The Most Popular Walk-Up Songs, Favorite Players, and Jersey Numbers in Youth Baseball

Trading cards traditionally have a wealth of detail on them, and at Pennant Cards we try to honor that tradition. When a league or team chooses to make cards with us, players (or their parents) can fill out a short questionnaire: walk-up song, favorite player, favorite team, favorite food, nickname — whatever questions their team parent or coach decides to ask.

After a few seasons, we've ended up with a pretty unique dataset. We've aggregated the card backs from thousands of players across hundreds of teams — anonymized, with duplicates removed and obvious variants merged — to see what they show. Most of the leagues in the data are youth baseball and softball, with some soccer, hockey, and adult leagues mixed in. Here's what we found.

The most popular walk-up songs

Walk-up songs are a very personal choice: the answers span hundreds of different songs, and even the most popular picks only appear a handful of times each. Here are the songs that came up most often:

1. All I Do Is Win — DJ Khaled
2. Thunderstruck — AC/DC
3. HUMBLE. — Kendrick Lamar
4. Who Let the Dogs Out — Baha Men
5. Welcome to the Jungle — Guns N’ Roses
6. Eye of the Tiger — Survivor
7. Back in Black — AC/DC
8. Thunder — Imagine Dragons
9. Crazy Train — Ozzy Osbourne
10. Golden — KPop Demon Hunters
11. Enter Sandman — Metallica
12. Not Like Us — Kendrick Lamar
13. Soda Pop — KPop Demon Hunters
14. Believer — Imagine Dragons
15. God’s Plan — Drake

Walk-up songs by release date

Those 15 songs span 45 years. Plotting them by release date shows two real clusters — a classic rock era ending in 1991, and a modern wave. In between we have "All I Do Is Win" and, what else, "Who Let the Dogs Out":

1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 Back in Black Crazy Train Eye of the Tiger Welcome to the Jungle Thunderstruck Enter Sandman Who Let the Dogs Out All I Do Is Win HUMBLE. Believer Thunder God’s Plan Not Like Us Golden Soda Pop

The most popular walk-up artists

Since so many songs appear only once or twice, we also grouped the same answers by artist. KPop Demon Hunters comes out on top, just barely ahead of AC/DC and Imagine Dragons.

1. KPop Demon Hunters
2. AC/DC
3. Imagine Dragons
4. Drake
5. Kendrick Lamar
6. Forrest Frank
7. Eminem
8. Metallica
9. DJ Khaled
10. Queen
11. Guns N’ Roses
12. Ozzy Osbourne
13. Survivor

Favorite MLB players

This one came down to a photo finish:

1. Shohei Ohtani
2. Aaron Judge
3. Bryce Harper
4. Elly De La Cruz
5. Bobby Witt Jr.
6. Francisco Lindor
7. Babe Ruth
8. Fernando Tatis Jr.
9. Ronald Acuña Jr.
10. Derek Jeter

Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge are in a virtual dead heat at the top, with Bryce Harper a distant third. Babe Ruth is the only long-retired player in the top ten. A handful of players answered "Myself" - we appreciate the self-confidence!

Favorite teams

1. New York Yankees
2. Los Angeles Dodgers
3. Seattle Mariners
4. New York Mets
5. Chicago Cubs
6. Atlanta Braves
7. Houston Astros
8. Philadelphia Phillies
9. Kansas City Royals
10. Colorado Rockies
11. St. Louis Cardinals
12. Boston Red Sox

The Yankees and Dodgers lead, which tracks with the two most-followed franchises in baseball. The Mariners' strong showing may be due to a cluster of PNW teams in our data.

One result that isn't on the chart: the Savannah Bananas received more mentions than roughly a third of MLB franchises, including the Pirates, Padres, Reds, Orioles, Giants, and Blue Jays.

The most popular jersey numbers

1. 7
2. 3
3. 1
4. 2
5. 10
6. 5
7. 4
8. 8
9. 11
10. 9
11. 6
12. 12
13. 13
14. 22
15. 15

Lucky number 7 is the most popular jersey number, followed by a long run of other single digits. 13 on the other hand, doesn't seem to be unlucky anymore. And among big numbers, 99 is the clear favorite, likely another sign of Aaron Judge's popularity.

Favorite positions

1. Pitcher
2. Catcher
3. First Base
4. Shortstop
5. Second Base
6. Outfield (unspecified)
7. Third Base
8. Center Field
9. Right Field
10. Left Field

When players list a favorite position, they overwhelmingly pick the ones where the ball is: pitcher and catcher together account for more answers than the entire outfield and infield combined. Center field is the most popular outfield position; left field comes in last.

Favorite foods

1. Pizza
2. Steak
3. Pasta / Spaghetti
4. Burgers
5. Sushi
6. Tacos
7. Mac and Cheese
8. Chicken Nuggets
9. Ramen / Noodles
10. Hot Dogs

Pizza wins, which is probably not a surprise. What is surprising is that sushi finishes just behind burgers and ahead of tacos, mac & cheese, and chicken nuggets. Ramen makes the top ten as well. Meanwhile the ballpark staple, hot dogs, came in last in the top answers.

Superpowers

Some leagues ask players what superpower they would want. Any answer is fair game — flight, invisibility, teleportation. The results:

1. Super speed
2. Flying
3. Teleportation
4. Super strength
5. Hitting home runs
6. Invisibility
7. Rocket arm

Dream jobs

1. Pro baseball player
2. Teacher
3. Scientist
4. Pro football player
5. Engineer
6. Pro basketball player
7. Artist / musician

About a third of players who answered this question want to play professional baseball, and around half want to be a professional athlete in some sport. We're surprised and delighted to see teacher as the runner-up dream job.

Bonus: the most popular card designs

One more chart, this time about the cards themselves. When leagues order printed cards, these are the designs they choose:

1. Pennant
2. Classic 3
3. Wood Grain
4. Ringer
5. Custom
6. Blank
7. Velcro
8. Classic 2
9. Classic 1

Our Pennant design came in first, which we appreciate seeing as we put a lot of TLC into making the curvature of the text in the pennant fit for many different types of names. Our two newest designs - Minimal and Airbrush - are only a few days old as of the time of publication, so the dataset doesn't include them.