Dodgers organist Dieter Ruehle on his witty World Series song choices

When social media took on its own task this week to informally pick an MVP during the epic Game 3 of the World Series, a surprising candidate emerged… not to mention the Los Angeles Dodgers’ underdog relief pitcher, Will Klein (though he does too, of course). We’re talking about Dodgers organist Dieter Ruehle, who stood next to Shotei Ohtani et al. as fans discussed their favorite things about the grueling yet exhilarating game. Ruehle is now practically legendary in baseball for the humor inherent in his song cues, but also for keeping the energy from flagging in the stadium. And that was never more relevant than in a match that lasted nearly seven hours, where Ruehle’s smart choices created almost as much intrigue as whether anyone would ever score another point before daylight.

Ruehle’s choices are not always humorous. For example, as Clayton Kershaw left the mound after his final regular-season game of the season — and of his career — this year, the organist lightened the mood by playing a snippet of the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony.” But more often than not, he offers his own entertaining play-by-play, with obvious songs like “Walk Like an Egyptian” or “Walk of Life” during a stroll – or much less blatant choices, like a song by the group 311 when the score is 3-1; “Piano Man” when it’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday night, “Clocks” for “We Can Work It Out” during a hill visit, or “I Am the Walrus” when Tommy Edman is up (because “eggman”/Edman… close enough).

With Game 5 just hours away on Wednesday, Variety spoke with Edman about what it was like to come up with suitable songs for a nearly record-length game like Monday night’s, and his thoughts on the importance of the organ in ballparks and the role of humor in his playing in general. (And since he’s Major League Baseball’s king of Easter eggs, we had to wonder if there’s some mysterious meaning in his repeated plays of Taylor Swift’s “Opalite” or “Golden” from “Kpop Demon Hunters.”)

In all the social media discussions about you during the World Series, we keep seeing Blue Jays fans get jealous and say, “We need an organist in Toronto.” We’re spoiled in LA and don’t realize that not every team has one, but when the whole world watches the Series, everyone is suddenly hyper aware.

That’s great to hear that people could actually hear and feel the difference. Obviously I’m biased, but I can feel it when I watch games from other places and there are only recordings of them. To me it automatically feels like things could be so much better. You could add some life and personality to a venue that doesn’t have live music. But fortunately, quite a few ballparks still have the organ, and those fans can experience it. It’s a bit like I’m playing the soundtrack to what’s happening on the field, just reacting. Since the game is unscripted, it is live. So what better way to do this than with live guidance?

Of course, it’s not entirely unusual for a Dodgers game to take a few extra innings. But in Game 3 it was on a whole different level – overtime overtime – and ultimately it’s appropriate to release some songs that reference the epic length. Are these numbers already in the back of your mind, even if there aren’t many opportunities to use them?

Well, I have a few in the back of my mind if games run long. For example, if the game is three hours long, I usually play the “Gilligan’s Island” theme because the lyrics talk about “a three-hour tour.” When we hit the six o’clock mark on Monday night, I thought, “Wait a minute, what if I play ‘Gilligan’ again, because it’s three o’clock times two?” I thought it was some kind of profound (reference)… but actually, to my surprise, people noticed it, and I thought, yeah, they got it!

And then just a few other things came to mind, like Billy Joel – “The Longest Time,” I played a little bit of that. And then I played the theme to ‘The Never Ending Story’, because it felt like the game was endless. That just occurred to me, maybe a few minutes before I played it – I thought, “Oh, this would be great.” So luckily I already knew how to play those songs and I didn’t have to learn them on the spot.

However, “Never Ending Story” may not be one you belt out very often.

Not that often, no. But I played it because there was a baseball player named Trevor Story who played on the Colorado Rockies for a long time, and every time they came here I would play a little bit of that. But yeah, I don’t play it often.

People were collectively adding to playlists on social media of the songs you got in Game 3: “Final Countdown,” “All Night Long,” “Just Can’t Get Enough”… which just sounds great on an organ clip, whether it has anything to do with the game or not.

Yes. I love Depeche Mode. “I just can’t get enough of this baseball game,” right? I just try to add little, little, little things here and there and hopefully it will put a smile on the fan’s face when they notice it.

People who have baseball as their favorite sport often do so because of the parts of the game that cannot be duplicated in any other sport. And that applies here: you have a very tense play, and yet in a way you introduce bits of comedy into it, without taking away the tension. There’s simply no comedy allowed in football.

But if I may, I think the point is that when you do it with the organ, it’s not exact – it’s more subtle. It’s not in your face, while the lyrics pop. And obviously we have the technology to play all the songs, right? But with the organ it is a little more subtle and remains part of the playing, but not bigger than the playing. Because people come here to see the World Series. And so the organ, I think, can add that nice comedy here and there, but in a subtle way that doesn’t take anything away. We’re not bigger than the game anyway. That’s what I think.

Do you have an estimate of how many people get the references or jokes if they’re not on social media and just enjoying the game? Clearly most people are not tuned in to that. Is it 10% or 20%?

I don’t know how many there are. All I know is that I have a social media account – just that one thing; I got too overwhelmed having more than one – on Twitter or X. The 14th inning piece I posted last night has been viewed over 140,000 times. I’m like, wow, that’s a lot, you know? But I don’t post everything. I can’t record and play back. So I’m not sure how many people notice these things. Sometimes it’s more than I think. Sometimes I’m quite pleasantly surprised.

Did you have a play in the 14th inning on Monday night? Those of us watching at home were deceived by that.

Yes, every seven innings we play Take Me Out to the Ballgame, so when we reached the 14th inning it was time to stretch again. People just loved it so much, because the normal play is a pretty fun part of attending a baseball game, and now we get to do it again a few hours later, and it’s so rare.

Any Taylor Swift fan who’s visited a game you’ve played recently immediately recognized “Opalite” from her new album. And you did ‘Golden’ and ‘Soda Pop’ from ‘Kpop Demon Hunters’. Are they there as some sort of reference, or just because they’re fun songs that people are into at the moment?

No, just because they’re fun. Although sometimes I might do it with ‘Golden’ after a pop-up, because we go ‘up, up, up’ and the ball goes up, up, up. Then maybe I would, but that’s kind of far-fetched. But mostly I play them with current stuff just because they’re popular right now. There is not always a connection or connection. Sometimes it is, sometimes not.

With “Opalite,” I started looking it up, like, are there blue shaded opalites, and does that relate to Dodger blue? And of course there are. But I thought about it too much.

No, that’s totally cool. I mean, I’ll get that on social media. People will say, “Oh, you played it for this reason,” and I really didn’t, but that works, you know?

I immediately tuned in to recognize the “Twin Peak” theme, but it wasn’t easy to figure out its meaning at first thought. Then there’s one that I would never recognize, but a lot of people do: a song from “The Goofy Movie” called “I2I.”

The song is called “I2I” – pronounced “eye to eye” – but it sounds like “1-2-1.” And the scoreboard says ‘one ball, two strikes, one out’ when that happens, so that’s when I play ‘I2I’. It was really surprising how many people realized that. At the same time, many people were curious: what is the connection here? When I explained it, they said, “Oh yeah, of course.”

People loved hearing the Ewok party song in Game 3, which you played before.

Yes, yes, yes. I usually play that towards the end of a game, because that song happened at the end of “Return of the Jedi,” and I thought, okay, usually in the eighth or ninth inning, when we’re about to win, it’s an upbeat, celebratory song, so I thought, “Oh, maybe I’ll play it there.” I also play ‘Con te partirò’, which is ‘Time to Say Goodbye’ by Andrea Bocelli. So that’s another one I’ll do in the ninth inning. As long as we win.

In Game 3, people kept wondering: Are the players getting tired? What about you – did you get tired? Was it stressful for you?

Yes, we all got tired. Even the organist got tired. But the adrenaline got me through it and my love for this job got me through it. You know, it takes energy, and I’m always thinking ahead… So yeah, I was tired. But it was certainly a nice tiredness.

We’ll hear more from you on Wednesday evening in the final home game of the series. But the Dodgers aren’t your only gig. We can look forward to hearing from you this offseason with the Kings, right?

Yes. Actually, I have a King’s match tomorrow. The hockey season starts in October, so we are now in our third or fourth game, and so yes, a King’s game tomorrow and another King’s game on Saturday. They’re both nice. They are clearly very different, summer, winter, outdoors and indoors; One can be warm weather, the other is in the arena, where it can be quite chilly. They are different, but each fun in their own way, that’s for sure.

(To read Variety’s interview with country star Brad Paisley about accidentally singing the national anthem during the two longest World Series games in history, click here.)