"Jose can you See, by the Dawn's Early Light...?"

There may be no crying in baseball, but there sure is music. As the Major Leagues' "hot stove" season heats up, we recall at two musicians who swung big bats in baseball history: Jose Feliciano and Eddie Layton.

Layton started his musical career as a live performer and a background organist for soap operas. But at virtually every Yankees home game since 1967, Layton has sat in a small glass booth in the loge section behind home plate, between the press box and the scoreboard control booth. In his oversize glasses and captain's hat, Hammond has guided his vintage Hammond organ through countless stanzas of pop hits and nameless chant-stoking rally songs that cry out "baseball."

Layton had never seen a baseball game before his first Yankee Stadium gig. When Mickey Mantle hit a home run, Layton remarked that Mantle was running the bases backwards. (He wasn't.)

Layton had never driven a car the day the Yankees signed him; they provided him limo rides to and from his Forest Hills home. (He still has never driven a car, and they still give him rides.)

In recent years, pre-recorded rock and rap music has been used to pump up the crowd, but once it was Layton alone who rocked the rafters. He told a New York Times reporter, "Playing with 50,000 watts of power, what rock star has an amplifier like that? I play for up to 56,000 people a night. Not even Madonna has done those kind of numbers."

Read about Eddie Layton and his early organ recordings

Read about Layton's retirement in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times [fee required]

Is Layton reconsidering his retirement? Read about it in New York Newsday

During Game 5 of the 1968 World Series, Jose Feliciano stunned the 50,000 spectators and 50 million TV viewers by messing with a musical sacred cow. No crotch-grabbing, no off-key humor, no forgetting-the-words, no screeching. Just a soulful performance, a guitar-only accompaniment and, well, some melodic improvisations.

People went nuts. In a Detroit Free Press feature marking the 35th anniversary of the game, Ernie Harwell (who selected Feliciano to perform) recalls receiving thousands of letters (some even calling him, an ex-Marine, a Communist).

Looking back, Feliciano's rendition seems quite tame. Less than a year after the fiery singing of the anthem at Tiger Stadium, Jimi Hendrix burned up the Woodstock stage with a wailing, dive-bombing, high-decibel reconstruction. And now every performer feels entitled to put some unique fingerprints on the anthem.

For Game 3, Harwell had chosen traditional singer Margaret Whiting. In game 4, Motown star Marvin Gaye sang the anthem – straight, after Harwell's request. But game 5...

Harwell considered country singer Eddie Arnold, who was unavailable. A West Coast producer recommended Feliciano, the blind 23-year-old who was gaining national recognition with his Latin-influenced cover of the Doors' "Light my Fire." A big baseball fan, Feliciano enthusiastically agreed.

After joking around with the Tigers players in the clubhouse ("C'mon Kaline, light my fire. Tigers got to have desire"), Feliciano took the field in a maroon suit and dark sunglasses, propping his right leg on a metal chair. A minute and a half later, it was clear that a national debate had been ignited. A tumultuous time in the US, people loved or hated Feliciano's performance depending on their political leanings.

Before that time, the song was treated traditionally. Since Feliciano, the anthem has been "part of the entertainment package," says history professor David Zang.

MORE: Read the complete Detroit Free Press article about Feliciano's groundbreaking ballpark appearance, the reaction, and his post-game career

Visit Jose Feliciano at his own site, or read about him at a fan site