What is a Walkout Song?

There are many names for this little chunk of music played over the ballpark speakers as the batter steps up to take his turn at the plate. Walk-up song, walk-out song, batting music, at-bat music, and entrance music can all be freely interchanged with optional hyphens wherever they seem to fit.

Whatever you call it, the walkout song has become an integral part of the musical score that accompanies every Major League baseball game. Players take their entrance music about as seriously as they would picking out a new glove or bat. In a game that is famously 90 percent mental, setting the right frame of mind with a personal choice of music makes perfect sense. Changing your walkout song to get out of batting slump is a pretty common practice among major leaguers with plenty of anecdotal evidence that it actually works.

The Major League Baseball office even has rules regarding walkout songs:
"Any musical clip used to introduce a batter should start immediately after the public address announcement and should stop when the batter reaches the dirt cut-out surrounding home plate. Music clips between pitches should be limited in order not to encourage the hitter to leave the batter's box."

The walkout song trend has now found solid footing in the college landscape. Most intercollegiate teams competing in both softball and baseball will have a song slice prepared for every batter in their varsity lineup. It has even become pretty common to hear walkout songs at high school games.

Playing the walkout music at a Major League ballpark is a broadcasting team effort with professional public address equipment at easy disposal, but things are much more difficult for the parent, assistant coach or team manager that gets selected to produce the music for a high school or college game.

That is the position that I found myself in a couple years back when my daughter was in her first year of high school softball, and that is why I wrote the Walkout Song DJ app. The app has evolved a little over the years to cover all the music needs for the game and I think you will find that it makes this complicated but critical role much easier to fill.

Thanks for your interest in Walkout Song DJ,
Joe Vidunas