The True Story of the "Bomb Song"
How A Mistake Became An Oklahoma State Baseball Tradition
One of my claims to fame is helping to start the tradition of The Gap Band’s You Dropped A Bomb On Me being played after every Oklahoma State baseball home run. It began in 1986 at Allie P. Reynolds Stadium and continues to this day at O'Brate Stadium.
I would like to tell you that it was a well-formulated and carefully thought-out plan, but that would be a lie. It was just a mistake.
The press box at Allie P. had a dual-deck cassette player. One of the decks would contain Ride’em Cowboys, the OSU fight song, to be played following a home run by OSU, and the other would have the music to be played on the next half-inning break.
One day in 1986, the cassettes got mixed up and instead of Ride’em Cowboys, the deck contained You Dropped A Bomb On Me, scheduled to be played in the next half-inning break.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Here’s yours truly talking about that day and the beginning of a tradition.
The Gap Band was an American R&B and funk band that rose to fame during the 1970s and 1980s. The name came from Greenwood, Archer and Pine, three streets in the historic Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It consisted of the Wilson brothers, Charlie, Ronnie, and Robert, and others. The name "Greenwood, Archer, and Pine Band" originally started as a joke, reflecting the band's origins, and was shortened later.
After the OSU Athletics interview in 2016, my longtime friend and high school classmate James Causley created a 30th Anniversary “You Dropped A Bomb On Me” t-shirt for For Pete’s Sake. James created the original “You Dropped A Bomb On Me” t-shirt for DuPree Sports in 1987. One of James’ co-workers at DuPree Sports was Garth Brooks. DuPree Sports was founded in 1966 by Gordon DuPree, a football star and a two-time All-America wrestler of Oklahoma State who was honored by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as a Meritorious Official in 1994.
While working on this story I realized that I needed a picture of the t-shirts. I was able to find the 30th Anniversary version in a 2016 Facebook post by James Causley. For the original t-shirt, I asked in the OSU Baseball lettermen’s group on Facebook and GroupMe. Within five minutes I had the picture I needed. It was provided by Jimmy Barragan, the player who hit the home run that started the tradition and a member of the Oklahoma State Baseball Hall of Fame.
Recent years have seen the addition of videos featuring the band played on the in-stadium video board and in X posts. I’ve included all three versions below.
The Bomb Song at Cowboy Baseball. It wasn’t planned. But it stuck … and now it’s tradition.
Fantastic ❤️⚾️