Since he was a toddler, Jeff Liffmann gravitated towards the piano.
Liffmann vividly remembers playing the piano on his grandpa’s and parents’ laps, going key by key, absorbing the distinct sound of each finger tap.
Now, he plays organ for the Long Beach Coast and Long Beach State Dirtbags, seated high up in the press box of Blair Field.
Liffmann was born into a musical household; his great-grandmother, Alice, was a lifelong piano teacher and her husband ran a piano restoration business. His parents were music fans and grew up listening to music; he recalled dancing with his sister to early Beatles songs in his living room as a preschooler.
“I grew up having good CDs in the house and having good radio stations to put in the car … and [I] always knew that music was a big part of my life,” Liffmann said. “I always felt deeply connected to music.”
He has fond memories of listening to his great-grandmother play music on her 1900s Steinway piano in her Rhode Island home. Alice passed away when Liffmann was around 7 years old. Soon after, he learned his great-grandmother left that piano for his family.
Around that time, Liffmann began taking piano lessons.
Liffmann’s love for sports
The Coast organist was always a sports fan too, buying baseball almanacs every year and watching New York Yankees games on the TV and radio.
One of Liffmann’s formative memories was attending a Yankees game as a kid after 9/11. He still gets chills recalling it.
“They started singing, “God Bless America,” as well as the National Anthem,” he said. “I still get tingly thinking about it now, just how powerful something like that is [and how] special songs and special moments can evoke emotion out of a crowd of 50,000 people.”
His two passions rarely intersected as a child. The first time the organ and sports briefly met was when he wrote to the New York Rangers’ and Knicks’ organist Ray Castoldi in red, white and blue ink, to match the Rangers’ colors.
“I don’t think I even asked him any questions,” he reminisced. “I think I just told him how cool he was.”
After growing up in Stamford, Connecticut, Liffmann resided in numerous states during his adult years.
He first attended Syracuse University at 18 and dropped out after two years, moved to Colorado at 21 to teach skiing and snowboarding and then moved to Argentina to teach skiing two years later. Even with the constant moving, music was always a staple in his life.
“I’ve been doing it [music] so much in Argentina and in Colorado, playing in bands, begging bands to let me join them or going to jazz nights and wanting to jump on stage and I’d always known that music was important to me … but I never thought I was good enough,” Liffmann said. “I just got to [the] point at age 23 where I was like, ‘I really should give it a shot.’”
In 2010, he made the decision to move back to the United States, attending Boston’s Berklee College of Music that summer and graduating two years later.
Liffmann then moved to Los Angeles in 2013 and began working as a sideman in 2015, when he was hired to fill out bands or perform wedding and corporate gigs.
Five years later, he had his “big break” into the sports — but not in the way you might expect.
Liffmann recollects teaching piano lessons to a fill-in Rangers guitarist in 2018 and bonding over their shared fandom.
“Maybe you can introduce me to the Rangers organist?” Liffmann asked the Rangers guitarist.
One year later, during a Rangers preseason game, he finally met the man he wrote to decades ago — Ray Castoldi.
In a recent interview with the Long Beach Coast, he discussed how meeting Castoldi was something on his bucket list
Shortly after, Liffmann played for Castoldi in Madison Square Garden for a substitute Rangers organist position, which he says was a dream come true. He wasn’t picked to be a substitute since he lived in Los Angeles, but Castoldi introduced him to Dieter Ruehle, the organist for the Los Angeles Kings and Dodgers, as well as the Dirtbags, who was also looking for a new substitute.
Liffmann served as Ruehle’s backup for the Dirtbags in 2021. That position quickly turned into a shared role after scheduling conflicts arose with Ruehle’s MLB obligations; Liffmann said he did close to half the games that year for the Dirtbags. Since then, he’s been the main organist for the Dirtbags.
Early in the 2025 Dirtbags season, Liffmann heard that there might be a new minor league baseball team coming to Long Beach. He met with executives and offered to play as the Long Beach Coast organist, since the Coast shares Blair Field with the Dirtbags.
Later in the spring, he received the news that he’d be working as the main organist for the Coast.
“[I was] very very excited,” he said. Liffmann explained that he’d been playing the organ for around 40 games a year for the Kings, Dodgers and Dirtbags.
Now that he’s working for the Coast, Liffmann adds 50+ games to his schedule, which, to him, really makes him a full-time organist.
The Coast utilizes more organ and pre-recorded tracks throughout the game compared to your typical major league baseball game. During Dodgers games, Liffmann says he only plays the organ half the time, occasionally celebrating singles, walks and strikeouts on the organ and bigger hits with pre-recorded stuff. The reason for that, according to Liffmann, is the difference in stadium capacity, with Blair Field filling up with 3,000 fans and the Dodgers averaging over 49,000 fans per game.
“We have to provide that [noise] and so because [The Coast] is more of a community team, people are coming out; maybe it’s their first game to a professional ball game … we’re trying to bring that excitement to them and keep them engaged,” he said.
While Liffmann admits to missing playing for bands, he said he feels lucky to have a community impact on baseball games, even if he views his impact on the game as marginal.
“It feels great, I’m a hack athlete and if this is the way of being successful in sports, then it’s great. I’ll never win a ring as a baseball player or lift the [Stanley] Cup as a hockey player … but if I can tangentially attach myself to sports in that way, it’s a fun way to do it,” he said.
His advice to younger organists looking to break into the field is to practice along at home during sports games.
“Don’t rely on the luck I had … if it’s something that’s interesting to you, reach out and pursue it,” Liffmann said. “If you come to a Coast game or a local minor league team and there’s an organist there, approach that organist.”
To learn more about Liffmann, check out his website and Instagram.
If you want to hear Jeff Liffmann play organ live at Blair Field, the Coast has its final regular-season homestand against the Modesto Warriors from Sept. 4-6 and will host a best-of-three playoff series on Sept. 10 and 11 (with a third game on Sept. 12 if necessary). Tickets are on sale on the Long Beach Coast website.
