You cannot say we weren’t warned. On Monday, in the Rangers’ final exhibition of the spring, Elvis Andrus debuted a new walk-up song. A familiar song, you might say. One that your child has probably played on Youtube so many times that you wished you could throw it (the computer; your child) through a wall. One that has wormed its way into the deepest crevasses of your brain, forcing out less memetic information, like the faces of your loved ones. In few places were you safe from the song, but a baseball stadium was one of them. No longer.
The 2019 MLB season will be the season of “Baby Shark.”
Yes, “Baby Shark,” the insanely catchy kids’ song that has mutated from a very old nursery rhyme to a world-conquering chart-topper, has hit baseball. We have Andrus to blame or to thank for this, but he’s just doing it for his son. Andrus explained that it’s the favorite song of 20-month-old Elvis Jr., and if you’re not trying to make your kid happy, what are you doing?
But Andrus, despite warning us as spring training ended, left some drama. He refused to say if his exhibition at-bat music would carry over to the regular season. Well:
If you do not want to hear “Baby Shark” coming out of your TV roughly 1,000 times in the next six months, your best bet is to hope for slumps. Creatures of superstition, baseball players will change everything up when they’re struggling, including their walk-up songs. But Andrus went 3-for-4 with a dinger and two RBIs. Dear god.
It’s not just Andrus, as it turns out. Cincinnati’s Jose Iglesias also used “Baby Shark” as his walk-up music on opening day. Iglesias went 2-for-3. Dear god.
Even if the players themselves aren’t picking it, we’re not safe:
There’s a decent chance that you, gentle reader, are currently saying to yourself, I don’t like it. I hope it goes away.
“If you don’t like it, you better get used to it,” Andrus said. “It’s not going away.”