Take Me Out to the Ballgame

No they don't. 7th inning they play their national anthem. They also have some cheerleaders run around for some of the teams. Pretty funny.

- 7th inning they play their national anthem.

What team is that? I've never heard the National Anthem in the seventh inning. It's often played before Pacific League games, but I don't remember it being played before many Central League games.

There's usually a team fight song of some kind (like "Giants Fire") with the cheerleaders in the seventh inning. At Yokohama, it's a country-western song with the cheerleaders in western outfits.

"Take Me Out to the Ballgame" is often played some time before the seventh inning. At least, at Tokyo Dome and Yokohama Stadium. And, yes, it's in English.

I think it depends on the team and/or stadium, but my observations have been that the most popular song between innings is "YMCA." I'd like to know if "YMCA" isn't played at any stadium in Japan.

They probably play "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at Tokyo Dome because they try to westernize everything there for some reason.

At koshien they do the jetto fu-sen and what not.

Right. No YMCA or Take Me Out at the Koshien. third inning, To-Lucky comes out and does his Fire Fight*; 5th inning, it's Rokko Oroshi, and in the 7th it's the jetto fusen.

*To-Lucky's Fire Fight isn't what it used to be. Before, he'd sprint up the first base line and do some somersaults - while wearing a huge strobe light on his back! - to a "5-4-3-2-1-FIRE!" countdown. And on "FIRE" he'd turn his back to the crowd and blind them with a blast from his strobe. No fire, and no fight, but fun all the same. During the brouhaha about To-Lucky and his antics a year or so ago, the strobe light disappeared, so now it's just a few somersaults - nothing whatsoever to do with fire or fighting.

You're right. I got it confused. I'm talking about the Hawks. They play their anthom before the game and then their team song during 7th inning before they let the balloons go. They also have cheerleaders in cowgirl outfits (haha) that do a routing to the team song without words.

No YMCA at Fukuoka Dome either.

When I saw a pre-season Dragons' game a few years back I took note that they played "Take Me Out" during an announcement of different groups that were attending that day's game. I've also noticed that back here in America it's becoming less and less common to hear it. Out of the 20 or so Detroit Tigers games I've been to, I would say that only 25% of the time do they still play "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

When I visited all 12 teams in their home parks last year, only one team, the Marines, played "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch. Other teams played it, but always between other innings.

Every other team, played its team song during the "Lucky 7" (as far as I could tell). Pacific League teams had home and road "Lucky 7"s, but only the home team got one in Central League games.

Every team that played "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in 2003 used a version sung by Carly Simon that appears on the soundtrack to Ken Burns' documentary "Baseball." So it's a rather slow, wistful rendition.

- Do Japanese fans sing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch, like American fans do? If so, in English or in Japanese? Is there even a seventh inning stretch?

That's not even a particularly longstanding American tradition. It wasn't a tradition when I was a kid. I thought it had started while Harry Caray was with the White Sox, so I googled and found this:

Harry Caray, who is credited with being first to sing "Take me out to the Ball Game" during the 7th inning stretch at a ball game in 1971, once said, "I would always sing it, because I think it's the only song I knew the words to!" On Opening Day in 1976 Bill Veeck noticed the fans were singing along with Caray so a secret microphone was placed in the broadcast booth the following day to allow all the fans to hear him.

-- [Link - PowerMaxConsulting.com]