The best part about attending a baseball game is eating a hot dog or three and drinking an overpriced beer while wearing a baseball hat and yelling at millionaires. The second best part is listening to the walk-up music—10 to 15 second snippets of songs the baseball men have chosen as their motivational inspiration to hit the ball and run like their pantaloons are on fire.
Thinking about what your walk-up music would be is a fun exercise, especially while watching a minor league baseball game on beautiful Staten Island, as Jezebel and Deadspin did, together, on Thursday night. Bellies full of hot dogs and macaroni salad, we watched the Staten Island Yankees beat the Connecticut Tigers, 3-2. Though each member of the collective staffs feared for our lives at least once, no one died from getting brained by a foul ball. We survived the rain and the boat. We made it home.
A walk-up song should make the person at bat feel excited and for 15 seconds, the entire stadium should turn into a club of the player’s choosing. Lights! Lasers! Screaming! The bleacher section taking their shirts off, twisting it around their hand, and spinning it like a helicopter. What’s your walk-up song choice? Here are ours for inspiration.
Ecleen Caraballo, Jezebel
Though I love baseball, I can’t even imagine what it was like sitting through nine long innings without loud music playing in between hitters to wake up snoozing friends that just come along for the ice cream and hot dogs. That said, the first song I’d choose (in hopes that I can change it every few months for sanity purposes) would be the reggaeton remix of “ICON” by Jaden Smith & Nicky Jam. SPECIFICALLY, the third verse which is in Spanish and shouts out haters, God, and Latinxs. It leads to Jaden’s first line of the fourth verse:“Look, we don’t know one like you.” Perfect, because… yeah, ya don’t!Avery Yang, Deadspin
Bangers only.Kelly Faircloth, Jezebel
I’m sorry to say that my at-bat music will really have to be the Benny Hill theme. I am genuinely the worst athlete of all time—I once was evicted from a spelling bee in the first round, on the word “athlete”—and it is my firm conviction that whenever possible one should just lean into the comedy of their own existence on this earth. Plus, it is kind of energizing.Barry Petchesky, Deadspin
The point of a walk-up song is to get you psyched up to smash the hell out of that baseball, right? I would use the intro to Metallica’s “Eye Of The Beholder” and then I would be pumped and jacked and I would snarl at the pitcher and rrrraaarrr smash the bat over my knee like Bo Jackson and then they would probably eject me and not let me hit.Harron Walker, Jezebel
I‘d walk out to the Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb.” I’m wearing a lamé cape. My jersey and baseballwoman pants have weird cutouts that aren’t hot. Just baffling. “Ummm, Wrestlemania is THAT way, ma’am” is the goal. I immediately strike out.Dan McQuade, Deadspin
As a baseball fan, I’ve spent a not-insignificant part of my life thinking about what music would play when I stepped up to the plate. Hours. I never even played baseball. I used to think “Return of the Mack” or Radiohead’s “Idioteque” (maybe even one of those cool live versions where Thom Yorke jumps up and down in place). But after much thought I’ve settled on “Battle Without Honor or Humanity,” the song that plays when Lucy Liu and her minions enter the restaurant in Kill Bill Vol 1. I think.-
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