Hitting all the right notes
From "Tessie" to "Narco," the evolution of baseball's soundtrack
Have you heard the one about…
…how the game found its groove?
We tend to think of baseball as quiet. Pastoral. The crack of the bat, the murmur of the crowd, maybe a vendor calling out from somewhere down the aisle.
But it’s never really been silent.
Not even close.
From the very beginning, baseball has had music woven into it—sometimes coming from the stands, sometimes from the speakers and sometimes from a lone organist sitting somewhere out of sight, shaping the mood of an entire ballpark without most people even realizing it.
Long before playlists and walk-up songs, the fans themselves were the soundtrack. They sang. They chanted. They made noise in ways that felt organic to the moment.
One of the earliest examples came in 1903, when Boston’s Royal Rooters (above) turned a song called “Tessie” into something much bigger than a tune.
It became a weapon.
