Many people may say the hero of Monday night’s 18 inning World Series Game 3 — which lasted 6 hours and 39 minutes — was Freddie Freeman who hit the walk-off home run to end it, but what about the man who kept the music going all night?
Multiple MLB stadiums around the country have an organist who plays live music throughout the games. The Los Angeles Dodgers are one of the teams with a live organist.
As the game between the Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays kept going inning after inning, many fans on social media drew attention to the organist who kept playing hour after hour.
The man behind Dodger Stadium’s organ music is 56-year-old Dieter Ruehle. He is also the music director and organist for Los Angeles Kings NHL team.
Ruehle has been the full-time organist for the Dodgers since 2016 but has been with the franchise for 30 seasons. This is his 36th season with Kings and he has also played the organ during six Olympics, according to ESPN.
He first started playing the organ at sporting events at age 15 when he was hired by the Los Angeles Lazers, an indoor soccer team, to be their organist. Five years later he was hired by the Kings.
Ruehle is also mostly self-taught but took a few classes in high school and at community colleges, according to ESPN.
As his organ playing during the extra long game drew attention online, he posted his own video of himself playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the game’s 14th-inning stretch.
Throughout the evening, Ruehle played a large variety of songs and some people online joked that by the end of the game he had played every song ever written.
One user on X wrote that “The Organ player has played all the songs ever created from the beginning of time since this World Series Game 3 started.”
Some of the songs he played included “Opalite” by Taylor Swift, the theme from “The Legend of Zelda” and “Golden” from “K-pop Demon Hunters.”
Ruehle is known for playing a large variety of songs including the popular songs of the day. He said he doesn’t use sheet music and learns songs by ear.
“I kind of went away from sheet music years ago because I found that oftentimes I would buy sheet music, but it wouldn’t sound the same as the original record,” Ruehle said, to ESPN. “And I learned that sometimes sheet music would be printed in a different key. And it felt off to me. I like playing the stuff in the actual original key the song is written in.”
As the game kept going with seemingly no end in sight, Ruehle played into that by playing “The Neverending Story” at the top of the 18th inning.
Many people on social media complimented Ruehle’s work during the game with one user calling him the “MVP” of the game.
Others gave him props for making it through all 18 innings of classic.