There’s been more than a few songs written about baseball. I wrote a more expansive piece several years ago, but for this essay, I’ll just concentrate on a few selections.
Baseball and music
There are classics like “Take me out to the ballgame” which has been a 7th inning staple for decades. Some ballparks have taken to playing “God bless America” while the Red Sox have made “Sweet Caroline” their 8th inning staple.
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Most players have a walk-up song, and many relievers have a walk-in song. My favorite was Trevor Hoffman entering a game to “Hells Bells”. I mean, who doesn’t love ACDC? I’m thinking about having my kids play this at my funeral. If they won’t, I’m getting up and walking out.
The mid-1980’s were a fruitful, and cringe worthy, time for baseball songs with John Fogerty’s 1985 hit “Centerfield” and Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 “Glory Days”. Peter Paul and Mary got into the act in 1986 with their song “Right Field”. I never cared for that trio of songs, but like anything else, someone, somewhere surely liked them. An old-timer once said to me, “Kid, there’s an ass for every seat”. Yes, there is. And there’s a song for every set of ears.
One baseball song I did like was Section 36’s 1980 regional hit, “Go Joe Charboneau” a paean to Cleveland’s irrepressible rookie star. Everyone liked Joe Charboneau. How could you not like him? The guy drank beer through his nose. He did his own dental work and fixed his broken nose with a pair of pliers. Before the 1980 season, a crazed Mexican fan stabbed him with a pen knife. The blow was stopped when it hit a rib. The assailant was arrested and fined 50 peso’s, to which Charboneau replied, “that’s $2.27 for stabbing a person”. He captivated Cleveland and the baseball world by hitting home runs and doing outrageous things. He was a runaway winner of the Rookie of The Year. Then injuries and hard living took hold and by 1983, he was out of baseball.
Those really were the days, back before the internet, cable TV and the 24/7 news cycle. A time when you had to rely on various sources of information, often outdated, to hear what the latest phenom was doing. That lack of information allowed players like Fernando Valenzuela, Charboneau and Mark Fidrych to develop reputations that whetted the appetite of baseball fans anxious to get a glimpse of said player. We relied on daily newspaper box scores, radio sports reports, The Sporting News and 30 second clips on the evening news to catch a glimpse of them. If we were lucky, you’d see them in the Baseball Game of the Week. Don’t get me wrong. It’s great today, to be able to watch any game, any time of the day. It’s great to have advanced stats at your fingertips, updated with each at-bat or pitch. But it does take away from some of the suspense and the myth building. We gained something and we’ve lost something.
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Another baseball hit during the 1980’s was Terry Cashman’s “Talkin’ baseball”. Cashman is a prolific writer who had several modest hits prior to Talkin’ Baseball.
I didn’t care much for the song when it first came out. One of our local radio stations, probably KSAL, would play it a couple times a day that summer, but I wrote it off as a hokey novelty song. Plus, it didn’t fit my genre, which arced more towards deafening hard rock. ACDC, Molly Hatchett, The Outlaws, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen. You get the idea.
I stumbled back upon “Talkin’ Baseball” a few weeks ago, gave it another listen to, and you know what, it’s not bad. In fact, it’s a bit of a rhyming masterpiece, how Cashman gets all the names to fit together. Writing a song is a very special skill, getting the music and lyrics to fit. I admire those who have the ability to do that. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but I liked the song this time around.
The Royals are featured prominently in the song. George Brett gets a nice line, “and Brett is the greatest”. Dan Quisenberry gets a mention:
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“I’m talkin’ baseball, like Reggie, Quisenberry
talkin’ baseball
Carew and Gaylord Perry”.
The structure of the song reminds me a bit of Dave Frishberg’s 1969 song, “Van Lingle Mungo”, in which Frishberg recites the names of various ballplayers in a rhyming fashion set to a Bossa Nova beat. Frishberg was a terrific jazz pianist whose name may ring a bell for some of you who had small children that watched Schoolhouse Rock. He wrote the children’s classic, “I’m just a bill”.
I can remember my father, a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, talking about Mungo. I thought he was pulling my leg with the name. Van Lingle Mungo?
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Mungo was a flamethrowing, albeit wild, righthanded pitcher who won 120 games over a 14-year career that was worth almost 33 WAR. He was also a colorful character, who often clashed with his teammates, managers and a few disgruntled husbands.
Mungo and Frishberg appeared together on the Dick Cavett show, where Frishberg sang the song. Before the taping, Mungo asked Frishberg if there was any money in it for him. Frishberg replied with this zinger, “No, but you might make some money if you wrote a song called Dave Frishberg”. Roy Campanella is the only player mentioned in both songs.
Baseball remains a fertile ground for musicians. What are some of your favorites?
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