Walk Up Music

"Work. Work. Work. Work. Work." It's a beautiful April Day at Veteran Memorial Stadium and the leadoff man from the Cedar Rapids Kernels walks up to the plate. Now when most people go to a baseball game who really thinks or pays attention to the walk up music? Not a ton of people, but as a bat boy and listening to the same songs over and over, night in and night out, you start to take notice. I started to wonder why to people pick the songs that they do, and why does that song have meaning to them? Well after a bat boy for the Cedar Rapids Kernels you start to figure it out.

As well known to many outsiders, many baseball players come from Spanish speaking countries, such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba, or Venezuela. Those players walk up songs are always my favorite because most of the time it's Latino. And one thing I've learned about these songs is that they are prominent in the places that they lived. For example Donza Kaduro was a big hit in the Dominican Republic last year, so the Hispanic on our team had that as his walk up song. And later I noticed that players from the south had country music while those from the cities had hip hop/rap, and one day a light bulb went off in my head. Those songs aren't used to pump them up, they are used to represent where they are from and show the world what they are.

The life of a baseball player is complicated. They travel all the time going from city to city from team to team. They don't have a "real" family. They jump around from host family to host family because that's what this job requires. They play baseball every day in hopes of someday making it to the big leagues and establishing a family and a nice leaving. I can only imagine how hard it would be to not see your family hardly at all for six months of the year, and travel none stop along that time period. So I think it's the coolest thing what these guys do. Their way of remembering home is their walk up song. Each player's song reminds them of their home, family, and friends. What else can you ask from a guy?

So next time you are at a baseball game, listen to that music because it's not an accident. Those guys want you to know a little bit about them, so pay attention and learn from them.