The 51-year-old baseball coach of a small Christian college in Minnesota drives around the Twin Cities, listening to a classic rock station. When he hears the opening riff of Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle,” Brian Raabe turns up the volume.
That's his song, mysteriously assigned to him in the mid-1990s when he would walk from the on-deck circle to the batter's box as a Salt Lake Buzz player. The guitar sounds take him back to the newly constructed stadium then called Franklin Quest Field. That's where Raabe spent the three most rewarding years of his pro baseball career, even as a Minnesota native who was called up during parts of two seasons with the hometown Twins in the major leagues.