A few weeks ago, a couple of self-described average college kids were fooling around on the guitar, and now -- to their amazement -- they have a cult following.

And the best is yet to come.

Tyler Crawford and Andrew Hall, who have been roommates at Auburn University for about a month, sat down one night in early August and, off the top of their heads, wrote a tribute to Mark Teixeira, a player the Atlanta Braves acquired July 31, the major league trading deadline.

For a lark, they decided to write a song about the new player. It took about 30 minutes.

"Once we wrote the first line," Crawford said, "the rest of it kind of just came to us."

Crawford and Hall recorded the song onto the voice mail of Hall's cell phone so they wouldn't forget the tune.

"We couldn't stop laughing," Crawford said.

A few days later, they borrowed a camera with a video function, and in about four takes produced a video. They first posted it to Facebook.com, then a day later put it on YouTube.com.

"We only posted it so our friends could see it," said Crawford, who strums the guitar throughout the catchy song that so far is titled simply "Mark Teixeira Tribute."

"We were just goofing around," Hall added. "We thought our friends would get a kick out of it."

What followed amazed Crawford and Hall.

Michael Brouder, director of marketing and on-air promotions for SportSouth/FSN South in Atlanta, discovered the video.

"It made the rounds in the office, and we thought it was great," Brouder said.

He got an idea. The video, he thought, might be a creative way to pump excitement into the network's late-season Braves broadcasts.

Brouder tracked down the students through You-Tube.com.

"I actually created my own YouTube account to send them an e-mail," he said.

In the e-mail, Brouder asked Hall and Crawford if they wanted their video seen "by 11 million viewers in the Southeast."

Hall and Crawford were blown away.

"Fifteen minutes later, we heard from them," Brouder said.

SportSouth played a clip from their video during Sunday night's game. Teixeira followed the act in style, slamming a pair of two-run homers. TBS, which also carries Braves games on TV, also played some of the song.

The fuse had been lit.

"At first, there were maybe two comments and 100 hits," said Crawford, who hails from Chelsea. "We were watching it on YouTube and we thought it was so cool so many people had watched it."

By the end of the weekend, more than 47,000 people had viewed the video. That number had ballooned to 56,000 by Monday night.

"It's really blown up," said Hall, an Athens native.

Hall and Crawford are realistic. They know the song won't bring them a fortune. But the effort has produced plenty of excitement.

Today they'll record the song at the SportSouth/FSN South studio in Atlanta. The plan was for the two to record the song again for use in the Atlanta pregame show, "Braves Live," before tonight's game at Cincinnati.

But Jeff Genthner, Senior Vice President and General Manager for FSN South, has other ideas.

"If they nail it in rehearsal," Genthner said Monday, "we're going to have them play it live. Hey, the Braves play baseball live, not live on tape."

To say Genthner loves the song is an understatement.

"When I saw it, I immediately thought, this is what SportSouth is," Genthner said. "It's two guys sitting on a couch singing a homemade song about the Braves.

"It has catchy lyrics. These guys are really talented."

SportSouth already has turned the video into two on-air promotions that began airing during Monday night's Braves telecast. (FSN South and SportSouth are both owned by Fox).

On Aug. 31, as guests of the team, Hall and Crawford will perform the song live in the plaza at Turner Field before the Mets-Braves game. And they'll get to meet Teixeira.

"We're the filler act for when they switch sets for the bands," Hall said. "I mean, we've got just the one song."

Hall and Crawford aren't taking themselves too seriously. But they're enjoying the moment.

"This really is a dream," said Hall, who is engaged to Crawford's sister, Emily. "This is one of those things where you just have to take advantage of where it takes you.

"And if all we get out of it is playing the song at Turner Field and playing it once at SportSouth, well, I figure it's a story we can tell for the rest of our lives."

If you’re an Atlanta Braves fan, there’s a decent chance you’ve heard or seen the Mark Teixeira tribute video on YouTube. I owe my only national television appearance to the lead singer, Andrew Hall, in the “Auburn Dodgers” shirt. We’ll get to that later.

Hall and Auburn roommate Tyler Crawford have become busy individuals ever since the 27-year-old Teixeira was officially traded to the Braves on July 31 for Jarrod Saltalamacchia and four prospects. They never imagined the 2-minute, 41-second anthem they wrote on a whim would garner such rapid popularity.

“It really is crazy. Some people spend so much time trying to get national attention with things like this and we do something just for fun, and it takes off,” said the 20-year-old Crawford, a Chelsea native. “The cool thing is we helped create more attention for the Braves. Maybe we’ve got some of those fans back who had quit watching the Braves as much. Even though they’ve struggled lately, people are still excited about their playoff chances.”

As of Saturday afternoon, the ode to Teixeira had been viewed 133,613 times, received 671 comments and been flagged by 829 viewers as their favorite Internet destination.

“Plain and simple, me and Tyler were completely goofing around one night,” said Hall, an Athens native. “We were 100 percent just having fun when we posted it on YouTube. We never imagined it would turn into this.”

Media requests for Hall and Crawford haven’t stopped since the jingle was posted Aug. 10 on the popular Web site. They’ve been featured in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, on Fox 6 in Birmingham and on WSFA 12 in Montgomery. They’ve done a handful of radio interviews and have traveled to the SportSouth studio in Atlanta to perform the song live for the regional network.

Their tribute has been mentioned on “Baseball Tonight,” “SportsCenter” and TBS and has been referred to in a blog by ESPN’s Buster Olney.

“We were just talking about how doing all of these interviews just about everyday is really wearing us out a little bit,” Hall said.

Hall and Crawford don’t mind it one bit despite it coming at an extremely hectic time. Both started the fall semester at Auburn less than two weeks ago and Hall’s planning to marry Crawford’s sister, Emily, on Sept. 7.

Hall and Crawford have at least one more exciting obligation before the wedding. Both are scheduled to perform the song at Turner Field on Aug. 31 when the Braves open a vital weekend series against the New York Mets. The Braves are a season-high seven games behind the Mets in the NL East and four games behind the Padres in the NL wild card.

On Aug. 31, they’ll start the evening by recording the song in order for the Braves to use it on the Jumbotron during rain delays. Then comes passes to the field for batting practice before they perform the song about an hour before game time in the Turner Field plaza area.

While Hall and Crawford have been caught up in a media whirlwhind the last few weeks, I’ve had a blast letting people know I’m acquaintances with both, especially Hall.

We met at Auburn primarily by attending the same church, which led us to becoming good friends. We traveled in large groups to plenty of road Auburn games and primarily during the Tigers undefeated campaign in 2004.

Hall handed me a national TV appearance a year later at the Auburn-Georgia contest in Athens, Ga. We had excellent seats in the student section, which led to us gaining air time after a second-quarter commercial break. See, Hall has a tradition at Auburn games. He wears a white Hutch helmet, which features Auburn’s logo. I was standing right beside him during Auburn’s 31-30 dramatic win, ESPN spotted Hall’s helmet in the crowd and showed us after a break.

While Hall has gained a lot of long-lost friends over the past few weeks, I had tons of people trying to call after we were on the air.

That's nothing for Hall now after joining Crawford to cleverly write the Teixeira song.

Before Hall got me on TV for mere seconds, he was a record-setting pitcher at 1A Athens Bible School. He started contributing for the Trojans as an 8th-grader and pitched at the private school from 1998 to 2002.

Hall finished his high school career with a 34-11 record and nine saves. His 34 career wins are eighth all-time on the career wins list, and his 173 strikeouts in 100 1/3 innings in 2002 are the sixth-best single season strikeout total in Alabama history. His 449 career strikeouts place him at seventh in the state record books.

Sumiton Christian got a frustrating dose of Hall in 2002 in the 1A baseball semifinals, and Eagles’ coach Lance Blair admitted Hall was the best pitcher they opposed that season.

Athens Bible dropped the 1A title to G.W. Long in consecutive years (2001-02) during Hall’s career.

Hall earned a baseball scholarship to Florida College in Temple Terrace, Fla., after high school, but struggled with injuries and eventually had Tommy John surgery. He also spent time at Auburn in 2006 as a walk-on pitcher.

None of those baseball exploits created as much buzz for Hall as the Teixeira video.

“My best sport has always been baseball. I was pretty good at baseball and I guess considered a decorated high school pitcher,” Hall said. “The funny thing is I’ve actually made significant gains in life in either dodgeball, a basketball shoot-out at Auburn or with this song.”

The song itself was cool enough. Hall’s support of the Auburn Dodgers in the video was even better.

I wrote about the success of the Auburn Dodgers over a year ago. Back in 2004, a few of my friends in Auburn combined with a few of my hometown friends from Hartselle to spend a measly Saturday playing dodgeball.

We had absolutely had no experience but we dominated the entire day. We won $1,000 as a team in our initial outing and after a few more tournament wins made a trip to North Carolina one April.

Hall’s shirt drew some criticism when the video appeared because it didn’t feature Auburn’s traditional colors. Our dodgeball team consisted of Auburn and Alabama fans so we decided to follow a baseball theme with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Those dodgeball games seem more and more comical as time passes, but those two huge trophies on my dresser remind me how much fun it would be if we wanted to do it again.

The Teixeira tribute dominates any fun we had with the dodgeball team.

Hall and Crawford have received requests from fans to write more songs about Braves players. One is already in the works for former Auburn pitcher Tim Hudson, who leads the National League in wins.

“We've actually got one almost completed for Hudson. We’ll throw some Auburn stuff in there with Hudson, but it mostly focuses on the Braves,” Hall said. “We hope to have it posted in the next couple of weeks.”

They’re also working to create a Web site, titoandthegunshow.com, which will allow fans of the song to download it on their iPods. 

The home page of the song on YouTube has all of a sudden become a forum for a lot of trash talk mainly between Mets and Braves fans. It’s reminiscent of the bickering that Auburn and Alabama fans enjoy.

“When they mentioned the song on ‘Baseball Tonight’ Mets fans really started commenting on it. We’ve had to delete some stuff, but it’s turned into a real fun forum,” Hall said.

Hall and Crawford deserve the attention they’re getting. You won’t find too many people in this world more morally sound and God-fearing. That’s another great reason to know them.

I used to take tough Braves’ losses extremely hard. I would like to think I’ve grown up a lot, but some games still bring out the sore loser in me. I’ve found a nice cure this season to help forget a tough loss.

All I need to do on YouTube is type in Mark Teixeira.

I’m taking a sabbatical from the heavy talk today - the will it be wild card or will it be division - I’m too distracted.

This is just too good. Have y’all heard about this yet? The YouTube clip of a couple guys from Alabama singing their ode to Mark Teixeira?

The musicianship, the lyrics, the delivery. The fact that they do the entire song without busting out. It’s great. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

But first, the link: It’s here.

Jeff Francoeur got wind of it and e-mailed the guys, offering them tickets to a Braves game and a meet-and-greet with Tex. Then the Braves went one step farther.

The Braves public relations folks, who’d been forwarded the link, invited these guys to the game August 31 (vs. the Mets, no less) to perform their song in the plaza. They’re also going to record the song in HD on the dugout, so the stadium folks can play it on the video board during pre-game stuff or a rain delay.

I don’t want to spoil it by sharing any lyrics. But the song is catchy. Try watching this video a couple times, then watching a Braves game and not have the tune in your head when Teixeira comes to the plate.

I just called the guys. They were great. Both are Auburn students from Alabama and longtime Braves fans. (They are, surprisingly, not regulars on this blog; I just know there’s some serious talent out there among you guys. Maybe they will be denizens now.) Let’s welcome the brothers in. We’re gonna light up their YouTube posting, right?

Andrew Hall is 23. He’s the one without the guitar, who does the Bobby Cox “Let’s go Mark T” line. He’s a masters’ student in physical education.

“All my teachers used to tell me I wouldn’t get anywhere goofing around,” Hall said. “At least I have for the last couple days.”

These are two guys who like doing some goofy stuff. Tyler Crawford, 20, a junior and a nursing student at Auburn - the one with the guitar - said the two of them once tired to break an egg toss world record at the Auburn intramural fields. They got to 90 yards, but alas - the record was 107.

They wrote the song sitting around the house watching the Braves the night of the trade. Teixeira didn’t play in the game that night, as you know, but when they saw him introduced, they felt the buzz all the way to Auburn. (And no, not any alcohol buzz, in case you were wondering.)

“We were talking about writing a song, and we had been talking about needing something to inspire us for some words,” Crawford said. “All of a sudden we saw Mark Teixeira, we’re like ‘Dude, Mark Teixeira tribute, we gotta do it.’ Thirty minutes later, we were writing the song. I picked up the guitar. We did the first line, and we were laughing hysterically. We couldn’t stop laughing. It just went from there.”

It helped that there’s lots to rhythm with Teixeira. (Scarlett O’Hara, no less.) The guys needed four takes to get the words down, and to stop laughing.

They first posted the video on facebook so their friends could see it. Hall and Crawford, who both work at the IT help desk at Auburn, decided to put it on YouTube.

“He’d tell me ‘Hey man, we got over 100 hits!’” Crawford said. “I’m like ‘Yeah, that’s awesome.’”

They thought that was exciting. The YouTube site was up to 9,000 hits by the middle of the day Friday. How ‘bout adding a few more now?

They were so excited when Francoeur posted a note to them, once they figured out it wasn’t a prank, that they called each other at the same time. And now they’ve got free tickets to the Braves game. And can meet Tex.

“Maybe they can talk him into catching some balls at first base for me,” said Hall, who pitched and played shortstop in high school and said he pitched a little bit at Auburn.

In the meantime, they’ve got some rehearsing to do. Crawford said the most people he’s ever performed in front of is maybe 300 kids once at a summer camp. Something tells me there will be a few more walking through the Turner Field plaza that night.

Too funny. And you gotta love how the internet connects people. I do.

A little wackiness went a long way for two Auburn students who wrote a song about Mark Teixeira the night he was traded to Atlanta.

By posting the guitar-accompanied serenade on Youtube.com, Andruw Hall, 23, and Tyler Crawford, 20, of Ala. drew enough attention to get an e-mail from Jeff Francoeur, laughs from Teixeira and free tickets to the Braves-Mets game on Aug. 31.

They have been asked to perform the song at the Turner Field plaza before the game and to have it recorded for the Braves to use on the video board during the pre-game or a rain delay. They'll get to meet Teixeira on the field during batting practice.

"All my teachers used to tell me I wouldn't get anywhere goofing around," said Hall, the one without the guitar. "At least I have for the last couple days."

He and Crawford wrote the song after watching Teixeira on TV as he was introduced to Braves fans during the July 31 game against the Astros.

"We were talking about writing a song, and we had been talking about needing something to inspire us for some words," Crawford said. "All of a sudden we saw Mark Teixeira, we're like 'Dude, Mark Teixeira tribute, we gotta do it.' "

He said it helped that there's lots to rhyme with Teixeira. (Scarlett O'Hara, no less.) They needed four takes to get the words down and to stop laughing.

Braves players got wind of it, and Francoeur's fiance found it for him on his home computer. He e-mailed the duo, offered them tickets and a meet-and-greet with Teixeria.

"I just thought it was cool," he said. "They're my age. I could see myself and my buddies doing something stupid like that."

Teixeira saw it soon thereafter and got a big kick out of it.

"Those guys are talented," Teixeira said. "They had a good beat and some clever lyrics. I thought they were good."

On Aug. 31, Andrew Hall planned to be in a seat at Turner Field, watching the Atlanta Braves during his bachelor outing the weekend before his wedding. Now, the graduate student at Auburn University will spend that evening performing live in a pregame show and meeting star player Mark Teixeira and other Braves players.

Hall will sing a song he wrote with pal and future brother-in-law Tyler Crawford, a junior at Auburn, called “Mark Teixeira Tribute.” A videotape of the friends performing the song is one of the most-watched videos on You Tube, leading Braves right fielder Jeff Francouer, officials with the Braves organization and Fox’s Sports South to contact Hall, an Athens, Ala., native, and Crawford, of Chelsea, Ala., about the song.

“The first thing that happened that was like, ‘Whoa, this is crazy,’ was when we reached 700 views or so and the Braves and Sports South messaged me,” Hall said.

Francoeur called with offers of a meet-and-greet with the players, but the Braves organization offered something more — a chance for stardom.

Or at least the chance to hear thousands of fans cheering their performance in the Turner Field Plaza.

A spokeswoman for the Braves said the video had “gone through the office like wildfire” and everyone loved it.

Braves general manager John Schuerholz said Friday his son e-mailed the You Tube link to him — Schuerholz is mentioned in the song — and he had heard the Braves’ marketing department may have some plans for the song but he did not know specifics.

A call to Fox Sports was not returned Friday but Hall and Crawford said a network representative showed interest in using the song on air.

“In his message, he said something about 11 million viewers in the southeast would love to see it,” Hall said.

Network officials wanted them to re-record in the same setting — sitting on a sofa in a college apartment — so the lyrics could be more clearly heard, Crawford said.

By Friday night, more than 9,000 people had gone to the Web site to watch the video in the six days since it was posted.

“It’s insane,” said Crawford, a nursing student and Chelsea resident, by cell phone Friday from Auburn. “When we posted it online, it was just for our friends, then we started getting more hits. It’s just like we can’t even believe it.”

15 minutes

The 30 to 45 minutes it took Hall, 23, and Crawford, 20, to write and record “Mark Teixeira Tribute” should bring them more than just 15 minutes of fame.

“We would joke about playing at the seventh inning stretch at Turner Field,” Crawford said.

Hall, who played baseball at ABS and during his first year at Auburn, said the idea for the song began when he, Crawford and friend Jason Williams were watching TV after first baseman Teixeira, pronounced Tishera, was traded to the Braves earlier this month.

“I invited a couple of buddies over to watch the first game after we found out Mark Teixeira traded and we started goofing around,” he said. “We started coming up with these crazy rhymes. We wrote them all down just for fun. Later that night, we decided to write a song about it.”

Less than an hour later, Hall and Crawford were officially a song-writing team.

“Three or four days went by after we had written it and we played it for our roommates just for fun,” Hall said. The response encouraged them to post the song on an online networking site.

“We put it on Face Book first and several people commented,” he said. “When we put it on You Tube, obviously we weren’t expecting all this to happen.”

In the first few days, Hall and Crawford enjoyed reading comments posted on You Tube by viewers:

“That is the best thing EVER!!!!! I want it on my iPod!!!!”

“I hope to see this on TV during a game before too long.”

“Oh, this is going on TV within a week. Good job, guys.”

Crawford said he doesn’t remember who wrote which rhymes, in particular the amusing last stanza.

“We got on a roll, one of us would say a word and get a rhyme, then the other would,” he said.

Braves officials said they wanted to have Hall and Crawford record the song in a studio so they can play it on the stadium’s high-definition video board during rain delays or other lulls in games, Crawford said.

More important things

Hall was advised by a Nashville recording company that the lyrics to the song were automatically copyrighted in the videotape but Hall said he has already filled out paperwork to ensure the lyrics are properly protected, he said.

In the meantime, Hall and Crawford will need to rehearse for the big night — the one on Aug. 31 and the one the following weekend.

“Right now the wedding is the most important thing,” said Crawford of the pending nuptials of his sister and Hall.

Emily, a senior at Auburn in human development who plans to continue her education with nursing studies, said 300 invitations have been sent and she doesn’t expect any big offers to change the couple’s plans to wed on Sept. 8.

She will likely, however, postpone a bridal shower that was scheduled for Aug. 31.

“I had a bridal shower planned so the guys could have their night,” she said. Friends, though, said they have no trouble with postponing it so she can attend the performance at Turner Field that night.

“I’m really excited for them,” Emily said of her fiancé and younger brother. “I think they’re both really great guys. Now I guess everyone else can see what we around here see all the time.”

Her brother was humble.

“It was a lot of fun to do it,” he said. “We were tickled to death anybody really watched it.”

Reprinted in:

The Moultrie Observer (Moultrie, GA - 8/18/07)

The Allied News (Grove City, PA - 8/18/07)

CNHI News Service (Birmingham, AL - 8/18/07)