Sharks have infested Nationals Park in Washington D.C during this year’s World Series between the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals.
The viral musical children’s song “Baby Shark” has become the rallying cry of the Nationals this season. With the team tied at two games apiece heading into Game 5 of the Series, Washington’s baseball fans are donning shark costumes in the stands to show solidarity with their team.
The shark phenomena began earlier in the season after outfielder Gerardo Parra, mired in a hitting slump, chose the song as his walk-up music at the suggestion of his young daughter. Parra promptly went on a tear at the plate and the Nationals as a team turned their slow season around. Parra kept the music and inspired stadium-wide dancing among the fans whenever he stepped up to the plate.
When you get older and have grandchildren and they ask you about the 2019 #WorldSeries….
— Cut4 (@Cut4) October 26, 2019
Show them this video. pic.twitter.com/CBT1WiMWFe
“I think it shows the power of Parra and what he means to our clubhouse,” Nationals ace pitcher Max Scherzer said.
Baseball players tend to be a superstitious bunch anyhow, so the team decided to run with it and made it the anthem of their season. That includes their trademark “chomp” when they deliver a big hit on offense. For a single, two fingers are used to pantomime the shark jaws. A double means using a whole hand and triple requires both arms. In case of a home run, a full feeding frenzy occurs among the entire team.
“It’s really cool. And what’s even cooler and weirder is to look up in the stands and see middle-age men do a Baby Shark,” Nationals first baseman Ryan Zimmerman said.
Along with being a unifying theme for a baseball team, the Baby Shark song, which broke into the Billboard Top 100 earlier this year, has also inspired a live tour, a Netflix series and a line of best-selling toys.
The two-decade old song enjoyed a major resurgence thanks to the Pinkfong version, which was re-released in 2016. Since then the accompanying video has over 2 billion YouTube views. The song gained widespread notoriety after it inspired a viral video trend, the Baby Shark Dance Challenge.