Posted on 04/15/2018 6:23:54 AM PDT by Twotone
Well, the snow outside my New Hampshire window is below two-and-a-half foot, and so it must be time for the "summer" game. Baseball season is here, which means that baseball season's enduring blockbuster anthem is back for another summer of seventh-inning stretches, 110 years after it was introduced to the public in May 1908.
"It's a tune that has all the color, all the swing, all the punch and feeling of the game," said Frank Sinatra, pinch-hitting for Bill Stern and guest-hosting Stern's "Colgate Sports Newsreel" in 1949. "It's the theme song of a great nation's national pastime, a diamond hymn for free Americans."
Indeed. And it was written by two guys who'd never been taken out to a single ball game.
It was born in New York back in the days when it was a three-team town: the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers, the New York Highlanders (the Yankees), and the New York Giants. As it happens, a lad from my small North Country nowheresville pitched for the Giants from 1902 to 1904, and a couple of years later, to rather more spectacular effect, it was the Giants that inspired "Take Me Out To The Ball Game".
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
I love how this man writes.
Interesting article of history of third most played song in America. I enjoy listening to and reading Mark Steyn.
The Trolley Dodgers, never knew that.
At the Angels and Royals game last night, it was snowing. I don’t watch baseball but was waiting for the Supercross racing to start.
Polo Grounds is now a public housing project.
Thanks for posting. Great column about a great tune.
Bookmark
Doris Day: “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HiOXBHNaXk
New York Yankees Stars Sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” - 1958
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drOdOCuWNRY
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