This story was excerpted from Todd Zolecki’s Phillies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
Last October, Bryce Harper got asked about the song that the Phillies play when they win.
Everybody’s heard it, right?
“When you come to Philly, it’s going to be a song that we listen to,” Harper said. “I don’t know how long it’s going to last, but with this group we have here, it’s the song.”
Last spring, everybody wondered if Callum Scott’s “Dancing On My Own” would stay or go, following the Phillies’ loss to Houston in the 2022 World Series. The players decided to ditch it and try something new. But the Phils played poorly the first two months of the '23 season, so they brought back the tune in June. They started to win again. But, perhaps predictably, people are asking again about the song’s fate following their Game 7 loss to Arizona in the '23 NLCS.
“I’m trying to find something new,” Phillies catcher/DJ Garrett Stubbs said Friday at BayCare Ballpark. “But maybe not. I think it’s [freakin’] great. But when we lose, people automatically want to turn on it. I think what matters is how everyone feels in here. Because if people are bought in, then that’s it. We’re trying to win. If we win and the people in here like it, then people will organically be drawn to it.”
An argument has been made that the Phillies haven’t won the World Series with the song, so they should disassociate from it.
But that sentiment changes with a championship.
“We’re always looking for new songs,” Stubbs said. “Even if it’s not our No. 1 win song. Just new stuff to keep people enjoying the postgame win music that we were playing. We added ‘Believe’ last year -- the Cher remix. There were definitely other songs added on. Taijuan [Walker] added on a few. I’m always looking for good new music.”
Asked if it’s funny that so many Phillies fans are genuinely interested in what music is played in the clubhouse, Stubbs said, “The thought of people being drawn to music, I think that’s why we do it. I think music is a way for everybody to connect on a different level.”
So what are the odds it sticks around another year?
“Hey, if No. 3 is in on it?” Stubbs said. “If he’s in, we’re in.”