Going to a Major League Baseball game has never been only about balls, strikes, and the final score. Sometimes the thing MLB fans remember years later is a song belted out by 30,000 people, a mascot causing trouble in the stands, a giant piece of fruit rising beyond the outfield wall, or grown adults dressed as sausages sprinting around the warning track.
MLB ballparks have accumulated plenty of those traditions. Here are 20 that have helped make a day at the park about more than nine innings of baseball.
“Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at Wrigley Field
Plenty of stadiums play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch, but Wrigley Field turned it into something closer to a performance.
Legendary broadcaster Harry Caray began leading the song while working Chicago White Sox games in 1976 and carried the tradition to the Cubs when he moved to the North Side in 1982. After Caray died before the 1998 season, the Cubs began regularly bringing in guest conductors.
That has produced some impressive performances and some spectacularly rough ones. Mike Ditka and Ozzy Osbourne are among the guests whose renditions became memorable for reasons that had little to do with musical precision.
“Go, Cubs, Go”
Wrigley’s musical traditions don’t end after the seventh inning.
When the Cubs win at home, Steve Goodman’s “Go, Cubs, Go” pours through the ballpark as fans celebrate. Goodman, a devoted Cubs fan, recorded and released the song in 1984.
He died of leukemia late in the Cubs’ run to the NL East championship that same season. Decades later, his song remains attached to Cubs victories at Wrigley.
“Sweet Caroline” at Fenway Park
Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” gets played at sporting events across the country, but Fenway Park has made it part of the routine.
The song has been a fixture during the middle of the eighth inning at Boston Red Sox home games since the early 2000s. By that stage of the game, Fenway usually doesn’t require much encouragement to join in.
The result is one of those baseball moments in which thousands of people temporarily become backing vocalists.
“New York, New York” at Yankee Stadium
For years, Frank Sinatra’s version of “Theme from New York, New York” could be heard at Yankee Stadium after games regardless of whether the Yankees won or lost.
That changed before the 2025 season.
The Yankees announced that Sinatra’s recording would be reserved for victories, not played after losses. For Yankees fans, hearing Sinatra after the final out now carries a straightforward message: the home team won.
Milwaukee Rolls Out the Barrel
Few songs fit their surroundings quite as naturally as the “Beer Barrel Polka” does in Wisconsin.
Also known as “Roll Out the Barrel,” the polka has become closely associated with sporting events around the state. Brewers games provide one of its most recognizable settings.
During the seventh inning, after “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” Brewers fans get another sing-along as Bernie Brewer helps lead the crowd through “Roll Out the Barrel.”
Bernie Brewer Takes the Slide
Bernie Brewer doesn’t simply celebrate Milwaukee home runs. He has transportation specifically designed for the occasion.
When a Brewers player goes deep at home, Bernie can head down the winding slide attached to his left-field home, complete with a chalet.
Mascots have plenty of ways to celebrate. A dedicated home-run slide is difficult to beat.
The “Pasquatch” Appears in Kansas City
Royals first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino already had the “Pasquatch” nickname. Kansas City took the concept literally.
During 2025 home games, whenever Pasquantino reached base, a Sasquatch-like character emerged through a door beyond the center-field wall and pranced around in celebration.
Baseball has spent generations producing strange traditions. A roaming Sasquatch summoned by a first baseman reaching base fits comfortably into that history.
The Phillie Phanatic
There are MLB mascots, and then there is the Phillie Phanatic.
The green Philadelphia institution has spent decades wandering through Phillies games, interacting with spectators and players while creating the sort of carefully controlled chaos that made the character famous.
For fans attending a Phillies home game, simply spotting the Phanatic isn’t necessarily enough. The real experience comes when the Phanatic decides to make you part of the act.
The Comiskey Park Shower
Long before luxury clubs became standard stadium amenities, eccentric White Sox owner Bill Veeck gave fans something considerably simpler: a shower in the bleachers.
It allowed spectators at old Comiskey Park to cool down during hot Chicago games.
The original shower survived the transition to the White Sox’s newer ballpark and can be found on the concourse near Section 161 at Rate Field. It’s a surviving piece of one of baseball’s more unusual stadium ideas.
Chase Field’s Swimming Pool
Most fans bring a glove to the ballpark. At Chase Field, a fortunate few might want a swimsuit.
The Arizona Diamondbacks’ home includes the Presidential Pool Suite, which lets a group watch the game while lounging around—or inside—an actual swimming pool beyond the outfield.
It’s an expensive way to see a baseball game, but there aren’t many other MLB seats where a home run can turn into a splashdown.
Tropicana Field’s Stingrays
The Tampa Bay Rays took the aquatic idea in a very different direction.
Tropicana Field featured live stingrays swimming in a touch tank, creating an attraction unlike anything else around Major League Baseball.
Hurricane Milton saved the stingrays when it severely damaged Tropicana Field and forced the Rays to relocate for the 2025 season. Their eventual place in the team’s long-term ballpark plans remained tied to what came next for the franchise.
The Mets’ Home Run Apple
When a Mets hitter sends one over the fence, New York doesn’t need fireworks to tell everybody what happened.
It has an apple.
The motorized Home Run Apple rises beyond the center-field fence at Citi Field whenever a Met homers. The tradition stretches back to Shea Stadium, giving the feature a history considerably older than Citi Field itself.
The original Shea Stadium apple wasn’t discarded, either. It now sits outside Citi Field.
Houston’s Home-Run Train
The Astros have their own machinery.
A train travels along a track above the upper left-field wall at Houston’s Daikin Park during pregame introductions and after Astros home runs.
For 2025, the train received a fresh look, including new paint and a load of Styrofoam baseballs. Conductor Bobby Dynamite operates it, an appropriately understated name for someone whose job involves driving a baseball-stadium train after home runs.
Yankee Stadium’s Roll Call
Before Yankee Stadium settles into the normal rhythm of a game, the Bleacher Creatures have some business to conduct.
The right-field fans perform their famous Roll Call, collectively chanting the names of Yankees position players until each one acknowledges them.
The tradition reportedly dates to the late 1990s. Different players have developed different ways of responding, but ignoring the Bleacher Creatures isn’t really part of the arrangement.
They call. You answer.
Washington’s Presidents Race
On July 21, 2006, the Nationals began a tradition built around one wonderfully strange premise: oversized former presidents racing around a baseball field.
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt became the principal competitors in the Presidents Race, staged during the middle of the fourth inning.
William Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover have also appeared over the years. The competitors race from center field toward the right-field corner and down the warning track in foul territory.
Presidential history rarely moves this quickly.
Seattle’s Salmon Run
If you’re going to stage a mascot race in Seattle, salmon make considerably more sense than presidents or sausages.
The Mariners introduced the Salmon Run in 2024, with King, Sockeye, Silver and Humpy competing on the field.
It’s a relatively young addition compared with some of baseball’s decades-old races, but the concept is immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with the Pacific Northwest.
Pittsburgh’s Great Pierogi Race
Pittsburgh took one of its favorite foods and made it run.
The Pirates’ Pierogi Race began in the late 1990s as an animated competition shown on the video board at Three Rivers Stadium. Eventually, the pierogies escaped the screen, so to speak, with costumed competitors taking the field.
The roster has included Potato Pete, Jalapeño Hannah, Cheese Chester, Sauerkraut Saul, Oliver Onion, Bacon Burt, and Pizza Penny.
At various points, as many as seven pierogies have competed. Baseball provides few other opportunities to watch Sauerkraut Saul attempt to outrun Bacon Burt.
Milwaukee’s Famous Racing Sausages
Before many of baseball’s modern mascot races, Milwaukee’s Famous Racing Sausages came along.
The tradition began in the early 1990s with three competitors: bratwurst, Polish sausage, and Italian sausage. Chorizo and a hot dog eventually joined the field.
What began as a Brewers promotion grew into one of MLB’s most recognizable between-innings spectacles. The sausages traditionally race during the middle of the sixth inning, and for some spectators, those few minutes can rival anything happening in the actual game.
Cincinnati’s Opening Day Parade
Cincinnati doesn’t wait for the first pitch to start celebrating baseball.
The city’s official Opening Day parade dates to 1920, while earlier forms of baseball celebrations and parades stretch further into Cincinnati’s history. Today it is known as the Findlay Market Opening Day Parade and often features a former Cincinnati Reds player as grand marshal.
The scale can be enormous. An estimated 130,000 people reportedly attended the 2024 event.
For Cincinnati, Opening Day doesn’t merely begin at the stadium. It moves through the city first.
John Adams’ Cleveland Drum
Some traditions survive even after the person who created them is gone.
John Adams was 21 when he brought a drum to a Cleveland game on Aug. 24, 1973. He sat in the bleachers at Municipal Stadium and started pounding away.
Then he kept coming back.
Adams missed only a small number of games over the decades before the COVID-19 pandemic and declining health ended his remarkable run after the 2019 season. He died in 2023.
Cleveland later named the bleachers at Progressive Field in his honor, while Adams’ drum became part of the collection at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
For nearly half a century, the sound of that drum was simply part of going to a Cleveland baseball game. That’s a difficult tradition to duplicate because it wasn’t designed in a marketing meeting or introduced as an organized promotion. One fan brought a drum to the bleachers in 1973, and he kept showing up.
