Baseball's stadium music isn't accompaniment — it's how fans take the game back
Baseball's official historian thinks stadium music is too loud, but it was fans singing Hey Hey Goodbye in unison that rattled the opposing pitcher — music turns the crowd from spectators into part of the game.
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One walk-up song can turn a passerby into a fan
Host Randa Abdel Fattah says she was indifferent to baseball for most of her life, until Mets pitcher Edwin Diaz's walk-up song Narco in 2022 changed that. Diaz is a closer, usually entering at a key moment in the late innings, and the team uses his walk-up song to announce to the opponent: the show's over, this one's ours. The entrance video went viral, the team started handing out plastic trumpets to fans, the mascots Mr. and Mrs. Met pretended to play trumpets, and eventually the team flew the original artist, Timmy Trumpet, in from Australia to perform live. The host says that if you were in the stands then, the feeling was electric.
— Randa Abdel FattahThe official historian finds the ballpark too loud
MLB's official historian John Thorne says plainly that he doesn't like entrance music. What he misses is the quiet between half-innings — quiet makes the other sounds louder and clearer: the strange sound of a bat hitting a baseball, the same sound when Babe Ruth hit, and when Josh Gibson did; the dull thud of a leather glove catching a fly ball; a coach yelling at a player to keep running and steal second. He thinks nonstop audio, the endless fight for fans' attention, may have robbed a kid who goes to the ballpark to dream of that right.
— John ThorneTake Me Out was originally a women's suffrage song
The seventh-inning stretch was originally literal: stand up, move your legs, get the blood flowing. It became a musical moment thanks to a 1908 song, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, which was actually about women's suffrage. The protagonist in the original lyrics is Katie Casey, a baseball fan who knows all the players' names, gets upset when the umpire blows a call, and knows what to do when the score is tight — she gets the whole crowd to sing the song. From this a new genre was born, the "baseball song," flooding sheet music, cylinder records and 78s in the 1910s.
— John ThorneThe baseball song boom was publishers, not fans
John Thorne points out that the 1910s wave of baseball music was less about fans liking it than publishers liking it — it was essentially a marketing tool to pull people into the ballpark. The evidence is the number of copycats: George M. Cohan released Take Your Girl to the Ball Game almost the same week, followed by imitations like I Want to Go to the Ball Game. But despite Tin Pan Alley producing so many baseball songs, large-scale singalongs at actual ballparks remained rare, and John says the main reason was technical: sound systems were too primitive, and before radio took hold, a brass band was still the best accompaniment.
— John ThorneThat 1977 singalong broke the opposing pitcher
On a muggy July night in Chicago in 1977, the White Sox trailed the Kansas City Royals by two. After the White Sox put runners on first and second, someone in the stands started singing Hey Hey Goodbye, the sound grew, more than 45,000 fans joined in, and the announcers had to raise their voices to be heard over the singing. The White Sox then erupted — bases loaded, cleared, four runs in — and the other side was forced to change pitchers. As the pitcher walked off the mound, Chicago fans "saw him off" even louder. Nancy Faust says she was thinking, "Did I hear that right?" because it wasn't the kind of thing you normally heard at a ballpark — it was more like mockery.
— Nancy FaustShe gave players songs; fans fed her ideas
In her first years with the White Sox, Nancy Faust still played a set repertoire: the national anthem, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and the hour when the crowd filed in. In her third year she started improvising, playing whatever she saw. When Dick Allen came up, the crowd would leave the bathrooms and popcorn stands, so she played the then-popular Jesus Christ Superstar, and when he hit a home run the place went wild. Fans sitting around her booth started offering her ideas: one player used to work at a watch counter, got stuck there when the store closed, so when he came up she played Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is. She says she was "the soundtrack to whatever was happening," not just scoring the players.
— Nancy FaustAn opposing pitcher admitted the singing shook his confidence
After that 1977 singalong, an opposing pitcher told reporters: you're standing on the mound, there are men on base, Zisk is in the batter's box, thirty thousand people are singing Kiss It Goodbye, and that shakes your confidence. Nancy Faust later read in a book that players recalling those years said they hated hearing that sound, and flinched when they heard na-na-goodbye. And White Sox slugger Richie Zisk said of those same fans: I don't know whether they came to see us or we came to see them, but I can tell you it fired us up. Nancy's conclusion: I guess I did have an impact, I just didn't know it at the time.
— Nancy FaustShe can't read music — it's all by ear
Every song Nancy Faust improvised over her career, she did by ear — she can't read music. Hum a few bars of anything and within seconds she'd play it back on the organ. She retired from the White Sox organist job in 2010, White Sox fan and former President Barack Obama personally wrote to congratulate her on her career, and the booth she occupied for decades is now named after her. She still occasionally comes out of retirement for special occasions, like Pope Night, playing Gotta Have Faith and Don't Stop Believing.
— Randa Abdel FattahIn their own words · checked verbatim
With walk-up music and nonstop audio, the need to secure attention, the attention of the fans is relentless. And the idea of a kid going to a ball game and being entitled to dream, that may be lost.
John Thorne6:18
Take me out to the ballgame was a suffragette anthem.
John Thorne10:31
It was more than just taking me out to the ballgame, to hear everybody singing along. It wasn't something I was used to. It wasn't very nice.
Nancy Faust19:49
you stand now on the mound with runners on base and zisk at the plate and the crowd of 30,000 singing Kiss It Goodbye and It Shakes Your Confidence.
Nancy Faust25:52
I don't know whether they come to see us or we come to see them, but I'll tell you this, it's helped to get you charged up.
Nancy Faust26:52
Baseball songs like baseball novels and baseball movies are by and large crappy.
John Thorne31:00
The appeal is to escape from yourself and be someone else at the ballpark or in front of the television and to commune not only with the past, but with yourself.
John Thorne32:00
Figures
| Attendance at that White Sox game | more than 45,000 (source: 45,000, 919) | 17:47 |
| Age when Nancy Faust entered the White Sox organ booth | 23 | 20:49 |
| Age when Nancy Faust started learning organ | 4 | 20:49 |
| Year Nancy Faust retired from the White Sox organist job | 2010 | 28:56 |
| The 8,000 attendance at a White Sox game that the GM called "blown" | 8,000 | 21:50 |
| Width of Bill Veeck's exploding scoreboard | 130 feet | 22:51 |
Glossary
- walk-up song
- A short piece of music played at the ballpark when a player comes up, usually chosen by the player.
- seventh inning stretch
- A break around the seventh inning of a baseball game when spectators stand and stretch, later evolving into a singalong moment.
- Tin Pan Alley
- The cluster of music publishers in early-20th-century New York, shorthand for the popular song industry.
- closer
- The pitcher on a baseball team who comes in to finish the game at a key moment in the late innings.
How to listen
People doing sports content, live-experience design, or fan-community operations; and product managers who want to know how "audience participation" was built by a single organist.
The first 0:00-3:14 is the host's personal intro; skip to 6:18 for the official historian's opposing view.