It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.???

It's Opening Day in Colorado. The Rockies have sold out the place and the home team's fans are enjoying over-priced beer and a one-run lead against their division rivals, the Arizona Diamondbacks. With one out in the eighth inning, reliever Brian Fuentes is summoned from the bullpen. During his trek across the outfield grass to the mound something very strange happens: Y.M.C.A. begins blaring from the stadium speakers. It's odd because Fuentes usually enters games to Staind's For You, a more "rockous" tune, to say the least. Despite the musical mix-up, Fuentes mows down the Diamondbacks, but he admits afterwards that being ushered into the game by the Village People did little to boost his adrenalin.

With the perfect tune, a closer's entrance can be as intimidating as any in professional sports. But it must strike a perfect balance, instilling fear in opposing batters, while also riling up fans to a fever pitch. That's why so many big-league closers pick classic heavy-metal tunes, with monster riffs and thunderous choruses, from the '80s and early '90s. Favourites include Hells Bells by AC/DC, Metallica's Enter Sandman, and Iron Man by Black Sabbath. "The song always reflects the closer's personality," says Deb Belinsky, who produces the music for all Toronto Blue Jays home games. "Metal is aggressive and in some ways beyond authority -- it's untouchable."

Many of the nastiest guys in baseball have come out of the bullpen -- and while music has accompanied many of them to the mound for a few decades, it hasn't always been so hard-hitting. Al "The Mad Hungarian" Hrabosky, a St. Louis Cardinal reliever in the 1970s who stomped around and screamed at himself between pitches as if possessed by the baseball gods, marched to the hill to the tune of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Then, during the '80s, John Franco made his way to becoming the first left-hander to notch 400 career saves with Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode, and the Oakland A's Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley jogged from the pen to the mound with his long black hair bouncing to the beat of George Thorogood & The Destroyers' Bad to the Bone.

Charlie Sheen's inspiring performance in 1989 as Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn in Major League is credited by some with the shift to a harder sound. Ever since he entered games backed by the Troggs classic that gave him his nickname, nearly every big league closer has demanded a hard, thrashing theme song to announce his late-inning arrival. For example, Toronto Blue Jay B.J. Ryan always enters games with Slipknot's Duality blasting, and the Montreal-born L.A. Dodgers closer Eric Gagne broke the all-time record for most consecutive saves in 2003 with a little help from Guns 'N Roses' Welcome to the Jungle. While many select their favourite bands, the feeling isn't always reciprocated. In 2000, members of Twisted Sister requested that Atlanta Braves save specialist John Rocker stop using their song, I Wanna Rock, after his disparaging comments about New Yorkers, AIDS sufferers and unwed mothers were published in Sports Illustrated.

This spring, the big debate among ball fans and pundits in the Big Apple (especially on sports radio) was over who deserved to use Metallica's Enter Sandman: the Yankees' Mariano Rivera, who had adopted the theme in 1999, or the Mets' newly acquired closer Billy Wagner, who switched to it in 1996 when his Houston Astro teammates grew tired of George Strait's The Fireman. Two months into the season, both pitchers still use the Metallica smash and Rivera has come out publicly, saying that it doesn't bother him at all that the new kid across town uses it.

Meanwhile, in Boston, Red Sox stopper Jonathan Papelbon said earlier this year that finding the perfect entrance tune is tougher than picking a wedding song. For the latter, he and his wife went with Making Memories Of Us by Keith Urban, which isn't nearly tough enough to cross over from the dance floor to the playing field. So this spring, the flame-thrower enlisted his fans to help him replace Drowning Pool's Bodies. More than 1,100 members of the Red Sox Nation responded, suggesting songs by everyone from AC/DC to Lionel Richie. But Papelbon -- who has notched 15 saves and surrendered only one run in his first 22 appearances this season -- decided to stick with what's working. Diehard fans can take heart that he ignored the one suggestion playing off his name: Ricky Martin's Shake Your Bon Bon.

PHOTO (COLOR): TWO GUYS, ONE SONG: Metallica's Enter Sandman is the theme music of the Yankees' Marsiano Rivera--and of the Mets' Billy Wagner

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By John Intini