Red Sox told Junichi Tazawa he had to pick Japanese song

Lots of players have fun with their walk-up or warm-up music. They pick what song(s) they feel gets them most amped up and ready to play and relay the information to the person in charge of playing it during the game.

Thanks to the new rules in place to help speed up the game, the song can only be 15-seconds long.

Sometimes, the song has personal meaning (“Three Little Birds” for Shane Victorino). Sometimes, it’s relevant to the person’s personality or faith (“This is Where I Belong” for David Murphy). Other times, the song is just fun to listen to for the player. In most cases, the player has general free range to select his song.

In the case of Red Sox reliever, Junichi Tazawa, however, a very specific parameter was given to the right-handed pitcher.

A story by Louise K. Cornetta written for ESPNBoston.com has the stories behind the walk-up music for the Boston players, and Tazawa had his translated by his interpreter.

"Junichi Tazawa: (translated by Red Sox Japanese interpreter C.J. Matsumoto) The title can be translated to a song about a mole. A mole as in the animal. The song has very positive lyrics. When they told me that I had to choose a Japanese song, that one came to my mind because it had very positive lyrics."

It seems odd that the Red Sox would force Tazawa to choose something Japanese, given that other Japanese players around the league don’t necessarily have to choose songs native to their home country (“Soulja Boy” for Yu Darvish being the most notable example).

Perhaps something was lost in translation and the Red Sox suggested it?