January 6, 2021
TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME
In a sense, the song Take Me Out To The Ballgame is baseball’s national anthem. It’s played and sung at ballparks all over the country and is a seventh-inning staple at Wrigley Field, popularized by the late, great broadcaster, Harry Caray. But I’m sure that a good many people familiar with the song and its lyrics don’t know its origin or the fact that they are just singing the chorus. There are actually two verses in the original, with the chorus sung after each. So let’s take a refresher course in a song that has become a baseball tradition.
The genesis of the song came in 1908 when a songwriter named Jack Norworth was riding the subway in New York City. While glancing out the window and thinking about what might be his next song he spotted a billboard that contained four words, BASEBALL TODAY – POLO GROUNDS. Norworth wasn’t a baseball fan and had never even attended a game. Yet seeing the sign gave him inspiration and he immediately began jotting down the lyrics for a song he would call “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
With the lyrics in hand, Norworth now needed the music to go with it. So he went to a composer friend named Albert von Tilzer, who penned the music to go with Norworth’s lyrics. Ironically, von Tilzer had never been to a ballgame either. But once the song was finished, Norworth gave it to his then-wife, the popular songstress Nora Bayes, who began performing it in front of vaudeville audiences. The song, of course, wasn’t really about baseball. Rather it told a story.
In the first verse, a girl named Katie is asked by a suitor for a date and he offers to take her to a show. Katie says she’ll accept, but only if he takes her somewhere else. The somewhere else is the ballgame, which is revealed in the chorus. The second verse extols Katie’s love of baseball and what she does at the game, leading into a repeat of the familiar chorus we all know so well.
Take Me Out To The Ballgame became a hit with live audiences in 1908. Later in the year, Edward Meeker recorded the song for the Edison Phonograph Company and it, too, became a hit and was the best-selling record in the country for seven weeks and was the most popular song of that long-ago year. Yet historians tell us the song wasn’t played at a baseball game until 1934, and its debut came at a high school game in Los Angeles. Later that year it was played during the fourth game of the 1934 World Series.
As for composer Jack Norworth, he didn’t see his first baseball game until 1940. In 2001, Take Me Out To The Ballgame was the number eight ranked song on a list termed “Songs of the Century.” Not bad.
And just so you know, here are the complete lyrics to a song all baseball fans love.
Katie Casey was baseball mad,
Had the fever and had it bad.
Just to root for the home town crew,
Ev’ry sou
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:”
Chorus
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.
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:
Repeat chorus
Check out this neat Harry Caray rendition of Take Me Out To The Ball Game.
Bill Gutman
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