Oral Roberts Baseball Player Explains Origins Of Viral Gummy Worm Celebration

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A lot of people have a tendency to take sports a bit too seriously, and while the people who play them obviously get a pass for getting overly invested in the outcome of a contest as opposed to some fans who need to dial it back a bit, it’s always nice to see athletes remind the world they’re still playing a game.

In recent years, plenty of MLB teams have embarked on a mission to Make Baseball Fun Again courtesy of the various celebrations they’ve dreamed up to reward guys who hit a home run or offer other contributions to the cause.

If you tune into this year’s College World Series, you’ll probably notice another tradition the members of the Oral Roberts baseball team have embraced in the form of the gummy worm first base coach Jimmy Turk pops in the mouth of anyone who reaches the bag.

It’s a fairly unorthodox move and one that’s left plenty of baseball fans scratching their head, but thankfully, the folks at Oral Roberts sat down with Turk and Golden Eagles infielder Jake McMurray to get the inside scoop on how the gummy worms (specifically a Haribo Twin Snake) became A Thing in the first place.

McMurray says the pastime can be traced back to an eight-hour bus ride between Minneapolis and Fargo during the 2021 season where members of the team decided to kill some of that time by hopping aboard the TikTok Sea Shanty bandwagon that was all the rage at the time.

He notes that by the time they arrived at their destination, “everyone on the team wanted to be a pirate,” which led to  Turk deciding the aspiring buccaneers deserved to be rewarded with some sort of “treasure” before settling upon the gummy worms he’s been doling out ever since, saying “It’s kind of just evolved into something to keep our guys loose and have fun.”

The more you know.