What if many of the biggest names in MLB at the moment were in a big football stadium with thousands of people watching them try to dance?
TOM GLAVINE: Okay, you guys...here�s how I�d dance to old school.
Ken Griffey Jr. turned the system on to Marvin Gaye�s �Sexual Healing.� Glavine twisted and turned and spun around.
DEREK JETER (to David Wright): Is this how you�d dance to Marvin Gaye?
DAVID WRIGHT: Not really.
Chipper Jones was exasperated; so much that he got up and said:
CHIPPER JONES: Okay, Tom�show�s over.
TOM GLAVINE: What do you mean, �Show�s over?�
CHIPPER JONES: You�re dancing like a baby and everyone�s just laughing at you.
TOM GLAVINE: Very well. Show me how you�d dance to something.
CHIPPER JONES: Okay. (To Griffey) Would you try something like�ballet?
Griffey set the tuner to �Le Petit Chien.� Chipper began dancing ballet to the piece.
DEREK JETER (to A-Rod): Interesting, huh?
A-ROD: Sure is.
Chipper stopped dancing and everyone clapped.
MIKE PIAZZA: Nice job, B.
CHIPPER JONES: Thank you. And by the way, why don�t some of you come up so we can do group dancing?
Everyone looked at each other and Chipper like: �Who�s gonna join him?�
CHIPPER JONES: Well?
DAVID WRIGHT: I�ll get up.
MIKE PIAZZA: Me, too.
NICK SWISHER: I second that!
DEREK JETER: Hey, Chipper, I�m back in the game.
HUSTON STREET: You know what? I�m joining them.
These men joined Chipper but stood behind him instead of standing him up.
CHIPPER JONES: Okay, guys. (To rest of audience) Now, I know a great way to group dance to this type of music. Ken, pick something. Anything!
But while setting the tuner, Griffey thought to himself:
KEN GRIFFEY JR.: Ballet. Bah! And he wants to teach everybody to dance to that crap? I�ll give them something to dance to, all right.
CHIPPER JONES: Are you going to play the song or what?
CARLOS BELTRAN: How about some salsa or merengue or something, man? I don�t wanna hear no stinking ballet!
CHIPPER JONES: Carlos, please...just for a few minutes.
Griffey set the tuner, but Vicki Sue Robinson�s �Turn the Beat Around� (Long 5:35 Version) began playing.
Instrumental intro: Chipper jolted his body left and right several times to the beat, as did Swisher, Jeter, David Wright, Huston, and Piazza, and the next thing you know, they all were moving swiftly to the rhythm. The others were bouncing their heads to the beat.
PRINCE FIELDER: Yeah, man! That�s what I�m talking about!
CHIPPER JONES: Well, what are you waiting for? Would you like to get up here and join us?
ALL: Yeah!!
The others quickly joined in the dancing.
BAND: Daniel Cabrera was playing bongos, Felix Hern�ndez was playing congas, Victor Mart�nez was playing timbales, Yorvit Torrealba was playing drums, Bernie Williams was playing fretless electric bass, Hank Steinbrenner was playing piano, Brian McCann was playing electric guitar, Russell Martin and Manny Ram�rez were playing trombone and saxophone, respectively, and Gary Sheffield blowing trumpet. A string ensemble was playing around them.
VERSE 1: Johnny Damon was shaking his behind while standing next to a pole. His wife, Michelle, clapped her hands. Tom Glavine was doing some type of John Travolta dance move.
CHORUS: Mike Mussina picked up rattles and started shaking them. Roy Oswalt was messing with a shaker, while Pl�cido Polanco was scratching a guiro to the rhythm of the song. Jeter and Trevor Hoffman kept spinning around. Piazza tried dancing the limbo underneath Swisher and Jos� Reyes� clasped hands. Managers Joe Girardi, Jerry Manuel, Joe Torre, and Tony LaRussa watched from the door and clapped their hands, moving their bodies to the beat.
VERSE 2: Lance Berkman and Troy Tulowitzki pumped their elbows and lifted up their knees as if they were exercising. Jeff Francoeur and his wife, Catie McCoy, took center stage. John Smoltz was shaking a tambourine and moving his hips slowly. Frenchy lifted up his arms and circled his hips whilst turning around, and McCoy shook her booty down to the floor like a slut.
On �scratch, scratch, scratch,� they pumped their booties inward and outward each time they said the word �scratch.� Carlos Quentin paraded next to McCoy and banged on a cowbell. Marco Scutaro shook his behind faster while Polanco circled him, still scratching his guiro.
Tino Mart�nez and his wife, Marie Prado, were shaking their butts, too, but Tino was also shaking rattles. On �rat, tat, tat...� Torrealba and Victor performed a drum break that led to the second chorus.
NICK SWISHER (singing in high pitch): Hey!
Huston Street and David Ortiz did some type of hip-hop dance. Vladimir Guerrero, Garret Anderson, and Howard Kendrick were jumping over each other. Mark Teixeira and his wife tried dancing the samba, but Teixeira almost stumbled. They didn�t sing the line �Love to hear it,� which was played four times, but they laughed. Carlos Beltr�n, Pudge, and A-Rod brought some girls to the dance floor and danced away.
BREAKDOWN: Felix performed a very intense conga ad lib that would make even the least motivated person get up off their feet in two seconds. Carl Crawford was playing with a cowbell, too. Tim Hudson and Josh Beckett did some vicious Latin dance with their ladies during this breakdown, in which the women shook their butts and the men kept spinning around and kicking the air. Jake Peavy, Orlando Hudson, and A.J. Pierzynski did some weird dance. Tim lay on the floor, kicked his right leg up, and jumped back up on his feet. Beckett and Andr� Ethier shook their bodies seductively.
Several audience members were dancing around. Tino (with his rattles), Vladimir, Huston, a shirtless Marco Scutaro, and Chipper (clapping his hands) squatted and shook their behinds along with the women. Quentin, Crawford, Smoltz, and Polanco were still playing their instruments while dancing around these guys. They stopped to wiggle their own booties back and forth.
SECOND CHORUS: Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Kyle Lohse, Cole Hamels, and Shane Victorino were doing the Electric Slide. Geovany Soto, Jim Edmonds, Jorge Posada, Johan Santana, and Carlos Delgado were sliding with these guys, too, except they were wiggling their hips like mad. Magglio Ordo�ez, Bobby Abreu, and Justin Verlander were bouncing their butts while sticking their arms outward. At this point, Liv�n provided a quick bongo ad lib.
Ethier lifted his hands high while dancing. A-Rod flung off his shirt and spun around. Ken Griffey Jr. and Justin Morneau jumped into the action. (Victor�s timbales filled their entrance.) Swisher and Kevin Youkilis were dancing around in a circle with two women in �Ring Around the Rosies� fashion. Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera tried some Egyptian-style walk. David Wright kept turning cartwheels.
GUITAR SOLO: Brian McCann stormed in with his electric guitar and went off. Frenchy, who just stripped McCoy down to a short black skirt and black bikini top, was doing a J. Lo-style dance with her. Melky Cabrera did that spinning thing normally done for rap songs as did Albert Pujols.
Liv�n resumed his bongo ad libs while Tino, Pettitte, Jeter, Hoffman, Chipper, Glavine and Scutaro danced mambo-style with their ladies. Huston and Ethier grabbed their wives and pretended to be intimate in their dancing with them.
Vocal ad libs: David Wells paraded through this mob while carrying Randy Johnson on his shoulders, and the Big Unit hollered:
RANDY JOHNSON: Gangway! Coming through! Whoa!
Final percussion interlude leading to final chorus: While Victor rocked his timbales, Shannon Stewart, Eric Ch�vez, Prince Fielder, and J.J. Hardy kicked their legs back and forth as if they were doing a cabaret-style gig. They headed down to the dance floor doing the cha-cha-cha. Rick Ankiel and Ichiro Suzuki did some silly breakdance. Matt Holliday shook his behind while Garrett Atkins held onto his waist. Todd Helton noticed them and yelled:
TODD HELTON: Hey, hey! Get some girls and do that!
While this was going on, Cal Ripken Jr., Francisco Rodr�guez, and Tony Gwynn (who were also singing) started a conga line that quickly brought everyone on the dance floor except for the instrumentalists in. The band kept playing the chorus after the song ended. Everybody in the conga line was dancing the conga and going:
ALL (chanting in conga line style): Da-da-da-da-da�whoo!
The entire band played a 16-measure improvisational section. During this, the line paraded fiercely around the main floor, spinning around, shaking their booties, even cheering, and ultimately splitting to do one final breakdance after the 16th measure.
At that point, Victor performed one last timbale ad lib for 16 measures, and everyone in the mob danced like crazy, which even brought Bobby Cox and many other Major League managers (with their wives, girlfriends, or other women, of course) into the action to strut their stuff. Several other audience members did the same. The 50,000+ people who filled the arena were cheering and dancing and clapping their hands while all this was going on.
Meanwhile, Holliday and Atkins were goofing off again, and Helton (who danced with his wife) caught them, yelling:
TODD HELTON: What did I tell you about doing that with each other?
When the band started playing the chorus for the last 4 times in its original arrangement, everyone (dancers, crowd, and all) was singing �Turn the beat around�� along with an enormous gospel choir that came into the arena in split lines from two entrances. Hank Aaron led one side shaking a tambourine, while Jim Leyland led the other blowing trumpet. These gospel singers were dancing around the stage clapping their hands, and several soloists were performing vocal ad libs of their own.
Frenchy, Glavine, and Ch�vez picked up their women and carried them on their right shoulders while the women clapped their hands. Scutaro swept his lady underneath his legs, while Tino and his lady did the booty dance.
Chipper stormed to one front row, and while clapping his hands, he was like:
CHIPPER JONES: Come on everybody! Let me hear you sing!
The crowd was singing, and so were Smoltz, Wright, Jeter, Frenchy, et al as they and their girls continued dancing. David Wright clapped his hands.
DAVID WRIGHT (rapping): Without the beat, you ain�t got no groove. Come on everybody let your bodies move!
CARL CRAWFORD: Yow!!
Carlos Quentin and Jon Lester were doing the booty drop.
NICK SWISHER (singing): I just can�t stop feeling the beat now!
Glavine and his wife were swaying freely.
TINO MARTINEZ (singing): Uh-huh give us some more baby!
FEMALE SOLOIST (singing): Hey yeah!
A-Rod shook his behind, and Huston and his wife got so intimate with each other that they nearly tongue-kissed each other. Brad Ausmus was doing the hustle.
ERIC CHAVEZ (bellowing into microphone): I live for this y�all!!
JIMMY ROLLINS (singing): Turn it up, down, and all around baby!
As these lines were being sung, Joe Torre and his wife had some serious fun moving their feet and singing the song along with �K-Rod,� Goose, and several audience members.
JEFF FRANCOEUR (singing in high range): Don�t you, don�t you, don�t you, don�t you love this rhythm?
Guerrero, Hardy, Fielder, Reyes, Kendrick, and Youkilis were twirling their wrists.
NICK SWISHER AND MARCO SCUTARO (singing): Whoo-hoo!!
(N.B. Swisher sang one octave above high C and B flat below that, and Marco hit the A above that same high C and then G natural below what Swisher sang, for a harmonizing effect in extremely high male registers.)
Jeter, Abreu, Ordo�ez, Verlander, and Griffey pumped their groins three times.
The last time everybody sang �Love to hear it...� the band performed the concluding 2-measure breakdown that led to the song�s end with the gospel choir singing �Whoa...yeah,� etc. Everyone stopped dancing and hugged each other, and on the final note the crowd cheered like crazy.
CHIPPER JONES (speaking into microphone): Thank you. I hope you enjoyed the dance instruction and major show we put on for you. (Pointing to band) I�d like to thank our band�
The crowd cheered as the band members waved.
CHIPPER JONES (pointing to gospel choir): �and the amazing gospel choir headed by Hank Aaron and Jim Leyland�
Aaron, Leyland, and the choir waved respectably.
CHIPPER JONES: �and most definitely everyone congregating around me�my teammates, their wives, children, and all�
The on-field mob cheered along with the rest of the crowd.
CHIPPER JONES: �and last but not least�
Bud Selig stormed angrily onto the field at that moment.
CHIPPER JONES: Uh-oh! I think we�ve got company ladies and gentlemen!
He passed the microphone over to Selig.
BUD SELIG: Ladies and gentlemen�I�m not in a good mood tonight so it would be greatly appreciated if you 50,000-some-odd parasites left this football field right now!!
At this the crowd rose to their feet and left the stadium screaming as if afraid.
BUD SELIG (to others): And the rest of you take your Latin/party/disco rubbish and scram!
Everyone booed.
PRINCE FIELDER: Party pooper!
BUD SELIG: Okay, I�ll admit�I am a party pooper, but what does that have to do with my wrath?
The mob left. Selig looked around the now empty stadium and bellowed:
BUD SELIG: I was just kidding! Sheesh�you guys take things too seriously!
JOE TORRE (to Selig): I think you may want to reconsider your venue decisions in the future.