![Baseball and mitt on a wooden background](https://media.wnyc.org/i/800/0/l/85/1/shutterstock_143590024.jpg)
May 2nd 1908, the United States Copyright Office received two copies of a new song titled "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." It was published by York Music Company, a publishing company belonging to brothers Harry and Jack Von Tilzer. The song was written by their younger brother Albert with lyrics by the vaudeville star Jack Norworth.
Norworth claimed that he scribbled the words on an envelope after seeing a sign on the subway that read "Baseball Today -- Polo Grounds." He maintained that he had never attended a professional baseball game before penning those sixteen lines. Today, this scrap of paper is in the permanent collection of baseball memorabilia at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Most people would be unfamiliar with the original verses.
Katie Casey was baseball mad,
Had the fever and had it bad.
Just to root for the home town crew,
Ev'ry 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 ball game,
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 ball game.
Katie Casey saw all the games,
Knew 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 knew what to do,
Just to cheer up the boys she knew,
She made the gang sing this song:
The Chorus repeats…
Jack Norworth started out in minstrel shows and the vaudeville circuit at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1908, he and his wife Nora Bayes introduced their most famous song, "Shine on Harvest Moon" in Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies Of 1908. Bayes and Norworth were the “Angelina and Brad” of their generation, a true-love stage couple, performing and writing the songs of America. In 1944, Warner Brothers made a Norworth-Bayes biopic, Shine on Harvest Moon, which starred Ann Sheridan and Dennis King. The film, of course possessed the 1908 song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
Norworth and von Tilzer wrote many songs together like "Honey Boy,” "Smarty,” and "Good Evening, Caroline," but none were as popular as “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Through the years the song continued to thrive in the American consciousness. In 1949, MGM released a film named after the song. Take Me Out to the Ball Game starred Gene Kelly, Esther Williams, and Frank Sinatra. The film begins with Sinatra and Kelley singing this American tune.
In 1955, Harpo Marx romanticized the song on his harp in the episode of I Love Lucy.
1958 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the song, and Major League Baseball presented Jack Norworth with a gold lifetime ball park pass. Legend has it, Von Tilzer had passed away two year prior on the eve of the 1956 World Series. That night he had watched The Ed Sullivan show in his Beverly Hills apartment. In honor of that year’s Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees, Sullivan hosted baseball legends Yogi Berra, Sal Maglie, and Hank Aaron. As they walked on stage, the band played the melody to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" After the program, he fell asleep and passed away peacefully in the night 48 years after composing his most famous melody.
Neither composer nor lyricist lived to see the song settle in its ultimate home, during the seventh-inning stretch.
Hall of Fame broadcaster Harry Caray is credited with starting the tradition at a Chicago White Sox ball game in 1976. Caray is often quoted claiming that he would sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch because it was the only song he knew the words to.
White Sox owner, Bill Veeck, remembered in his biography Bill Veeck: Baseball's Greatest Maverick that on Opening Day in 1976 the fans close to the broadcast booth were singing along with Caray. He had a microphone placed in the booth the following day to allow the entire stadium to hear. Caray remembered Veeck’s kind explanation in his biography Holy Cow! "Harry, anybody in the ballpark hearing you sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” knows that he can sing as well as you can. Probably better than you can. So he or she sings along. Hell, if you had a good singing voice you'd intimidate them, and nobody would join in!"
Carey took the “compliment” and continued this tradition as he went on to work uptown for the Chicago Cubs. The tradition spread across the country. Soon all of baseball was singing “Take Me out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch, with their own unique traditions and sounds.
This year’s World Series will be played at two stadiums with their own seventh-inning customs. At Citi Field the New York Mets have been using the Bing Crosby version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” since the 1980s. They usually follow it with “Lazy Mary” by Lou Monte, which fans refer to as “that Italian clapping song.” At Kauffman Stadium, the Kansas City Royals have an organist play “Take me Out to the ball Game” which is followed by Wilbert Harrison's “Kansas City," a tradition that started in 2007.
During the seventh-inning stretch in each game of the world series, no matter which park, fans will be connected by one tradition and one song. In the words of Harry Carey it is "a song that reflects the charisma of baseball," a song that makes the game even more extraordinary and allows the young and the old to raise up their voice and become one.