(Editor’s note: with baseball season approaching, here’s an old one from Raymond Gorman)
Just a few cool days ago, I had the privilege of one of the best seats in an Arizona ballpark to share some time with the 2017 Chicago White Sox as they readied for a new year in major league baseball. To be clear, I have not been to Chicago, am a California native son, and if hard-pressed would admit that my favorite baseball team has always been “not the Dodgers”. But wait, this is bigger than my favorite team.
I am an athlete from way-back-in-the-day and have played many team and individual sports. I have experienced glorious wins and tragic losses at various levels of amateur competition, and have the scars and aching bones to prove it. I have never been a professional athlete, and my amateur career pretty much ended by getting run over by a younger and stronger opponent. Not a profound statement there. I am a bad baseball player, was usually chosen near-last from the available players, and as a left-hander they always put me at first base. I am a terrible first baseman, and my box score was consistently 1 for 5 with 4 strikeouts and one 500 ft. home run to right field. I didn’t like that everyone was throwing the ball as hard as they could at me on many infield plays, so I swung too hard at the plate. Disillusioned, I switched to soccer in high school and ultimately excelled at that. Funny thing about my history in baseball, no matter what league I played in or at what age I was playing (10 yrs. to 40 yrs. old), I always had the same box score and was usually picked near-last. For some reason, I still love that game.
Katie Casey was baseball mad
Had the fever and had it bad
Just to root for the home town crew
Ev’ry penny
Katie blew
On a Saturday her young beau
Called to see if she’d like to go
To see a show, but Miss Kate said “No,
I’ll tell you what you can do:”
Multitudes of persons flock to Arizona and Florida each March to fill up on sun, golf, good southern food, and most importantly, every bit of team apparel and gear they can possibly afford. The team stores at each stadium are absolutely packed with fans buying stuff (while they are wearing stuff they bought last year), and truthfully, the look of myself and ten thousand other fans in their first pair of shorts of the year can truly be frightening. The food vendors simply cannot keep up as people clamor for their Chicago Dog, Yankee Slice, or their first cold beer of the baseball season.
On this sunny day in Arizona, I bought a hat, like I always do. But, since I was at the home of the SOX, I bought a Chicago White Sox hat, which is pretty cool. While sitting in my seat, enjoying the first couple innings, it felt like everyone in the park had the same feeling at the same time…. The feeling of re-birth, a fresh start and new beginning. Quiet feelings of contentment and joy surrounded the green grass of the Arizona field, signaling the coming season’s spring hope for the long frozen north and those pesky rain storms. I think now that this is the true purpose of baseball spring training, hidden among the marketing and hoopla, the incessant vendor calls to sell their wares (“lemo-nade, lemo-nade, like GRANDMA MADE!”) and the big talk about how great this year’s team will be… the Hopeful Future. The hopeful future can draw us in, and hold us forever. No wonder baseball has survived for so many generations.
Take me out to the ball game
Take me out with the crowd
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack
I don’t care if I never get back
Let me root, root, root for the home team
If they don’t win, it’s a shame
For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out
At the old ball game
Oh, what a great song. It’s my bet that if one does not follows baseball or watch even one game every twenty years, they will still know how to sing this chorus. The song was written in New York in 1908 by Jack Norworth, and then set to Tin Pan Alley music by Albert Von Tilzer. The song was popularized in many vaudeville acts, sung in 1927 by Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra (in the movie of the same name), then was first sung at a 1934 high school baseball game in Los Angeles, Calif. That year, the song was first sung at a professional game in the 1934 World Series, where Mickey Cochrane and his Detroit Tigers lost to Dizzy Dean and The St. Louis Cardinals.
Yes! It’s the chorus! The chorus of Take Me Out to the Ball Game celebrates the joy of the baseball fan, and the wish to stay at the park indefinitely. But, surprisingly, it is not the whole story within the song. As you know, many songs tell a story, and this one is no exception. This song tells the story of Katie Casey, the girl with “baseball fever” who, when her beau comes to call and ask her out, refuses to go on a date anywhere but the ball park.
Katie Casey saw all the games
Knew the players by their first names
Told the umpire he was wrong
All along
Good and strong
When the score was just two to two
Katie Casey knew what to do
Just to cheer up the boys she knew
She made the gang sing this song:
So it is, gentile reader that I wish upon you the day when you can see the men play a boy’s game in the spring. And when you stand to sing the song, sing it loud and long, and think of Katie Casey, the spell-bound girl who loves baseball above all else. Enjoy the spring day and a hopeful future. Most of all, pass it on. Best