Baseball

What do you get when you combine peanuts, Cracker Jacks, and Simon Cowell? A weird trail mix and the “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” contest. The tune turns 100 this summer, and to celebrate, Major League Baseball will let fans choose the singer who performs it at the 2008 All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium July 15.

Aspiring singers submitted their version of the tune online in April and May, and contest administrators selected 10 finalists. You can pick the top three from June 2 through June 30 by casting your vote at mlb.com/babyruth. The lucky trio will perform before judges at the All-Star FanFest, and the winner will lead the crowd in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the All-Star Game’s seventh-inning stretch.

Unlike our national anthem, this song’s lyrics won’t get muffed. “It’s the unofficial anthem of baseball fans everywhere,” says MLB representative John Brody. Legend holds that Vaudeville performer Jack Norworth wrote the words to the iconic song while riding a New York subway in 1908; as the story goes, he saw a sign that read “Baseball Today—Polo Grounds,” and though he had never been to a baseball game, he jotted down the lyrics on an envelope. As we watch the performance and the game on Fox, we’ll toast Norworth’s gift for rhyme—even though we can’t root for a home team.

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Norworth’s original version included two verses; the eight-line tune we sing today is just the chorus. The full song tells the tale of a “baseball mad” girl named Katie Casey who cheered up the home team by leading the crowd in the song. After Norworth’s wife, singer Nora Bayes, first recorded the song, vaudeville acts quickly added it to their routines. Soon after, three different recordings of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”—those of Edward Meeker, the Haydn Quartet, and Hindermyer—hit No. 1 in sales. But the song wouldn’t become a ballpark staple until 1976, when broadcaster Harry Caray began singing it during the seventh-inning stretch of Chicago White Sox games.

Here are the lyrics to the original 1908 song:
“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—

‘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:

‘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.’”

Nora Bayes and Harry Caray are in good company. Listen to these famous crooners sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”: Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, Carly Simon, King Curtis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Neil Sedaka, the Goo Goo Dolls, and Mike Ditka (yes, that Mike Ditka).

Don’t understand why polo would inspire Norworth to write a baseball tune? This site should provide clarity. 

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