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The World Series started this week, with the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays playing for a championship. I honestly don’t have a dog in this hunt, but it seemed like a good time to put together a soundtrack for the game baseball — and for everything we bring to it.
Maybe you follow every inning. Maybe you mostly remember playing catch, sitting in the bleachers, or hearing a familiar voice call a game on the radio. Baseball has a way of attaching itself to people and places, even when you couldn’t tell anyone who’s leading the division.
I grew up playing baseball with the boys in my neighborhood, and I played Little League softball, too, which was pretty much all that we had for girls where I grew up. My dad had played baseball in high school and college, and he coached my Little League teams. So my connection to the game started long before I had any reason to pay attention to a World Series.
These songs make room for all of that: the kids hoping someone will hit the ball their way, the fans who keep showing up, the players who become heroes, and the memories that last longer than a season.
Load Up The Bases (The Baseball Song) — Whiskey Falls (2007)
This sounds like something you should hear coming through the stadium speakers while everyone finds their seats. There’s anticipation in it — the kind that belongs to a game before anything has gone right or wrong.
That makes it a good place to begin. Nobody’s made an error. Nobody’s stranded a runner. There’s still every reason to think something worth watching is about to happen.
You don’t have to know the lineup yet. Just come on in.
Centerfield — John Fogerty (1985)
I almost left this one out because it’s such an obvious baseball song. But sometimes a song becomes the obvious choice because it gets something exactly right.
Fogerty captures the eagerness of wanting your turn. You’ve got the glove, you’ve got the shoes, and you’re convinced you can do something if somebody will just put you in the game.
It also gives this soundtrack its title. A moment in the sun can be a championship, certainly. It can also be one good catch on an ordinary afternoon — something nobody else remembers quite as clearly as you do.
The Greatest — Kenny Rogers (1999)
A little boy has a bat, a ball, and an impressive amount of confidence. His results don’t immediately support his opinion of himself, but he keeps going.
The turn at the end is what makes this song so good. The evidence hasn’t changed; his understanding of it has.
There’s something wonderful about a child who can find another possibility before disappointment has time to settle in. He went outside to play baseball, and he’s still having a good day.
Right Field — Peter, Paul and Mary (1986)
Of course, not every kid arrives with that much confidence.
“Right Field” belongs to the child waiting to be picked, trying to look occupied, and hoping not to be embarrassed. There’s a whole little world out there beyond the infield, especially when your attention has wandered away from the game.
Then the ball comes your way.
I like having this beside “The Greatest.” One child can manufacture confidence out of almost anything. The other needs a chance to discover it. There ought to be room for both on the team.
The Cheap Seats — Alabama (1993)
You don’t have to be on the field to feel like you belong at the ballpark.
Alabama gets the pleasure of showing up for a team without requiring that team to be especially impressive. There’s food, conversation, somebody questioning the umpire, and enough happening to make an evening of it.
That feels familiar well beyond baseball. Sometimes the thing you’ve gathered to watch is only part of the reason you came.
The seats may be inexpensive. The ritual matters.
Nolan Ryan (He’s A Hero To Us All) — Jerry Jeff Walker (1991)
A baseball soundtrack with a little Texas in it ought to have room for Nolan Ryan.
Jerry Jeff Walker gives him the kind of affectionate, larger-than-life treatment that turns an athlete into a folk hero. There’s admiration here, but there’s a grin in it, too.
Walker later explained that he wrote the song while showing his baseball-loving young son that a song could be about anything. That detail makes me like it even more: a father, a child, baseball, and
Jackie Robinson — Everclear (2012)
Baseball’s heroes don’t all ask us to admire the same things.
With “Jackie Robinson,” the conversation reaches beyond athletic ability into racism, courage, and the example a person leaves behind. Art Alexakis has described the song as political, and it brings a different kind of weight to this part of the soundtrack.
It’s worth making that space. We remember what great players could do. We also remember what some of them had to endure to do it.
Fear the Beer — Nate Gibson (2025)
Now, a moment for Milwaukee.
Nate Gibson made an entire country album celebrating the Brewers, and this song makes its allegiance clear right away. It’s playful, proudly local, and thoroughly convinced that this could be the year. There’s even a World Series wish built into it.
Every fan base deserves a little room for unreasonable optimism. Milwaukee’s fans have the microphone for this one.
Tampa Bay, you’re next.
Feel the Heat Rays (09) — Darren Moore (2009)
Here’s the other side of this year’s matchup.
Like the Brewers song, this one doesn’t pretend to be neutral. It’s a rallying cry for people who already know which team they want to win. Put the two songs together, though, and they make room for both sets of fans.
A Brewers option for Milwaukee fans.
A Tampa Bay option for Rays fans.
My Oh My — Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (2010)
Contains explicit language.
Sometimes the voice describing the game becomes as much a part of your memories as the players.
Macklemore wrote this tribute after the death of longtime Seattle Mariners broadcaster Dave Niehaus. It carries the affection of someone who grew up hearing that voice and can still feel what it meant when an ordinary broadcast became an extraordinary moment.
You don’t have to be a Mariners fan to recognize that attachment. A voice can bring back a room, an afternoon, or the person who used to listen beside you.
Angels Of Fenway — James Taylor (2015)
James Taylor tells a story about a grandmother, a grandson, and a devotion to the Red Sox that lasts through decades of disappointment, finally reaching the team’s 2004 championship.
The team is specific. The connection isn’t.
People introduce us to the things they love. We sit beside them, learn the names, ask questions, and gradually find ourselves caring, too. Years later, we may still be following the team partly because of them.
A championship can mean an awful lot when you’ve spent a lifetime waiting. Having someone to remember while you watch gives it another meaning altogether.
The Baseball Song — Corey Smith (2015)
Corey Smith brings us back to a father and child, the game they share, and the encouragement that follows the child into adulthood. Baseball gives them something to do together, and the lessons travel well beyond the field.
That feels like a natural place to return to my dad.
I mentioned that he’d played in high school and college before he coached my Little League teams. I can look back now and see those as connected parts of his life: the game he had played becoming something he shared with us.
You don’t always recognize what you’re being given while it’s happening. Sometimes you’re just playing ball.
This Used to Be My Playground — Madonna (1992)
Yes, Madonna was just here in our last soundtrack. I don’t normally repeat artists in consecutive soundtracks, but this song belongs at the end of this one.
A League of Their Own is one of my favorite movies. It’s funny, of course, but my affection for it goes a little deeper than that. Although the film was released long after my playing days were over, it left me wishing I could have played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The reunion at the end gets to me, too. As the women look through old photographs and reconnect with former teammates, we see how much time has passed since their playing days — and how much those years still mean to them.
Then the closing credits bring us to women who actually played in the league, back on the field, while Madonna’s song plays. The story has somewhere real to land.
That’s where I wanted to leave this soundtrack. With the people who played, the people who made room for us, and the younger versions of ourselves who wanted a turn.
Someone will win this World Series, and the people who love that team will have a new memory to keep.
For the rest of us, there may be another game that comes to mind. A neighborhood game. A Little League afternoon. A seat beside someone who taught us what to watch for.
I hope these songs bring back a few memories of your own — of playing the game, cheering from the stands, or simply being there with the people who matter.
