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10/07/2008 11:37 AM ET
'Waiting' for next season
Senses Fail frontman lives and dies by Yanks
By Doug Miller / MLB.com
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Senses Fail's new album, "Life Is Not a Waiting Room" hits stores Oct. 7. (Courtesy Vagrant Records)
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Buddy Nielsen is uncompromising in his music and in his opinions, particularly when it comes to baseball and his favorite baseball team, the New York Yankees.
How uncompromising?
"Let's put it this way," says Nielsen, the lead singer and founder of the New Jersey-based hard rock group Senses Fail. "I know tons of people with Yankees tattoos, but I'm the only guy I know of with a 'Red Sox (stink)' tattoo."
The band, which also includes guitarists Heath Sarceno, Garrett Zablocki and drummer Dan Trapp, has been around for six years and released its new album, Life Is Not a Waiting Room, today.
It figures to continue the progression that led to 2004's Let It Enfold You and last year's Still Searching. It should also help Nielsen get over the pain of the Yankees not making the Postseason. In fact, Nielsen has already come to grips with a dark October in the Bronx.
"There's always next year," he says. "And we'll go out and spend absolutely ridiculous amounts of money to get everybody."
Nielsen says he first started rooting for the Yankees with his father as a kid. He was at the famed Jeffrey Maier game in the 1996 American League Championship Series against the Baltimore Orioles and he watched the ticker-tape parade that followed that New York World Series title, the first one in the Bronx in 18 years.
Since then, he's kept up with the team while making his name as a rock singer. He constantly checks MLB.com for scores and stats during the season and he says he tries to make it to as many big-league parks as possible when Senses Fail hits the road.
He says he hates the Mets almost as much as the Red Sox, and it's these type of passionate, punk rock-inspired feelings that fire him up as a fan.
"One of the things I really love about the Yankees is that everybody else hates them," Nielsen says. "Seriously, if you're a real Yankee fan, people don't like you. I like that. I also like the fact that it's the greatest team ever in the history of any sport. It's the greatest franchise in the greatest city."
Nielsen has his own specific definition of a real Yankees fan, too.
"Here's a good example of someone who's not a Yankee fan," he says. "I'm on the train to the Stadium not too long ago, and I heard this girl ask if they won the night before. They happened to have gotten destroyed by the Red Sox, 11-3, in probably the most meaningful game of the season.
"If you don't know what the score is the night before against the Boston Red Sox, that's wrong. You're not a real fan."
But a real Yankees fan would never hesitate to express his true disdain for those northern neighbors, according to Nielsen, who says he hasn't yet written a song about baseball but would consider doing it simply to reinforce those opinions.
"Yeah, maybe a hate song," Nielsen says with a laugh. "An 'I hate the Red Sox song, like a 30-second-long rant where I just yell thing about why I hate the Red Sox. That would be perfect, actually."
And even though Nielsen loves his Yankees, he says he hasn't gotten too emotional over the fact that Yankee Stadium has closed down for good.
"I've gone to so many games there, and I have a memory of what it is as a link it to certain aspects of my life," Nielsen says. "I'm one of the couple of people who think it's cool that there's a new stadium.
"The bottom line is that the other new stadiums are so nice. I'm kind of excited to see something new and a place that really represents the Yankees for the future. And people need to relax a little bit about this anyway. Yankee Stadium's only moving over a couple feet."
Doug Miller is a Senior Writer for MLB.com/Entertainment.
This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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