From Bieber to Metallica, Mets rookies Ewing, Benge strike a chord on and off field
NEW YORK -- Ask Carson Benge or A.J. Ewing about their favorite road trips this season, and they’ll probably mention San Diego. The beach? The weather? The ballpark?
“They had a couple guitars [in the visiting clubhouse],” Benge said.
As far as feel-good stories go, the Mets don’t have many better than Benge and Ewing, a pair of teammates and friends who have emerged as top-of-the-order hitters for the franchise. They also both happen to play guitar.
Benge picked up the habit when he was rehabbing from Tommy John surgery back in college, mostly as a way to fight boredom. It began with sessions of the video game Guitar Hero, before Benge decided to move on to the real thing. He became a credible player in a short time, experimenting with any music he thought sounded good. About three years ago, Benge had an image of a guitar tattooed onto the back of his arm.
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Ewing learned the instrument at a more formative age. He was around five or six years old when he met his stepfather, Tom Hawkinson, who was performing the role of John Lennon in a Beatles cover band called The Sweet Beats. A couple of years later, Ewing began learning how to play from Hawkinson, whose band remains active today.
Those lessons, as well as nights out seeing Hawkinson in concert, plus lots of instructional YouTube videos, formed the foundation of Ewing’s interest in the instrument.
“Music is his thing,” Ewing said. “He loves the guitar. He loves to sing. But he kind of brought guitar onto me when I first met him.”
For several years, Ewing stopped playing guitar as baseball became the focal point of his life. But around the time he met Benge, Ewing began fooling around with music again. Hawkinson once gifted Ewing a Taylor guitar that he keeps with him in New York, along with multiple others at his childhood home in Ohio. Benge left his guitar at home, which he regrets.
“It’s a little hard to stick with it during the season,” Ewing said. “But in the offseason, I like to play a lot.”
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The two don’t consider their guitar habits much more than a way to kill time. Rather than harmonize together, they’re far more likely to pass the instrument back and forth, as they did in the San Diego clubhouse. Neither has any ambition to start a band. They will, however, try their hand at just about any music -- “from Justin Bieber all the way to Metallica,” as Ewing put it. If one of them finds a guitar lick or a chord structure that they like, they’ll dive into it. (Among Ewing’s favorites is the Metallica headbanger “Fade to Black.”)
“If I hear a song and I like it, I’ll just kind of look it up and learn how to play it,” Benge said.
Asked who’s the better musician, Ewing paused before defining the main artistic difference between them: Ewing is more of a strummer, while Benge “just picks.”
“He could probably impress you more,” Ewing said.
“Me,” Benge quipped without similar hesitation.
Of course, this isn’t a competition. As top National League rookies, Benge and Ewing have an outlet to scratch their competitive itch on a nightly basis. If anything, guitar playing offers them a reprieve from the stress of it all.
“I’d say it’s pretty calming,” Ewing said. “It’s just fun. Listening to songs and you being able to make it sound like that, it’s cool. It’s fun.”