Letter: “A Shiver Of Sharks (doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo!)”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Please allow me to introduce myself: I’m a baseball fan. More specifically: a lifelong, unswervingly loyal New York Yankees fan. I care not for other baseball teams, nor for other American sports like basketball, or that egregious misnomer “football”, or ice-cold hockey, where time is all that matters.

A true game is one where “it ain’t over till [somebody] sings.” Yesterday, on the eve of All Hallows Eve, a chorus boomed out, loud and clear:

“Baby Shark, doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo!”

A month ago, I would have had no clue as to what they were chanting. As it happens, though, my wife and I teach English a couple of days a week to pre-adolescent denizens of Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo. Part of our lesson plan is catchy tunes, e.g. “Old McDonald Had a Farm”; “Abcdefg, hijk, lmnop”; and “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”.

The kids all love singing (duh!) and one day, they asked us if we could teach them “Baby Shark” … but in return they got blank stares. Whereupon they began to sing the tune, making the gestures that go with the words. We paused the class, looked it up on the internet, and Behold! There it was, in all its addictive (if you’re under age 12) glory!

Preparing for our next class, we viewed the song over, and over, and over (doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo!). Surprisingly, we both enjoyed singing it: it’s not just catchy, it’s contagious, as we learned at a birthday party for a grandniece aged 14 months, who played it over, and over, and over (doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo!)

But I digress from baseball, you protest. Not so!

Shortly after learning the song, at home watching the playoff games before the World Series, I heard chants of “Baby Shark”: bemused, bewitched and bewondered, I gaped at groups of grown-ups making jaw-clamp gestures with their arms.

WTF! came to mind, but the broadcasters explained that Gerardo Parra was coming to bat for the Nats. He’d chosen the song for his walk-up, because he’d heard it so often on his cellphone, which his 3-year-old used more than he did (duh!).

At that very moment, I knew, with the absolute blinding certainty of faith, that the team from my birthplace (yes, Washington DC), a successor to teams I knew only as “First in War, First in Peace, and Last in the American League”, would win the 2019 World Series, because they had chosen the right theme song.

Moreover, as my beloved Yankees had been hammered, Coled & Verlandered, by the upstart Astros, it became incumbent upon me to root for the … NatSharks!

Safe at last, doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo!

A group of sharks can be called a school, a shoal, or (brrr) a shiver. The NatSharks schooled Houston twice near Galveston Bay, but foundered thrice on the shoals of Anacostia Bay, returning as underdogfish (sorry) to warmer waters.

Let’s go hunt, doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo!

Baby Shark Juan Soto, Daddy Shark Stephen Strasburg, Grandpa Shark Max Scherzer and the other swarming NatSharks shivered the Astros’ timbers, winning twice in succession, bringing joy to Ribeirão Preto, and perhaps even to Mudville.

It’s the End, doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo!