Take Me Out To The Ball Game
A deep dive on baseball walk-out songs
Welcome back to Can’t Get Much Higher, the internet’s favorite place for music and data. If you enjoy this newsletter, check out my book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent years listening to every number one hit in history.
One of my favorite things to do in this newsletter is to write about places where we interact with music without thinking of them as musical places. In the past, for example, we’ve looked at music in supermarkets. Today, I want to go to a different place, though: the baseball stadium.
Take Me Out To The Ball Game
By Chris Dalla Riva
If you want to own a World Series ring, you probably assume you only have two options:
Get so good at baseball that you make the major leagues and win a championship
Get very wealthy and find a championship-winning baseball player that is willing to sell you their ring
Most people don’t realize that you have another option, though: Play the organ. While DJs and recordings have taken over many spaces that were historically occupied by live musicians, some baseball stadiums still employee organists to fill dead space in between pitches and innings.
If the team that employs you is good enough, you’ll likely find yourself with a World Series ring. Long-time New York Yankees’ organist Eddie Layton got five during his tenure. According to his obituary, Layton “wore only the smallest one, from 1978, fearing that he might play a wrong note if encumbered by the heavier ones.”
Baseball is my favorite sport. And one of the many things that I love about baseball is how important music is to the game. No, not every stadium still employs an organist, but baseball is a rare sport with a theme song, namely “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Plus, some teams have song-specific traditions.
The Red Sox play “Sweet Caroline” before the start of the 8th inning
The Dodgers play Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” after a win
The Yankees play the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” in the middle of the 6th inning with the grounds crew miming along to the dance as they maintain the field
On top of all of this, each team uses walk-out songs. These are recordings that are played as a pitcher trots out from the bullpen or a batter walks up to the plate. While some songs can become staples, like Yankees’ closer Mariano Rivera making his entrance to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” most are changed every now and again. Because the baseball season just kicked off, I decided to take a look at what players were walking out to.
So, What Are Players Walking Out To?
For many editions of this newsletter, I need to go spelunking for data around the web, gluing multiple datasets together over a matter of days. That wasn’t the case here. Major League Baseball includes walk-out songs on each team’s website. Well, almost every team. But outside of the White Sox and Athletics, each team listed walk-out songs for most of their starters.
Let’s first start by looking at the top five most popular walk-out songs. The most selected were “God’s Country” by Blake Shelton and “Loud and Heavy” by Cody Jinks. Both were selected by four players. This shocked me. While neither of the songs is obscure—both have been streamed hundreds of millions of times—they weren’t huge hits. Maybe baseball players just have different taste than your average person.
Still, to make the top five songs, you only had to be selected by three players. That’s less than 1% of our database. Trends might be a bit clearer if we roll things up to the artist level.
And they are. The top artist is Bad Bunny, arguably the world’s biggest star. He doesn’t appear near the top of the song list because while ten players currently walk out to one of his songs, none of those players have chosen the same song. We see a similar pattern with other top artists, like Travis Scott and Morgan Wallen.
This top five also suggests a trend: MLB players are into country, rap, and Latin music. This would align with some of the league’s demographics. According to a recent report, 40.8% of Opening Day players in 2025 “came from diverse backgrounds.” Among that cohort, 28.6% were Latino, the largest subset.
Top artists don’t tell the full story, though. When we roll things up to the genre level, we see that that hip-hop/R&B and rock account for 51.6% of walk-out songs. Hip-hop/R&B appearing at the top isn’t much of shock given the presence of Travis Scott, Gunna, and Lil Wayne near the top artist list. But rock is unexpected, especially since it outpaces Latin selections.
Rock does much better at the genre-level because there is more variation in the selections. Myles Straw of the Blue Jays is the only player to walk-out to“Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. Kyle Finnegan of the Tigers is the only player to walk-out to “Song 2” by Blur. Kevin Ginkel of the Diamondbacks is the only player to walk-out to “Built By Nations” by Greta Van Fleet. Those solo selections won’t show up at the artist-level, but they do at the genre-level. Latin selections, on the other hand, are very concentrated around major stars, like Bad Bunny and Daddy Yankee.
Even so, when we compare walk-out song genres to the genres that people streamed in 2025, we see that the percentage of Latin walk-out song selections outpace the percentage of streams coming from Latin songs. According to Luminate, 7.8% of streams in the US were of Latin music in 2025. Compare that to the 19.2% walk-out songs being Latin.
In general, MLB player tastes skew toward hip-hop/R&B, Latin, electronic, and gospel more than your average listener. By contrast, players are significantly less into pop music. 12.4% of US streams in 2025 were of pop songs. Only 6.7% of walk-out songs turned to the genre.
We can run a similar analysis for when walk-out songs were released. While nearly 78% of walk-out songs were released after 2000, MLB player tastes skew a bit older than your average listener. In 2025, 47.9% of streams were from music released in the last 5 years. Only 33.1% of walk-out songs came from that period. By contrast, 22.2% of walk-out songs were released before 2000 as compared to 12.4% of streams.
Weird Walk-Out Song Facts
As when I was writing about the evolution of classic rock, I made a bunch of stray observations while working on this piece. Rather than letting that knowledge rot in my brain, I figured I’d share it with you here.
The oldest walk-out song is “Mambo Italiano” by Dean Martin. Texas Ranger Sam Haggerty currently walks up to the plate with the 1954 song playing.
No player has turned to a song released in 2026 yet.
The Pirates’ selections skew the oldest. Their average walk-out song was released in 1999, a decade earlier than the league average.
MLB players like the Jay-Z song “Young Forever” much more than your average listener. Jacob Young of the Nationals, Jared Young of the Mets, and Connor Wong of the Red Sox all walk out to the song, making it the fifth most popular song among all players. On Spotify, it’s the rapper’s 28th most popular song.
I have no proof, but given that 6.2% of walk-out songs are gospel as compared to 2.1% of streams, I would bet MLB players are more religious than your average person.
New York Yankee Amed Rosario walks out to “Elly De La Cruz,” a song named after Cincinnati Red Elly De La Cruz. De La Cruz has eschewed the narcissistic route and chosen to walk out to “Real Guerrero” by Secreto ‘El Famoso Biberon.’
For my money, the strangest walk-out songs are Elton John’s “Circle of Life” (Fernando Cruz), Michael Bublé’s “Feeling Good” (Tyler O’Neill), Grover Washington’s “Just the Two of Us” (Sean Manaea), and Eminem’s “Square Dance” (Matt Strahm).
If you are a baseball fan, I hope you enjoy the 2026 season. May your team win many games, and may your team’s players choose good walk-out music.
A New One
"poem" by overtonight
2026 - Bedroom Rock
Because no MLB player is currently walking out to a new song, I can’t recommend something from our dataset. Instead, I’ll turn to “poem,” a track from the up-and-comer overtonight.
Though he clearly takes some cues from the diverse world of internet rap, overtonight lives in the under-produced rock universe, his songs sounding like they were tossed off at a moment’s notice. I mean that as a compliment, though. The off-the-cuff nature of his short tracks come across as earnest rather than unprepared.
An Old One
"God’s Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash
2006 - Country
I was thrilled to see both the Guardians’ Shawn Armstrong and the Dodgers’ Emmet Sheehan walking out to “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” a posthumous song released by Johnny Cash. Albeit under different names, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” is a folk song that goes back a long way. But when you hear Johnny Cash intone line after line about God’s judgement, you’ll think that everyone else had been doing it wrong. His trembling voice could send shivers down the spine of the staunchest non-believer.
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Lindor walking out to My Girl is electric
For the Mariners, the most impactful walk-out song in recent memory was Jered Kelenic walking out to John Denver's "Country Roads." The crowd would sing along. That was happening when there was still optimism about Kelenic's career.