Fox played the wrong ‘Baby Shark,’ and Nationals fans aren’t pleased

“Baby Shark” was a worldwide sensation long before Washington Nationals outfielder Gerardo Parra started using it as his walk-up song earlier this summer.

The Pinkfong! version of the campfire ditty has racked up more than 3.7 billion views on YouTube over three years, delighting toddlers and annoying parents who have yet to figure out a way to get all those “doo doo doos” out of their heads.

Everybody knows that version of that song — with the possible exception of Fox Sports, which inexplicably played a different version Wednesday night during the Nationals’ 12-3 rout of the Houston Astros in Game 2 of the World Series.

The Pinkfong! version is fun and upbeat, an unlikely-yet-perfect anthem for a Nationals team that was 12 games below .500 in May and is now two wins away from its first World Series championship.

×

Fox played the Super Simple Songs version, which is none of those things. As the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay brilliantly observed, that rendition sounds as if it was “recorded by Art Garfunkel at a Chuck E. Cheese.”

×

Fans were not pleased.

Fox play-by-play announcer Joe Buck told the Washington Post before the Series: ““I have listened to the ... out of that song for the last year. I have 1½-year-old twin boys. I didn’t need Gerardo Parra to introduce me to ‘Baby Shark.’”

Yet as he discussed the cultural phenomenon during Wednesday’s broadcast, Buck declared, “There it is,” when the bizzarro version started playing.

A representative from Fox Sports told The Times that there’s really no reason that particular recording was chosen for the broadcast and added that the Pinkfong version is available should the network decide to use it later in the Series.