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Reflections March 2014

The Man Who Wrote ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’

By Richard Bauman

Amazingly, its lyrics were written by a young man who had never seen a ball game.  The words to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” were penned in May 1908 by Jack Norworth. When he composed his “ball song,” as he called it, he was a 30-year-old vaudeville performer in New York City.

When the home plate umpire cries “play ball,” and the pitcher throws the first pitch of a baseball game, no one can be sure which team will win. One virtual certainty, however, is that during the seventh-inning stretch, every stadium’s crowd will be on its feet singing, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

For most of the 20th century, and continuing into the new millennium, that song has been the musical symbol of baseball. It is the most famous song in the world about the sport — or any sport, for that matter. Moreover, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” comes in right behind “Happy Birthday” and “Here Comes the Bride” among the most universally recognized songs in Western culture. It is sung, lustily and from memory, by tens of millions of people every year at major league and minor league baseball games across North America. Indeed, it is part and parcel of the game itself.

And, amazingly, its lyrics were written by a young man who had never seen a ball game.  The words to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” were penned in May 1908 by Jack Norworth. When he composed his “ball song,” as he called it, he was a 30-year-old vaudeville performer in New York City.

Norworth, who created much material for his act with music writer Albert Von Tilzer, was trying that spring to come up with a fun little piece, one that the audience could easily learn and sing along with him. One afternoon, in a subway car on his way to the theater, Norworth saw a placard advertisement from the New York Giants with the message: “Come out to the Polo Grounds, and enjoy a ball game.” He had the inspiration for his lyrics.

“An idea flashed across my mind,” he later said of that moment. “I figured there had never been a baseball song, so I pulled an old hunk of paper out of my pocket and started scribbling. The words came together. Thirty minutes later I had it.”  Norworth’s scrap of paper, incidentally, is now on display in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

He quickly conferred with Von Tilzer, and the partners married lyrics to notes. Norworth debuted the song in his act, and it wasn’t long before people were singing it not only in the theater, but on the street — and at the ballparks, too.

Norworth continued to perform in vaudeville theaters, until that form of entertainment faded in the 1920s. But Norworth had been smart enough to copyright his “ball song,” and enjoyed a steady income from royalties long after his performing days were over.

His song brought him to the public’s attention in a varied of ways. He appeared in several movies and later on television numerous times. He made five guest appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show during the 1950s.

As his song became a national institution, Norworth was constantly asked the obvious question: How could a man who didn’t know a home run from a sacrifice bunt, write the most famous sports song of all time?

“Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island,” he would retort, “but there was no such place. It was simply a matter of using the imagination.” 

Thirty-four years after writing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” a friend finally convinced Norworth to actually see a major league game. It was 1942, and the 64-year-old Brooklyn resident went through the turnstiles of Ebbets Field to see the hometown Dodgers take on the New York Giants. Many stars from both teams had already gone off to war, replaced by teenagers and 4-Fs. No matter. He was hooked.

“I caught the fever,” he later said of that game. For the rest of his life he was a baseball fanatic. “Now, you can’t get me away from the TV set during a ball game,” he told an interviewer during the 1950s.

When Norworth moved to Laguna Beach, Calif., in 1952, there was no organized baseball for the youngsters of that seaside community. In his mid-70s, he was instrumental in launching Laguna Beach’s first Little League program.

Though “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was unquestionably Jack Norworth’s most famous song, he wrote more than 400 other songs during his lifetime. Probably his second most successful piece, also composed in 1908, was “Shine On, Harvest Moon.” He co-wrote that with his wife, Norah Bayes, and pitched it to impresario Florenz Ziegfeld for the Ziegfeld Follies. “It’s too clean,” objected Ziegfeld, who, after all, made his fortune on the theory that showing a little leg could sell a lot of tickets.

Jack and Norah did the song anyway, and as Norworth later pointed out, “The clean song was the most popular.”

Jack Norworth died in 1959, at the age of 80. Relatively anonymous in death as in life, he nonetheless left a happy musical legacy that nearly everyone does know.

 

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