A Tampa Bay Rays game at Tropicana Field comes with its own soundtrack, and the cowbells that echo through the building have a backstory tied to a classic TV comedy bit.
According to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the tradition started in 2006 when the team showed a legendary “Saturday Night Live” sketch on the stadium Jumbotron. In that scene, Christopher Walken played music producer “The Bruce Dickinson,” who insisted during a recording session that the song “needs more cowbell.”
Fans took the joke and ran with it. They began bringing cowbells to home games to back the club, and the Hall of Fame says the Rays leaned into the reaction by producing custom bells and setting out official rules for when they should be used.
Those instructions are simple enough: ring them when a player reaches base or scores a run. The guidelines also call for cowbells when an opposing hitter gets to two strikes, or any time the words “More Cowbell” appear on the video screen, according to the NBHOF.
The tradition took hold as the baseball side started to change too. The Hall of Fame says general manager Andrew Friedman took over operations in 2006 and rebuilt the roster around emerging homegrown players such as James Shields, Melvin Upton Jr., Evan Longoria and David Price.
By 2008, the club had become the youngest team in the American League and carried baseball’s second-lowest payroll, the Hall of Fame said. Those players helped energize the local community, and officials said that push showed up in the attendance at Tropicana Field.
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