Lame Ballgame: the Baseball Mixtape

Baseball has had a measurable impact on popular language and culture, at least in the English-speaking world. Right now in Ireland, for example, a country where nobody plays or watches baseball, I guarantee somebody is speaking in a business meeting about their company needing to “step up to the plate”, or that the latest projection for next month’s revenue is only a “ballpark figure”. No one will think about baseball when saying or hearing it, nor even realize there is a connection.

In terms of popular culture, one needs to look no further than Hollywood, where a new baseball movie begins production every three weeks. I made that statistic up, but here’s a real one: the phrase “baseball movies” returns 207,000 hits on Google. (“Rugby movies” is good for only 9,510.)

Baseball + Language = :-)
Baseball + Movies = :-)
Baseball + Internet = :-)
Baseball + Hot dogs = :-)

Baseball + Music = :-(

Baseball hates music

It’s partly because of those movies that the global language has absorbed baseball-derived idioms beyond the borders of FOX’s MLB franchise coverage map, and definitely not because of popular music. Baseball hates music, and vice-versa. I defy anyone to come up with a baseball mixtape that anyone wants to listen to. Sure, I’ve seen lists of baseball songs before, but they’re full of maudlin dross that reduces fine songwriters to sophomore philosophers. John Fogerty’s “Centerfield”? MORsville, no thanks. Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days”? I heard former major leaguer, broadcaster and amateur guitarist Bob Brenly on WGN this year say that no one “inside the game” has ever used or would ever use the term “speedball”, as featured in the Boss’s otherwise inoffensive ditty. It didn’t take long to find corroboration for my thesis that music/baseball hates baseball/music:

“…baseball is only a .180 hitter as a songwriter’s game. It has seldom secured substantial links with commercially successful music. During the past three decades, in fact, the decline of baseball-related lyrical imagery is staggering. The Billboard-charted tunes of Simon and Garfunkel, Meatloaf, John Fogerty, Bruce Springsteen, and The Intruders are really anomalies to a dismal showing for contemporary baseball tunes…Since 1960, baseball tunes have simply failed to attract substantial national interest.”

This is not to say that musicians don’t like baseball. On the contrary, look at Billy Corgan, Nils Lofgren, Eddie Vedder, or Johnny Ramone. Bing Crosby owned 15% of the Pittsburgh Pirates for over 20 years. Emmylou Harris, it turns out, is a baseball fanatic (“As soon as the show is over, I get on the [tour] bus and watch [ESPN’s] ‘Baseball Tonight.’ ”). And the players love music too: Roger Clemens’ favorite group is Led Zeppelin, Bronson Arroyo has his own band that plays in the clubs in Cincinnati, and Kerry Wood shills for Gibson guitars. None of this has resulted in a thing called “good baseball music”.

Bob Dylan’s baseball mixtape seems over-populated with novelty songs and olde time stuff. To fill up an hour-long show, he was forced to include two versions of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”—perhaps one of the worst songs ever written—with one of them performed by himself. This tune--used constantly in the background-- almost ruined Ken Burns’ nine-part documentary on the history of the sport, and it has taken on a grotesque level of over-importance at Wrigley Field in Chicago, where celebrities beg to lead the crowd in singing it during the 7th inning stretch so that they can also plug their latest project during in-game interviews on Cubs’ TV and radio telecasts.

But at least BD could come up with a tape. I feel like I got "caught looking," with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. I think I might need to forfeit on this one, and “take one for the team”. Because this is all I got:

· 2 promotional jingles for the Cubs: “Hey Hey Holy Mackerel” by Johnny Frigo, circa 1969, and “It’s a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame” by The Harry Simeone Songsters, dating back to 1960 and used on broadcasts by the Cubs, Dodgers and Mets intermittently ever since. There’s also the cheesy “Go Cubs Go” by Steve Goodman, recorded in 1984 as a radio promo and currently the team’s victory song, but I don’t like it and would not put it on a tape. Don’t much care for Goodman’s more serious “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request”, either.
· I’m a Little Airplane (“I fly in the dark…over the baseball park…”) – Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
· Beat on the Brat (i.e., “with a baseball bat”) – Ramones
· Brown-eyed Handsome Man (“2-3 the count, nobody on, he hit a high fly into the stands…”) – Chuck Berry
· Mrs. Robinson (the Joe DiMaggio references) – Simon and Garfunkel
· 10 different songs by the Beastie Boys with throwaway references to baseball, including teams (Yankees), players (Mike Piazza, Rod Carew, Phil Rizzuto, Sadaharu Oh), stadiums (Shea), pitches (curve) and bats (Wiffle).

Seriously, that’s all.

Here’s a link to BD’s baseball mixtape on Amazon.com. Its sales ranking is not provided. No customer reviews yet. Be the first.