The Baltimore Orioles have a new closer -- and his intro music is pretty badass.
Felix Bautista, a towering right-hander, has been entering games to the spooky whistling of the legendary character Omar, famously portrayed by the late Michael K. Williams, from the hit HBO show "The Wire." The haunting whistle, which in the Baltimore-set TV show is meant to signal the ruthless stickup kid's arrival, is set to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell."
On Tuesday night, Bautista, who is listed at a likely conservative estimate of 6'5" and 190 pounds, was serenaded with the whistle and an accompanying elaborate, Pink Floyd-style laser light show to mark his entrance from the bullpen in center field.
The Baltimore Ravens also used the "Omar whistle" during pregame introductions soon after Williams' untimely death last year.
Bautista, 27, was anointed closer after Baltimore dealt former ninth-inning man Jorge Lopez to the Minnesota Twins leading up to the trade deadline.
The grandiose production is at least the second to gain national attention in recent weeks, after Mets closer Edwin Diaz's raucous entrance to the electrifying brass riff of "Narco," by Blasterjaxxx and Timmy Trumpet.
The dramatic, pro wrestling-style entrances harken to an earlier era in closer history, when the likes of Mariano Rivera ("Enter Sandman") and Trevor Hoffman ("Hells Bells") got their respective home crowds on their feet with their respective lights-out tunes.
Bautista, for his part, recently told the Baltimore Sun that he took the field to the entrance music of the legendary WWE wrestler The Undertaker during his time with Triple-A Norfolk last season.
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