Ask McFartnuggets: “Why Do Fans Yell “Charge!” at Baseball Games?”

Dear McFartnuggets: 

Why at a baseball game do they always do that “Doo doo doo doooo dooo DOOOOO CHARGE!” bullshit? How you gonna tell the players to charge in a sport where there’s no form of charging involved whatsoever? At least in football players charge as a team on kickoffs. You never hear that chant done in football games. At least in basketball there’s actually a charging violation when a player runs over another player. You never hear that done at basketball games. What’s up with that? -- Caleb from Cincinnati, Ohio

Dear Caleb:

It’s known as “fanfare” which is described as a short musical arrangement usually done by brass instruments. The “Charge” fanfare is just an old baseball tradition dating back from the 1950’s. You do hear it in other sports occasionally, but it’s much more common in baseball because baseball is a more pastoral, classic game. They keep a lot more of the old fashioned things which is part of the reason Major League Baseball is falling behind the NFL and NBA in popularity. A lot of the things they do in baseball just don’t make sense in today’s fast paced, technology driven, OCD world and yelling “Charge” at baseball players just happens to be one of them.

The only charging I want to see in baseball is the batter charging the mound.

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