How 'Soul Man' Cease found perfect warmup song in Blues Brothers hit

TORONTO -- Dylan Cease is bringing back the blues.

Cease’s warmup song is one of the most unique in baseball -- and it might just be the best -- a performance of a blues classic that can be traced all the way back to an after-hours club in Toronto in 1974.

Cease had warmed to James Brown’s "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" in 2025, but in the days leading up to his Blue Jays debut, a wild mix of songs started spilling out of the coaching offices. Inside was Cease, searching for something. He was blasting everything from Metallica to Mary J. Blige, Marilyn Manson to The Tragically Hip, but nothing felt right.

“I just couldn’t find one that was perfect,” Cease said. “Then [pitching coach] Pete [Walker] called me in, and he was like, ‘Hey, man, I think I’ve got something for you.’”

Walker pressed play. It was a live 1978 recording of “Soul Man” by The Blues Brothers.

“As soon as the 'Soul Man' chorus hit, I was like, ‘Yup. That’s it,’” Cease said.

Walker lit up when he was asked about “Soul Man.” He spends every waking minute trying to find the perfect pitch sequences or mechanical adjustments for his pitchers, but this time, he’s found a perfect warmup song. When Cease was warming up for his home debut on March 28, Walker could sense everyone wondering what on earth was playing when the song started to build through the Rogers Centre speakers, but then the chorus hit and it all started to work.

Comin' to ya, on a dusty road
Good lovin', I got a truckload
And when you get, you got something
So don't worry, 'cause I'm coming
I'm a soul man
I'm a soul man

The Blues Brothers go back to the early days of “Saturday Night Live,” but the group was really “born” in Toronto, just a 10-minute drive east of the dome. Dan Aykroyd, then performing at The Second City, had a place at 505 Queen St. East -- the 505 Club -- which would open up at 1 a.m. ET after he was done performing. One night in 1974, after Aykroyd met John Belushi at a show, Belushi stopped by the after-hours club and the two hit it off immediately.

That night, Aykroyd was playing a blues record from Toronto’s own “The Downchild Blues Band.” Aykroyd was already the blues savant, but Belushi didn’t know a thing about it.

“And I said, ‘Well, you’re from Chicago, you know about the blues.’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m into heavy metal and that,’ Aykroyd told The Toronto Star in 2017. “The next time I saw him, he had 300 [blues] records. That was really the night we came up with the Blues Brothers.”

They modeled parts of their characters, Elmwood and Jake Blues, off that same Downchild Blues Band. Aykroyd had the harmonica, dancing wildly on stage, while Belushi was the raucous frontman. In 1975, the two were part of the original SNL cast, and while they played some local clubs as The Blues Brothers, Lorne Michaels eventually let them warm up the SNL crowds with their music before the shows began.

This all came before their movie by the same name, but “Soul Man” was one of the group’s biggest hits, up there with “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.”

The Blues Brothers were, just like Cease, so many things all at once. It often led to the question of whether the band was a serious band or just a skit that never ended, but it was all real.

Cease is an eccentric himself, a new obsession swallowing him whole every few months. Right now it’s disc golf and vintage tees, where he has a particular fascination with Aladdin’s Genie and Robin Williams. Last week, he gifted Blue Jays manager John Schneider an original painting of his, which is now the brightest and loudest thing hanging in the skipper’s office.

He’s one of a kind from the moment he steps on the mound. He’s a soul man.