It’s hard to imagine a more intimidating experience in baseball at the moment than batting against Mason Miller. The Padres’ fireballing closer has faced 30 batters this year, and precisely one of them has gotten a hit. (Luis Arraez, for the record.) Twenty-three of them have struck out. Miller hasn’t allowed a run in 30 2/3 innings, three short of the franchise record set by Cla Meredith in 2006.
A closer that intense needs an appropriately hard-charging entrance song, and this season Miller has jogged out to Korn’s “Blind,” which sets the tone nicely for his barrage of 102-mph four-seamers.
It turns out Korn, which hails from a few hours up the coast in Bakersfield, Calif., clearly appreciates Miller’s choice of song. When he got to his locker on Thursday a few hours before closing out the Padres' eighth straight victory, there was a massive selection of Korn swag waiting for him, plus a letter from the band’s manager, Mark Wakefield, inviting him to attend a concert at some point.
The twist – ahem – is that Miller didn’t actually pick the song, leaving that in the hands of the Padres’ clubhouse attendants. This is understandable, given that “Blind” dropped in 1994, roughly four years before Miller was born. There’s also some precedent here: Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman ended up with AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” the same way.
“I’m glad they’ve taken some notice of it,” Miller said of Korn’s care package. “It’s awesome to have some notice of it. It’s awesome to have that support. Obviously the fans have really taken to it, and the band, from what I hear, loves it, too. So it’s awesome on all sides.”
Might we see Korn play Miller out live at some point a la Timmy Trumpet’s serenade for Edwin Díaz? It might be a good idea to keep some earplugs at the ready just in case.
AJ Cassavell contributed reporting to this story.