In 2019, “Don Zemmer” emerged as something of a star on social media. Through his Twitter account, “Don” posts videos of classic songs with a twist — instead of singing the actual lyrics, he replaces them with baseball player names that sound similar. Yeah, it sounds crazy, but check the links in the article — it kind of works. After posting several videos last spring, the account blew up over the course of 2019, with write-ups by USA Today, Major League Baseball’s official website, and a singing cameo by a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Classic W recently sat down with “Don” to talk about baseball, his craft and miscellany. (The interview has been edited.)
TCW: Where did you get the idea to do these — what do you call these…compositions?
DZ: It all started at the beginning of the 2019 baseball season. I’m a huge baseball fan, and I’m in a longtime fantasy league with some friends. As is typical, team names in our fantasy league are often puns based on player names. The players in my fantasy league are all Jewish, and after giving my team a name with a pun based on a Jewish term and player’s name, I had the idea of recording a quick song substituting player names for all the Hebrew words.
I posted it to the Whatsapp group for my friends in the league, but pretty quickly it was shared beyond our group went somewhat viral in the world of Whatsapp. There were actually some people (who didn’t realize it was my video) who sent it to me, thinking I’d appreciate it. I was surprised because I felt like I didn’t even try too hard and I could do much better, so I did a second song and a third. Pretty quickly, I decided to move from Whatsapp to Twitter.
TCW: How did you blow up?
DZ: Initially, I was doing Hebrew songs on Twitter and I built up a following of a few hundred people, virtually all of who were Jewish. Cespedes Family BBQ, a respected baseball account, was one of my pretty early followers.
I was getting such good reception for my Hebrew songs that I decided to do a couple of popular American songs, and that’s when I really went viral. The first that gained traction was the Star Spangled Banner. Cespedes Family BBQ retweeted it and then sports betting guru Darren Rovell retweeted it, and all of a sudden, it was seen by what seemed like the entire baseball world. Players, writers, ESPN reporters. That got me hundreds of followers. The second that got a ton of traction was Take me Out to the Ballgame.
But things really got crazy when I did Eminem’s Lose Yourself. That got retweeted by Justin Verlander. And Cespedes Family BBQ said “If you’re not following Donzemmer it’s your fault.” So that song took me from about 800 followers to 2,300, and we’ve just kept growing.
Since then, I’ve done about 30 more songs. Some have done really well, like Truth Hurts, God Bless America and Wonderwall. Then there are some that don’t get as many views — Lola and Enter Sandmanare both songs I love personally, but didn’t perform too well. That’s okay, too. I try to mix up the genres and song types to attract as many different people as I can.
TCW: Can you talk through the creative process?
DZ: It all starts with picking a song and writing out the actual lyrics of the song — once I have that done, I have to find the names that go with the lyrics.
It’s easier than it probably seems — especially now that I’ve done so many of these and I know how to match up a lot of the words. “I’m” and “love” and others are really easy. (“I’m” is Val Heim; “love” is one of the several players named “Love.”) Although I have developed a few rules — for example, I don’t use the same word twice (unless it’s repeating a chorus) — at this point I know a lot of the basic words, so it doesn’t take as long as people think.
I always try to put some sort of “Easter egg”, if you will, into videos. I try to have moments in the songs, whether it’s a funny match, a funny player or a recognizable player used at a key moment. That way, even if you’ve seen a dozen videos, you can appreciate it. One cool thing I did was use three generations of Boones — Ray, Bob and Bret — for the lyrics “boo hoo hoo” in Sweet Home Alabama.
For the most part, I try to get the best match in terms of rhyme, but sometimes I sacrifice to use the full name of a player (as opposed to just a last name). If I was about perfect matches and perfect syllables, I think the end product wouldn’t be as enjoyable. Picking right names is a science and an art.
When I don’t have a lyric match off the top of my head, I type the names into Baseball-Reference.com. The site has a great autofill feature which is very helpful. With the help of a tech-savvy friend, I also created an Excel file of all player names. Baseball Reference only lets you search by full name, but using my Excel file, I can search for rhymes without having to think of the full name.
Once the lyrics are written, I record using three devices. I play karaoke from Youtube on one phone, use my laptop for the lyrics and sing into a second phone. Then I got to baseball-reference.com and grab a screenshot of every player mentioned in the song. The screenshots get imported into an app I have, and then I just have to edit it so the timing of the screenshots aligns with my singing. That’s basically it, although I sometimes add a bit of text overlay to the video.
I have to be careful to keep the video length to two minutes and 20 seconds, which is Twitter’s limit for posting a video. Initially, I would just do one stanza of a song, but recently I’ve been trying to get as close to 2:20 as I can.
TCW: How long did it take to make a video when you started as compared with now?
DZ: My first few videos took somewhere between three and five hours of work, which I would put in over the course of a few days. But as I got more faster at writing the lyrics, the time got cut way down.
Now, depending on the song, I can usually write it basically in 15-20 minutes. I might tweak it a little afterward, and sometimes the first recording is weak or I mispronounce a name, so I have recorded as many as five or six times. Altogether, a song takes me about a couple of hours at this point, but I can break it up over a couple of days.
TCW: In the Star Spangled Banner, you sing “Babe Ruth though the night.” Is that what you meant by “creating a moment”? Do you have any other examples like that?
DZ: That’s one of my favorites. Babe Ruth is obviously not the best rhyme I could have found, but if I’m getting a full name, I’m pretty lax. And getting Babe Ruth into the song is amazing.
I didn’t record earlier songs (like that one) with music, so I sang at my own pace and the names were up longer. Now that I use music, many of the songs have a faster tempo, and it’s harder to catch things like that.
Nothing beats Babe Ruth, but I was also kind of excited to insert Cameron Maybin into WonderWall.
TCW: What’s your personal favorite song and what’s the most popular among your fans?
DZ: The most popular in terms of views on Twitter were the Star Spangled Banner and Lose Yourself. Some other really good ones were Wonderwall and God Bless America. (I’m trying to build up my following on Youtube and TikTok but, at this stage, most people are hearing the songs on Twitter.)
What I’m finding is that people like top songs. I could do songs in the Billboard 100, and they’ll do great. But I also did a song like Lola, because I love the song.
Listen, I’m doing this for fun. I’ll teach myself Truth Hurts by Lizzo to make a good song, but songs that I already love — classic rock and rap — are the most fun for me. The two I enjoyed most personally were Lose Yourself and Lola.
TCW: Have you been learning anything about some of the obscure players whose names you’re using?
DZ: Not really. My dad got me into baseball at two years old and he used to get these books on baseball history, so I’m familiar with a lot of the old players, but I don’t usually explore their pages or bios or anything.
One thing I will say is that at first, I only used major league players, but then I started incorporating players from the Negro Leagues, minor leaguers and college [editor — all of which are listed on Baseball-Reference.com].
I still have my own rules. If I need someone named “York” (to substitute for “your”), I won’t generally use one from the minor leagues. Although, that’s actually a bad example, because Mikey York, who is in the Rays’ minor league system followed me, so I made an exception and put him in Drops of Jupiter.
Baseball-Reference functionality also biases me toward major leaguers, because college players and others don’t show up in the search bar’s autofill. Still, if you type in the whole word, the search function pulls them up; that happened to me when I needed the word “place” for Country Roads – I typed that in and found a couple of minor leaguers with that name.
On the other hand, sometimes you can take it too far. In Piano Man, I use a guy named Memory, who is so obscure that Baseball Reference has no information about him besides that he played for the Belton Braves in the Mid Texas League in 1914. No stats, no position, no idea if he batted right or left. Looking back, I feel a little bad about that. Originally, I was going to use Nimmo Ray, but even though “Memory” is a perfect match, I don’t love it.
I also love getting in guys with crazy names. “The Only Nolan” in Lose Yourself is sort of a mascot of DonZemmer. He’s actually the rare player I looked into, and apparently he was a character. (Editor: He seems to have gotten suspended on several occasions for doing things like leaving the team to ostensibly go to a funeral, but instead going to a bar.)
I also love getting in guys with crazy names. There’s a guy named Ed Head. I have nine choices when I’m looking for “Head”, but Ed Head is funnier than Charlie Head. I want to make people laugh and to show people funny names they might latch on to. In I want it That Way, I did Nutter Butters – and people commented on it. The goal here is to entertain, so a funny name doesn’t have to fit perfectly.
TCW: You mentioned Mikey York, but have a lot of other players reached out to you or requested specific songs?
DZ: It doesn’t happen a lot, but there have been a few. Trevor Williams reached out to me, and Ty Kelly.
Actually, Trevor Williams sang in one of my songs. I had posted a poll so people could vote on what my next song should be, and he commented that he wanted to do “wake up”. I DMed him to see if he was serious. He was and he sent me a video, so I used that in the song.
This whole thing has been so cool for a baseball nut like me. When Yankee beat reporter Sweeney Murti was retweeting my stuff, that’s just been the coolest part of all this. Media personalities that I’ve been reading for years — and guys like Paul Score, Justin Mason, Eno Sarris, who are huge in the fantasy baseball world — I listen to their podcasts and read their articles. To have them retweeting me has been the coolest part.
And I also really love the obscure comments I get from people, like “Jeff Datz is my grandmother’s cousin’s son” or whatever. “Stu Flythe is my grandfather.” “Eddie Youhas is my grandfather.” A lot of grandkids appreciate seeing their grandads getting another 15 minutes of fame.
I’d love for this to get bigger, so whenever there’s a chance for the player to see it, I try to have them share it.
TCW: Have you ever done anything like this before? I’m thinking this isn’t your first quirky, creative project.
DZ: Not really. Never done this sort of thing before.
TCW: I think you first gained popularity on Twitter and you then started expanding to other social media platforms? Can you talk about that?
DZ: Twitter is the biggest focus for me, because I already have a following there. I am also trying to grow other platforms, and get myself out there. But it’s not like I have this grand strategy. At this point, I’m posting to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and TikTok and my niece runs my Instagram account — but we’re posting the same video on all of them. Everything starts from Twitter, but I’m really hoping to grow on the other platforms, especially Youtube.
It’s tricky, because Twitter is people and follower-based. People see something they like, and they hit share. Youtube has no feed like that. So, the only two ways someone who isn’t following you will see your video is by searching “lose yourself parody” or something, or if Youtube suggests something similar.
Then you have Tiktok, which is insane. It’s like Youtube, but you’re more likely to go viral. It already has more people than twitter, and the videos are shorter than on Youtube, so people will watch five times as many videos. I just did this Christmas Soulja Boy thing, and I got 730,000 views on there — and that wasn’t even a really big deal on TikTok. It’s another platform out there to get people to see my stuff and see the name. Those videos are also short so they’re really easy; that one took me under 30 minutes.
TCW: What’s next for Don Zemmer? Can you give our readers a sneak peek? Maybe an upcoming song or a player who will be featured in your next piece.
DZ: I can say that I’m considering doing something for football, but I’m still working on it. I’m not sure if what I’m playing with is the right song.
In terms of baseball players you can expect to see in future songs, some names I’m hoping to use are Sugar Cain, Ice Box Chamberlain, Bad News Hall and Ten Million.
As a general rule, I only use last name, full name or nickname. (I used to use just first names sometimes, but it didn’t feel right.)
TCW: What is your favorite non-baseball sport?
DZ: Football
TCW: Favorite nickname?
DZ: The Only Nolan.
TCW: Favorite ballpark?
DZ: Hmmm…I’m a big Yankee fan, so this is weird, but I go to more Met games than Yankee games. The intense fantasy league I’m in is NL only, and I’d actually rather go to a NL game and see players impacting my fantasy team than watch the Yankees.
I haven’t been to that many major league ballparks, although I’ve been to the Dodgers, Diamondbacks and Cubs. I guess I would say Wrigley is my favorite. My wife’s from Chicago, and I actually played softball on Wrigley Field twice. (There’s an online forum I’m part of that had a bunch of guys chip in and play a game there.)
I liked Marlins stadium a lot, too.
TCW: Dinner with three people dead or alive in baseball, music and beyond. Who?
DZ: Number one would be my mascot, The Only Nolan. Two is Babe Ruth, he’s obviously a fascinating character. And for three, I’ll say Ronald Acuna Jr. He’s on my fantasy team and is awesome. I love his personality and talent.
TCW: How many baseball hats do you own?
DZ: Ha – zero! I got married, and my wife is pretty trendy and had a huge impact on my wardrobe. I went from loose clothing to more form fitting stuff and the baseball caps all went. I guess still have some old Yankee hats in my parent’s house.
Y’know…my wife gets to wear baseball caps, why can’t I?
TCW: Favorite meal?
DZ: Shawarma. I never had it before I went to Israel for a year after high school, but I was introduced to it and now there are days that I just crave it.
TCW: Best baseball book?
DZ: Moneyball
TCW: Favorite Jimmy?
DZ: Jomboy. Jimmy Obrien
TCW: Favorite color?
DZ: I don’t have a favorite color. I guess black, because it goes with everything
TCW: How do you eat your eggs?
DZ: Fried, sunny side up
TCW: Favorite team uniform?
DZ: Yankees classic pinstripes
TCW: Favorite means of transit?
DZ: Walking. I take the bus and train everyday and I hate both. And I hate flying — I’m pretty tall, so I don’t fit.
The Classic W 