A dance club anthem has become the unexpected soundtrack of a red-hot team. Credit (or blame) goes to a backup catcher.
The soundtrack of a baseball clubhouse tends to follow a predictable pattern, its beat sticking mostly with hip-hop, country, rock and Latin music. But when video clips emerged in recent weeks of the Boston Red Sox celebrating various playoff milestones, what stood out was the players’ enthusiasm — and full-throated singalong — to a melancholic club song from a Swedish pop star. Or, more accurately, a Dutch DJ’s remix of a British singer’s cover of the Swedish pop star’s melancholic club song. The Swedish star, Robyn, first wrote and performed the hit, “Dancing on My Own,” in April 2010. That was years before Calum Scott sang it for his audition on the reality show, “Britain’s Got Talent,” in 2015. The Dutch DJ, Tiësto, then added his own beats for the version adopted by the Sox. How “Dancing on My Own” became the team anthem of the Red Sox’ 2021 season — which now includes a meeting with the Houston Astros in the American League Championship Series — is largely a story of catcher Kevin Plawecki’s enthusiasm for his speaker’s repeat button, but the tale has its roots in baseball’s 2020 pandemic restart. When the Red Sox reconvened in July 2020 for the postponed start of the season, many players were away from their families. Four opted to live together: Plawecki and three now former teammates, Andrew Benintendi, Mitch Moreland and Kevin Pillar. Benintendi introduced the song to Plawecki, who immediately loved it and started playing it nonstop in the house, much to the apparent chagrin of Moreland. “Moreland hated it — a ‘he said he hated it but really loved it’ type of deal,” Plawecki said. As a joke before an intrasquad scrimmage, the catcher decided, “I’m going to make it my walk-up song for Mitch,” who was playing first base for the opposing team. Plawecki homered in his first at-bat and sang the song to Moreland as he rounded the bases. At that point, Plawecki was hooked. “The beat of it, the flow of it, puts you in a good mood,” said Plawecki, who called himself more a “vibe guy” while acknowledging that the lyrics — about a clubgoer watching a former lover with a new flame — “don’t make sense at all” for baseball. In previous seasons, Plawecki had let his wife and brother choose his walk-up songs, but that home run convinced him to keep “Dancing on My Own” as his accompaniment for trips to the plate.
