Baseball Music
Baseball and music are the twin obsessions of my life, but beyond drunken 7th inning renditions of “Take Me out to the Ballgame,” I’ve always been fairly dubious about the wisdom of combining the two. Having grown up in an era where the only music heard at the ballpark came from a ghostly-sounding organ perched behind the press box, I find something extraordinarily distasteful about players running out onto the field to tune of ’80s hair metal, or Sportscenter highlights synched to the latest Fall Out Boy single. Songs about baseball generally aren’t much better; too often, they reduce the grand old game to lame Field of Dreams clichés. And while there have been far more worthless CDs released by basketball players, baseball players who fancy themselves recording stars have generally registered a low batting average in the studio.
Still, as any savvy baseball strategist can tell you, there are exceptions to every rule; and with Opening Day upon us once again, it’s time to celebrate some of the good stuff in baseball’s musical canon. Take, for example, Count Basie‘s “Did You Ever See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?“, which not only gives a well-deserved shout-out to such black baseball greats of the ’40s as Robinson, Satchel Paige, Larry Doby, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, but also conjures up the raucous fun of an afternoon spent in the old Ebbets Field bleachers. Ditto for “Robbie-Doby Boogie” by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, a mitt-slapping tribute to the first black players in the National and American leagues, respectively. And then there’s Vince Guaraldi‘s “Baseball Theme” from the A Boy Named Charlie Brown soundtrack, which wordlessly says more about the promise of springtime and a new baseball season than a dozen Terry Cashman songs.
Before he decided to concentrate on a singing career, Charley Pride was a star pitcher for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League, but failed in various major league tryouts for the California Angels and New York Mets. Baseball’s loss proved to country music’s gain, however, as Pride went on to rack up several dozen major hits, like “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” and “Is Anybody Goin’to San Antone” from All-Time Greatest Hits, Volume 1. Less commercially successful, but no less respectable, were the musical efforts of Scott Radinsky, a talented reliever who pitched for the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers in the ’90s. When he wasn’t fanning batters, Radinsky fronted punk rock combos Ten Foot Pole and Pulley; “Insects Destroy,” from the latter’s Matters CD, has often been interpreted as Radinsky’s raised-middle-finger salute to baseball’s increasingly corporate culture.
Jack McDowell, a White Sox teammate of Radinsky’s – and winner of the 1993 American League Cy Young award – is another ballplayer who could handle himself equally well on the stage or the mound. McDowell’s band Stickfigure (which included Smithereens bassist Mike Mesaros) serves up a pretty decent mixture of Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam and late-model Replacements on their 1999 album, Feedbag. And on “Salsa En Mi” from the P.S. soundtrack, veteran New York Yankees outfielder/guitarist Bernie Williams proves himself as fleet on the fretboard as he used to be on the basepaths.
While it’s not exactly musical, no baseball-themed playlist or mix CD would be complete without George Carlin‘s classic “Baseball-Football” monologue (from The Little David Years, 1971-1977), which helpfully (and hilariously) points out the intrinsic differences between the two sports.
“Mr. Steinbrenner – he like my cheese Danish, cinnamon Danish, prune Danish…” No, that’s not a Borat-style comedy sketch, but rather a snippet of an interview with the proprietor of the “G&R Pastry Shop,” one of many fascinating stops on the Soundwalk’s The Bronx: 4 Train-Yankee Stadium. A must for any Yankee fan (or student of urban history), this wonderful hour-long audio walking tour takes you through the old neighborhood that surrounds “The House That Ruth Built,” filling your ears with Yankee lore and local color as you go. But since 2008 will be the Bronx Bombers’last season in Yankee Stadium, and there are plans afoot to demolish the majors’third-oldest ballpark sometime in 2009, you’re hereby advised to take this tour in person while you still can.
