, and since the organ would be audible over the radio broadcast, Nelson couldn’t even play the Cubs’ theme at the time.
After the second world war, the ballpark organist became a hot in-game attraction that spread across the league. They were a ballpark staple, playing everything from the National Anthem to pre-at-bat jingles to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch.
But the proliferation of celebrity anthem singers, customized walk-up songs, and familiar rock and pop jams reduced how much teams relied on their live entertainers. And some teams, like the Mets in 1979, and the White Sox in 2010, never replaced their longtime organists.
By 2005, the Los Angeles Times had recommended the ballpark organist for the endangered species list. Today, only nine teams employ full-time organists.
Tatro, a lifelong Texan, never paid attention to the organist when he made the rare, six-and-a-half hour trip to Arlington in his 20s. In fact, he figured that the organ music was all made on computers.
“It turns out that was true by that point,” Tatro said. “But when I was a kid, we did have a live organist.”
Tatro played the piano in elementary school. Once he reached middle school, the organist at his local church convinced him to play hymns before the Sunday service each week. Still, it was beyond his wildest dreams that he’d one day weave his two loves together.
That’s because, in the heyday of the ballpark organ, players were pros. Nancy Faust, who tickled the ivories for the White Sox from 1970-2010, was the daughter of a professional musician who started playing the instrument at age 4. The Angels’ former organist, Peggy Duquesnel, was an established jazz pianist before taking the gig. Mets organist Jane Jarvis was a jazz prodigy who studied at the Chicago Conservatory of Music. There was little room for normal folks who just liked baseball and could play pretty well.
Then, in 2020, Chuck Morgan — who has been the Rangers’ PA announcer since 1983 and is now in charge of team entertainment — found Tatro on social media and asked if he’d be interested in recording some organ tracks for games.
So Tatro got started, recording music that pumped up Rangers fans for the next few seasons.
The team didn’t have an organ at the stadium, but that didn’t worry Tatro. He loved connecting with fans through his music, even if he wasn’t playing them live.
“Baseball tends to bond people, even those who don’t know each other, in a way that other settings don’t,” Tatro said. “Everybody’s family, everybody’s friends when they’re at the ballpark.”
He’d take requests on his website, record them, and upload them to the cloud. The tracks would be available for a game that night. Some of the more niche requests he received were “Intermission” by prog-metal band Tool and Sisquo’s “The Thong Song.” Tatro said he turned red when the team actually played the latter during a game.
He and Morgan had a plan to eventually get an organ installed at Globe Life Field, the home of the Rangers that opened during the COVID-plagued 2020 season.
“That was kind of a promise, but it never happened,” Tatro said.
Tatro held out hope, especially after the Rangers defeated the Diamondbacks in the World Series in 2023. But he began to worry when, during two home exhibition games this March, zero organ music played in the ballpark.
Now there’s no organ music, per Tatro, and everything is “techno synthesizer” and “garage band metal guitar with a tone that an 11-year-old would come up with.”
After Tatro criticized an employee on social media who took credit for the new presentation at the ballpark, he was blocked by that staffer and subsequently unfollowed by the team’s DJ.
(The Texas Rangers did not respond to a request for comment from The Barbed Wire about Tatro’s employment and termination, or to questions regarding the future of organ music at the ballpark.)
Tatro still loves the Rangers. He’s been back at the ballpark this season, and on September 9, posted a photo of himself receiving his 2023 World Series ring.
He has heard nothing from the organization about the organ, however.
“When they get done playing around, they know where their organist is and if they want to ask, I will gladly step back in,” he said.
The Rangers finished 78-84 in 2024, missing the playoffs.
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But Tatro didn’t spend the 2024 season crying into his Hammond B3.
He lives a few blocks away from a small baseball stadium that houses the Abilene Flying Bison, an independent team. The Flying Bison are several steps below Major League baseball, averaging a mere 800 fans per game. And Tatro is now the team’s organist.
John Stark, the team’s president, plucked Tatro from the waiver wire.
“You don’t always have an MLB quality organist just fall in your lap like that,” he told The Barbed Wire. “But there was no ego, there was no, ‘Hey, I used to do this at the big league level. It was, ‘How can I help to make this the best possible outcome for all of us and to have fun with it?’”
It went so well that Tatro said he’d bring his portable organ to as many home games that his work schedule and family life would allow.
Stark accepted the offer.
“There is nothing more synonymous with the game of baseball to me than listening to ‘Charge’ being played on the organ,” he said.
The season was a success.
“The crowds responding to the organ stuff were shaking dust and insulation out of the ceiling,” Tatro said. “It was crazy.”
During games where Tatro couldn’t make it, fans asked where he was by name, Stark told The Barbed Wire.
“Every game here in Abilene this summer was a blessing and it almost made me forget about what’s happened up there,” Tatro said, obliquely referring to the Rangers, and mentioning that there is “no question” he will be back with the Flying Bison in 2025.
Now Stark can’t imagine a Flying Bison game without a live organ.
“I know where he lives,” he said. “I’ll go hog tie him and drag him back to the ballpark.”
Even if Tatro wanted to bolt for brighter pastures, he’s in a bit of a pickle. Stark is personally storing some musical equipment for him during the offseason.
“I’ve got the dadgum organ,” Stark said. “He better be coming back, or else I’m inheriting it.”
