Please Don’t Take This Away From Me

About a year ago, I wrote a post here on UmpBump to express my utter dismay at how my Mets had begun playing Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” during the 8th inning at Shea. For one, I never, ever want to copy the Boston Red Sox (aside from that whole “winning championships” thing. That would be kind of cool). Secondly, it’s an incredibly annoying song that’s exacerbated by the choreographed movements (it ain’t dancing, people) of the audience.

On the other hand, I love the practice of Rickrolling. For those who are still unfamiliar with this wonderful phenomenon, it’s essentially a prank involving cultural icon Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up”, a tune that just gets sexier by the day. In fact, I currently have it as the #3 sexiest song of all time, preceded only by Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” and Billy Ocean’s “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car”.

So you can imagine how elated I was when I learned a few days ago that the people over at Fark.com were going to Rickroll the New York Mets, who was conducting an online poll as to what song the fans wanted to hear this year during the 8th inning.

Replace Neil Diamond with Rick Astley? It’s too good to be true!!!It’s like Black Sabbath replacing Tony Martin with Ronny James Dio!

Well, the votes were tabulated and the results were announced yesterday. And it was too good to be true, like Tony Martin coming back to replace Ronny James Dio (I’ll stop this horrible analogy now).  Despite “Never Gonna Give You Up” winning the online voting with over 5 million votes, the Mets have changed the rules of the game. Instead of giving me a song that will make me giggle uncontrollably every time I’m at Shea this year, they’ve decided to have a run-off. Why? Because the majority of the votes didn’t come from Mets fans, but rather, from people with an actual sense of humor. As MetsBlog.com explains:

Instead of declaring Astley the winner, the team will hold a live, run-off vote.

Tomorrow, during the eighth inning, they’ll play Never Gonna Give You Up, followed by Living on a Prayer on Wednesday, I’m a Believer on Thursday, Movin’ Out on Friday, Sweet Caroline on Saturday and Build Me Up Buttercup on Sunday.

What? Those are my choices? If I don’t get Rick, I’m left with 1) a Bon Jovi song that’s overplayed and abused at karaoke bars across the world, 2) a song that was written by Neil Diamond and performed by a fake television band that initially didn’t even sing or play their own music, 3) a Billy Joel song that’s actually about how pathetically pretentious it is for people to try and pass their lifestyles off as being better than it actually is, 4) the song that I wanted to be replaced from the get-go, and 5) a song that was forever ruined by Ben Stiller.

And you want to know what the kicker is? I’m going to be at Shea this Saturday where I will have to listen to, you guessed it, “Sweet Caroline”.

I think Neil Diamond’s ghost is haunting me. What? He’s not dead? Huh. Fooled me.