Organ Man

When Nancy Faust majored in psychology at North Park College, she wasn’t expecting the career into which she almost immediately fell to be a long-term engagement. Instead, playing organ for Comiskey Park (home of Chicago’s White Sox) was only supposed to be a temporary engagement before embarking on teaching. However, like a good song, Faust stuck in the stadium and became a part of history. For 41 years, she played the stadium, with her final appearance on Sunday, October 3.Faust became popular for attaching popular songs to different players, such as “Ina-Gadda-Da-Vida” for Pete Incaviglia and “Let’s Get Physical” for Omar Vizquel. As you can see, puns and wordplay make up a good part of Faust’s musical connections. However, her best-known contributions exist in a class of their own. She played an arrangement of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” that became popular with the Chicago Cubs, and her rendition of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” reinvigorated interest in the forgotten 1969 hit and caught on at sporting events around the country. Another track that Faust put her own special spin on was the Queen anthem “We Will Rock You,” which fans adapted as “We will, we will, Sox you!”The organ woman was recognized with several awards during her career, both official (a RIAA gold record from Mercury Records) and unofficial (a citation from Sports Illustrated as baseball’s MVO”Most Valuable Organist”). She also appeared in a special exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame called “Women in Baseball” and performed with Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2005. Faust missed only five games during her career during the birth of her son and didn’t miss any games between 1983 and 2005. In 2006, she announced her semi-retirement to daytime-only games.Faust’s organ of choice is a Technics, along with a sequencer and synthesizers. She became a sports icon without ever taking the field, and fans are sad to see her go, but optimistic at the thought that another hidden talent may be waiting just around the bend.