October 24, 1908: "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" Is Introduced

October 24, 1908: Baseball's anthem, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," is introduced by singer Bill Murray -- no relation to the later actor who got his start on Saturday Night Live. At the time the song was written by composer Albert Von Tilzer and lyricist Jack Norworth (words), neither had ever seen a game. But Norworth had seen an advertising sign on the new (opened 1904) New York Subway:

BASE BALL

TO-DAY

POLO GROUNDS

And he was inspired to write a song about an Irish girl -- apparently his favorite subject, as so many of his songs had an Irish theme, not surprising for New York City at that time:

Katie Casey was baseball mad.
Had the fever and had it bad.
Just to root for her hometown crew
every 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 ballgame.
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 ballgame.

Katie Casey saw all the games.
Knew all 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, she had the clue.
Just to cheer up the boys she knew,
She made the gang sing this song.

Take me out to the ballgame.
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 ballgame.

A "sou" is a penny. Sometimes that archaic lyric is changed to "Every cent, Katie spent."

Norworth probably named her after the title character in the most famous baseball poem, "Casey at the Bat," written in 1888 and thus still relatively new. In 1927, Norworth rewrote the song, and the girl subject became Nellie Kelly -- a better rhyme, and still Irish. But most people don't even know there are verses: They only sing the chorus.

Edward Meeker made the first recording, but Murray appears to have been the first to sing it live. Murray had also recorded "Tessie," which became a ballpark chant for Boston Red Sox fans in 1903. Ironically, Murray was a fan of the New York Highlanders, the team that would become the Yankees. In an even greater irony, Von Tilzer didn't see a live major league game until 1928, and Norworth didn't until 1940.

It apparently took until 1934 for the song to be played at a major league game. In 1976, Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck noticed that, while organist Nancy Faust was playing it during the 7th Inning Stretch, broadcaster Harry Caray was leaning out of the press box, and inviting fans to sing the song with him. So Veeck piped Harry and the fans into the public-address system at Comiskey Park, and a tradition was born.

Harry took it with him across town to Wrigley Field, and, with the Cubs' partnership with cable-TV "superstation" WGN, made the singing of that song at that stage of the game a national phenomenon. (And probably saved Wrigley for at least 2 more generations.)

Unfortunately, Harry always got the words wrong, and, to this day, the celebrities the Cubs have brought on to sing it in Harry's place since his death in 1998 -- including that other Bill Murray, a noted Cub fan -- have repeated his mistakes: They sing, "Take me out to the crowd," and, "I don't care if I ever get back."

In 1994, I heard it played at Mercer County Waterfront Park (now Arm & Hammer Park), home of the Trenton Thunder of the Class AA Eastern League. The Thunder didn't do too well in that 1st season of professional baseball in New Jersey in the modern era, and it inspired me to sing, "I don't think this team's gonna come back, for it's root, root, root for the home team, if they don't win, it's the same."

*

October 24, 1908 was a Saturday. The only games played on this day were in college football. Some of them:

* The Carlisle Indian School, outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, made an early inroads into public consciousness, achieving a 6-6 tie with the University of Pennsylvania at the original Franklin Field. A freshman named Jim Thorpe scored Carlisle's touchdown, but also missed 3 field goals, any one of which could have won the game. Both teams had come into the game unbeaten: Carlisle at 5-0, Penn at 7-0.

* Another matchup of unbeatens took place at Worden Field, on the campus of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Navy played Harvard University, and this one also ended in a 6-6 tie.

* Yale University beat Washington and Jefferson University, 38-0 at Yale Field in New Haven, Connecticut.

* The University of Pittsburgh beat Bucknell University, 22-0 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates -- until the following June 30, when Forbes Field opened.

* Michigan beat Ohio State, 10-6 at Ohio Field in Columbus.

* Georgia Tech beat Alabama, 11-6 at Ponce de Leon Park in Atlanta, home of minor-league baseball's Atlanta Crackers.

* In New York City, Fordham and New York University were idle.

* In New Jersey, Rutgers lost to Haverford College, 9-5 in the Philadelphia suburb of Haverford, Pennsylvania. Princeton played the next day, held to a 0-0 tie by Syracuse at University Field in Princeton.

In that other kind of football, Woolwich Arsenal beat Manchester-area team Bury, 4-0 at the Manor Ground in Plumstead, Kent, now part of Southeast London.

July 13, 1917: Nora Bayes Records George M. Cohan's "Over There"

July 13, 1917: Nora Bayes records "Over There," a patriotic song written for the American effort in World War I, by the biggest songwriter in America at the time, George M. Cohan.

Cohan had already written "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (with its not-quite-true line, "A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the 4th of July" -- he was born on July 3, 1878) in 1904, and "You're a Grand Old Flag" in 1906, both for Broadway shows. So he was already proven true to the Red, White & Blue.

Bayes -- born in 1880 in Chicago as Rachel Eleonora Goldberg -- had been discovered in 1900 by Helen Cohan, George M.'s mother. "The Four Cohans" had been a vaudeville act: At the end of their show, George would point to his mother, his father Jeremiah (or "Jere"), his sister Josephine (or "Josie"), and himself, saying -- pausing after each, for the inevitable applause -- "Ladies and gentlemen, my mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you."

In 1908, Bayes married songwriter Jack Norworth. That year, they co-wrote "Shine On, Harvest Moon," and she sang it in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1908. That same year, with Albert von Tilzer, Norworth wrote one of the few American songs more famous than "Over There": "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." But Bayes and Norworth divorced in 1913. She married 5 times, and adopted 4 children with her 4th husband, but never had children of her own.

When America got into World War I on April 6, 1917, Cohan volunteered for service. He was 19 when the Spanish-American War broke out, but did not volunteer then, as his career as an entertainer was already in full swing. This time, it may have been due to the fact that he was now making enough on royalties to support his family without his continued presence. Or it may have been due to grief: His father and his sister had both died within the past year.

But he was 38, and, though his physical versatility as a dancer allowed him to pass the fitness test, he was turned down. So he contributed to the war effort in another way, writing "Over There," which turned out to be biggest American song of the period, alongside such British efforts as "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" by Jack Judge and Harry Williams (written in 1912 but became connected with the war due to John McCormack's 1914 recording) and the 1915 "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag, and Smile, Smile, Smile" by the brothers Felix and George Powell. 

With its refrain of "The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming!" "Over There" became known as the theme song of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. When World War II broke out, it returned to popularity.

It was not used during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, which were less appealing to the American home front. On an episode of the TV show M*A*S*H, set during the Korean War, the camp chaplain, Father Francis Mulcahy (played by William Christopher), the best piano player in camp (which wasn't saying much), remarked that, unlike most wars, theirs didn't have a song. (Fats Domino's "Korea Blues" wasn't even all that popular at the time.) In the song that Mulcahy wrote, he even sang that there was "No 'Over There,'" and asked, "What are we fighting for?"

Nor was "Over There" brought back during the orgy of jingoism during the brief Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. There are sources that will tell you that it returned to popularity after the 9/11 attacks, but that's not true: It's a relic of another time.

Cohan did not live to see victory in World War II: He died in 1942, not long after the premiere of Yankee Doodle Dandy, the film biography of him starring James Cagney. Bayes, whose postwar recording of "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down On the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)" became the top American song of 1919, had already died in 1928, of stomach cancer.

Of all the stars that Broadway has ever had, Cohan is the only one with a statue on the street, at the northern end of Times Square.

*

July 13, 1917 was a Friday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-5 in 11 innings at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Shoeless Joe Jackson only appeared as a pinch-hitter, and did not reach base.

* The New York Giants beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-3 at the Polo Grounds.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers -- or the Robins, as they were known while Wilbert Robinson managed them from 1914 to 1931 -- swept a doubleheader from the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-0 and 2-1 in 10 innings. Larry Cheney pitched a 6-hit shutout in the 1st game. Honus Wagner, in his final season, went 1-for-8 for the Pirates. Zack Wheat went 0-for-8, but did have an RBI on a groundout in the 1st game.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Boston Braves, 7-6 at Braves Field in Boston.

* A doubleheader was split at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Phillies won the 1st game, 7-0. Grover Cleveland Alexander pitched a 7-hit shutout. The Chicago Cubs won the 2nd game, 1-0 in 10 innings. Al Demaree went the distance, pitching a 4-hit shutout.

Early in the 1918 season, Alexander would be drafted into the U.S. Army. His experiences over there left him with what was then called "shell shock," but would now be called "post-traumatic stress disorder" or "PTSD": He lost the hearing in one ear from all of the shooting and explosions, he developed epilepsy, and his already-present drinking problem got worse. One of the greatest pitchers who ever lived became a tragic figure.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Boston Red Sox, 1-0 at Navin Field (later Briggs Stadium and Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Bill James of the Tigers allowed only 1 hit, a single by Duffy Lewis. Ty Cobb went 1-for-4 for the Tigers. Babe Ruth, still mostly a pitcher at this point, did not play for the Red Sox.

* The St. Louis Browns beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 2-1 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. George Sisler went 2-for-4 with 2 RBIs.

* And the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Senators were rained out at League Park in Cleveland. The game was made up the next day, as part of a doubleheader. The Indians won the opener, 7-5. Tris Speaker, the Indians star center fielder and manager, went 3-for-4. The Senators won the nightcap, 3-0. This time, Speaker went just 0-for-3, as Harry Harper pitched a 3-hit shutout.