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That other anthem The story behind a classic American tunePosted: Thursday April 04, 2002 12:54 PM
Baseball opens. Every other sport just starts. Baseball worms its way into the culture. The existentialist Who's on First? routine is still our most famous comic bit. Casey at the Bat is accepted as the most popular American poem. And, after the national anthem and Happy Birthday, the third most-played song in the land is, of course ... Take Me Out to the Ball Game. All you need to hear is that first, long raucous growl of a note, and every American worth his stars and stripes knows what song is coming -- and has since Handsome Jack Norworth wrote those immortal lyrics 94 years ago this month. Handsome Jack, a vaudeville tenor and songwriter, otherwise most famous for Shine On Harvest Moon, was riding the New York subway one day when he looked up and saw a sign: BASEBALL TODAY -- POLO GROUNDS. Inspired, even though he'd never seen a single baseball game in all his life, Norworth immediately scribbled two verses and a refrain on a sacred scrap of paper that is now enshrined in the Hall of Fame. In Manhattan, he took his lyrics to Albert Von Tilzer, a tunesmith best known for I'll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time and Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey, and, with equal rapidity, Von Tilzer composed the music -- even though he, too, had never set foot inside a ball park. The next part was even easier. As befits a man known as Handsome Jack, Norworth was married to the beautiful Nora Bayes, then the most popular chanteuse in the land. Now, we don't know whether Nora had ever seen a baseball game, but with her singing it, Take Me Out to the Ball Game became an instant hit. In fact, one major irony about America's greatest sports song is -- no matter how many times you heard Harry Caray sing it -- it was written to be sung by a woman. The first verse, which you never hear, begins: Katie Casey was baseball mad. Had the fever and had it bad. Her beau wants to take her to a show, but instead Kate sings ... well, you know what she sings. In 1927, for some reason, Handsome Jack changed Katie Casey to Nelly Kelly and tinkered with some words in the verses, completing the version we know today. Wisely, though, Norworth didn't mess with the refrain. Probably the song's most famous rendition was performed in 1935 in the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera, when Groucho, as Otis B. Driftwood, and Harpo and Chico somehow get the orchestra to change the opera overture to Take Me Out ... In 1949, a movie starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly as turn of the century baseball players, and Esther Williams as the team owner, used the song's name as its title. It also featured that other baseball song classic: O'Brien to Ryan to Goldberg. The other great irony of Take Me Out to the Ball Game is that it's a sports song about losing. Handsome Jack had to find a word that rhymed with "game", so he chose "shame" and suggested the home team would lose. And then, of all things, he featured -- no, not a home run, but ... baseball shame, a strikeout. In a way, Take Me Out to the Ball Game was sort of the first country and western song, about breakin' hearts and losin'. There's one, two, three strikes you're out in the game of love. Jack, Jack: Why didn't you write: Let me root, root, root for the home team. If we win big it's no shame, For it's hits, runs and victory is ours at the old ball game. But he didn't. A guy who could write Shine On Harvest Moon obviously knew what he was doing. Who knows, maybe he never saw a harvest moon, either. Norworth finally did manage to see a game -- in 1940, 32 years after he wrote the song. There is, however, no evidence as to who finally took Handsome Jack out to an old ball game. Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. His new novel, The Other Adonis (Sourcebooks Landmark), is available now at bookstores everywhere. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer. |
