More Teams Taking To Song

Now you’ve seen Barry Larkin rap.

The video above could serve as a cultural artifact for future anthropologists, for sure. Wonder how American men dressed in the late eighties? What sort of music was popular? Facial hair? It’s all in there.

But what’s also in there, once you take your snark pants off (NOT your real ones, please), is worth something to us, now. Here are the World Champion Cincinnati Reds, having fun for your pleasure. The song isn’t great, the singing voices often atrocious, and the fashions just kinda goofy, but they were willing to horse around in a studio for no good reason.

Shouldn’t there be more of this? Well, actually, there is.

The NotGraphs investigative team already found a song that the Pirates coined in 1990, and then there’s this gem from the 1986 Dodgers:

Oh boy. rap.

Orel Hersheiser! Bob Welch! Fernando Valenzuela! Mariano Duncan – strangely involved in both this video and the Reds one. So musically inclined!

There’s a progression in these videos that you might notice. The earliest one, the Dodgers, is easily the silliest. The ridiculous premise gives way some genius dancing – but the Dodgers are enjoying themselves despite. The Reds’ video is decidedly ‘cooler’ and a little more detached (less is asked of the players in the way of acting), and the Pirates video seems to made mostly by outsiders. Those two trends have continued, as we can now find plenty of fan-made music (Oh, Frenchy) but nary a team-created musical. Perhaps the players now-a-days are too cool for school, or too ‘professional’ to make this sort of video.

It’s a shame – who wouldn’t want to see Pat Burrell (as the Machine) and Aubrey Huff try to get a rise out of ever-placid Buster Posey while Brian Wilson screaches “Don’t Stop Believin” from the top of the lockers with Sergio Romo before Tim Lincecum emerges from a smoky closet? It might come off as cheesy, and the singing might not be top-notch, but it would be a lot of fun. And fun is what this is all about.

H/T: James Kannengeiser