How the Phillies use music to help make Citizens Bank Park ‘four hours of hell’ for opponents

First in a series exploring what makes the homes of Philadelphia’s professional sports franchises special, from the people who work there to the fans who flock there to cheer on their teams.

The Phillies give Eddie Romani just 55 seconds, not nearly enough time for the DJ to showcase the turntable tricks he performs in nightclubs and on FM radio. But Romani will still spend most of his day thinking about those 55 seconds, searching for the perfect song to play from his perch in the first inning on an October night at Citizens Bank Park for more than 40,000 rally towel-waving fans.

“My producer will be in my ear,” said Romani, who cuts and scratches on WIOQ-FM (102.1) as DJ N9NE and travels the country with Pauly D. “And he’ll say, ‘We want to melt faces here.’”

That’s all Romani needs to hear. He’ll turn up the volume, pump the subwoofers, and transform the ballpark into a rave for 55 seconds before play resumes.

“There’s really nothing like it,” Romani said. “It’s incomparable to any gig that I do. It’s the best place on Earth.”

The Phillies updated their music presentation — “We were in desperate need of a refresh,” said the team’s director of broadcasting and video services, Mark DiNardo — before the 2022 season in an attempt to inject some life into their ballpark. They installed a new sound system, hired DJs to play at games, and added to their music library. Even the organ music became hipper.

A few months later, the Phillies returned to the postseason for the first time in 11 years. The roster was talented, the ballpark was beautiful, and the fans were crazy. The ability to melt faces proved to be the ingredient that brought everything together as Citizens Bank Park felt like the city’s most exclusive nightclub, where every seat was sold but everyone chose to stand.

“I get goose bumps when I play during the postseason,” Romani said. “It definitely feels different as a DJ.”

Saturday’s postseason opener at Citizens Bank Park will be the team’s 17th home playoff game since 2022. The Phillies can play as many as 11 home games this postseason and all of them will be sold out. It is one of the hardest tickets to secure in sports, and secondary prices are easily worth three times the face value.

The Phillies’ postseason games have become a spectacle where the crowd, as an opposing coach told manager Rob Thomson, makes the night feel like “four hours of hell.”

“It became an event unto itself, an experience,” DiNardo said. “It’s a thing. It’s a happening. People, like anything else in this world, they want to be part of it. They want to say, ‘I was there that night.’ When they come, they come loaded for bear.”

» READ MORE: Sound check: Just how loud are Phillies fans at the Bank?

The atmosphere now is wild, but first the Phillies needed to change their ways. For years, their in-game presentation was traditional. It felt safe. Eventually, it became stale.

Even the players had enough as they lobbed baseballs at the PhanaVision booth during batting practice and asked those inside to change the song. The Phillies played in ballparks like Dodger Stadium where the music makes a crowd come alive. The players wanted to feel that in South Philly.

“The one thing that people all relate to is music,” DiNardo said. “It’s the most subjective thing that we do as a presentation group. I have a pretty open mind about music. I like everything. I just love music. I tried to have a little something for everybody. You know how the old adage goes, you try to make everybody happy and you make no one happy. We were going down that road, and I’m not ashamed to say that I was driving that bus.”

Dee Kelchner, the team’s manager of PhanaVision operations, and Sean Rainey, the Phillies’ director of video production, pushed DiNardo to hire DJs who could spin in the ballpark. Let the professionals pick the tracks, they said.

“I finally relented,” DiNardo said. “I learned to listen a little better and trust my younger staff who may have been less experienced than me but more experienced in what was going on in the real world and what was resonating with sports audiences across the country. I said, ‘OK. Go out and find me some talent.’”

Romani grew up in South Jersey, went to Burlington Township High School, and spent summers with his dad at Veterans Stadium. Playing at Citizens Bank Park feels like a bucket-list gig, Romani said, except it wasn’t a thought because the job didn’t exist until Kelchner emailed him.

“To this day, I’m still not sure how she found me,” said Romani, who mastered the wheels of steel while playing frat parties as he attended Rutgers.

The Phillies wanted a DJ to play for the team during batting practice and then perform during the game for the fans. Romani was in and told the Phils that he would assemble a team of five DJs to cover the 81 home games.

» READ MORE: The Phillies have a new post-win mix, thanks to three brothers from Northeast Philly

He sets up his turntables in the afternoon near the dugout as the players take the field and then moves before first pitch to Section 201. His first spot is in the middle of the first inning, when those 55 seconds have to hit just right.

“I like to say, ‘It’s hard to mess this gig up because it’s so much fun and we pack the stands anyway.’ But you can,” Romani said. “The music selection is key. It can be kind of off if you’re playing a song that’s not for the scenario or how the ballgame is going. You have to be totally dialed-in as if you’re Rob Thomson in the dugout. You really do. If the away team is pitching and they need a mound visit, that’s my cue. I’m going in there, and we’re turning the volume up to 10 so they can’t hear themselves talking on the mound. That’s kind of our hidden sauce.”

You have to be totally dialed-in as if you’re Rob Thomson in the dugout.

The Phillies tell Romani to play it loud, instructing him to melt faces or blast the music so it can be heard in the suburbs. But anyone can turn up the volume, DiNardo said. The skill is knowing when the time is right to play the right tune. And the DJs have figured it out, having learned to match their professional music skills with baseball fandom.

If the Phillies are losing, the music has to match. If the Phillies are winning, it has to be something that gets the crowd going. And if Bryce Harper is coming up in a big spot, the music has to set the stage.

“It’s about finessing the use of music as a tool,” DiNardo said. “You have to use it properly. Our job is to get them off their hands or out of their chairs and start creating that vibe and the energy that the team responds to. It really is a symbiotic relationship between the players and the crowd. The players do something awesome on the field, and we punctuate the event with some music and the crowd goes crazy.”

They play music at every sporting event, but no sport seems to romanticize music more than baseball. They reserve time every game to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” players walk to home plate as their handpicked track plays, and organ music does not sound out of place.

“Baseball is an old man’s sport, and people like the traditional elements,” Kelchner said. “But we’ve strayed so far from it, and it’s worked. We’re looking to see how far we can push it.”

Paul Richardson started as the team’s organist in 1970 and played for the Phillies in three home ballparks. The Phillies still play some of his tunes — Richardson died in 2006 — but largely went away from the organ. A PhanaVision staffer told Kelchner before the 2022 season to check out this Phillies diehard who plays keys in a yacht rock band. He’ll do whatever they want, Kelchner was told. It sounded like another chance to push the limits of baseball’s traditions.

Rainey asked Brian Anderson to record a Dr. Dre song on his organ, a rap tune never played by Richardson. It was great. The Phillies wanted more. They didn’t need Anderson to play “Charge” or “Bullfight” on his keyboard. Instead, they wanted Kendrick Lamar, Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift, and the Backstreet Boys.

“We were like, ‘We have something now. We’re cooking,’” Kelchner said. “It just adds something a little different than your traditional organ music.”

Anderson records the tracks at his home in Phoenixville when he’s not on the road playing with his band, Boathouse Row. He has provided the Phillies with more than 400 songs. They first played his organ music as part of the team’s Throwback Thursday promotion before using his tunes every night. The organ music helps the Phillies freshen up their production while paying homage to the past. Like the DJ’s turntables, Anderson’s keyboard became part of the ballpark’s new sound.

“We already have one of the best parks in the country,” Anderson said. “If I can just help add to that texture and get the crowd into it a little bit more. Our crowd doesn’t really need much help, but if I can add any texture, that’s my goal. The audio paints the picture along with the aesthetic of the ballpark. It’s something that we don’t always think about, but it sort of seeps in to give you the feel of what a ballpark is.”

Anderson was born in Delaware County and was an all-glove, no-bat Little Leaguer. That didn’t stop him from believing he would play for the Phils as he sat in his family’s season-ticket seats at the Vet.

“I’m sure a lot of kids have that same dream when they look at that field,” Anderson said. “There was no great aura to the Vet, but it was still our ballpark, and our players were on it, so it was pretty magical. That’s why this experience is cool for me. It’s the closest I’ll get to playing Major League Baseball. I still pinch myself.”

The control room where Kelchner and DiNardo sit is encased in shatterproof glass, making it hard during the summer to truly gauge how loud the crowd is.

“We’ll have to do a vibe check sometimes with our camera guys because they’re out there,” Kelchner said.

Come October, shatterproof glass can only do so much.

“You know it’s loud,” DiNardo said.

The postseason games are just as important as they were 15 years ago, but it feels a little different in South Philly during this run than it did for Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Jimmy Rollins. The speakers are louder, the stadium lights are brighter, and the PhanaVision screen is bigger.

The crowd was crazy back then, but the fans feel more integral this time, almost like active participants in the performance than just spectators in the seats. It’s still a baseball game. It’s just different.

“The difference between 2008 and 2024, people are now coming with an expectation of an experience,” DiNardo said. “It’s more than just tailgating in the parking lot or coming to the block party. Coming in, they want to be on their feet, yelling and screaming and cheering. They want to go back and see the social media posts from the people in South Philly who said they can hear the ballpark from a mile-and-a-half away.”

The sound of that experience can be heard through the thick glass, but DiNardo sometimes will walk next door to the audio room and open up a window, allowing the sound of more than 45,000 fanatics to pour in.

“It is like standing next to the space shuttle as it’s launching,” DiNardo said. “It’s that loud, and it’s that crazy.”

But opening the window comes with a risk. DJ N9NE will soon be spinning, and he’s instructed to melt your face.