Take Me Out to the Ball Game

 "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is a 1908 Tin Pan Alley song by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer which has become the unofficial anthem of North American baseball, although neither of its authors had attended a game before writing the song. The song's chorus is traditionally sung as part of the seventh-inning stretch of a baseball game. Fans are generally encouraged to sing along, and at many ballparks, the words "home team" are replaced with the team name.

"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is one of the three-most recognizable songs in the US, along with "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Happy Birthday." However, most people are only familiar with the chorus. 

Jack Norworth, while riding a subway train, was inspired by a sign that said "Baseball Today – Polo Grounds". In the song, Katie's (and later Nelly's) beau calls to ask her out to see a show. She accepts the date, but only if her date will take her out to the baseball game. The words were set to music by Albert Von Tilzer. (Norworth and Von Tilzer finally saw their first Major League Baseball games 32 and 20 years later, respectively.) The song was first sung by Norworth's then-wife Nora Bayes and popularized by many other vaudeville acts. It was played at a ballpark for the first known time in 1934, at a high-school game in Los Angeles; it was played later that year during the fourth game of the 1934 World Series.

Norworth wrote an alternative version of the song in 1927. (Norworth and Bayes were famous for writing and performing such smash hits as "Shine On, Harvest Moon".)  With the sale of so many records, sheet music, and piano rolls, the song became one of the most popular hits of 1908. The Haydn Quartet singing group, led by popular tenor Harry MacDonough, recorded a successful version on Victor Records.

Its use became popularized by Harry Caray, the announcer of the Chicago White Sox, when he began singing it during the seventh-inning stretch in 1976. He continued the tradition when he became the announcer for the Chicago Cubs in 1982 and games were nationally broadcast.

The most famous recording of the song was credited to "Billy Murray and the Haydn Quartet", even though Murray did not sing on it. The confusion, nonetheless, is so pervasive that, when "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America as one of the 365 top "Songs of the Century", the song was credited to Billy Murray, implying his recording of it as having received the most votes among songs from the first decade. The first recorded version was by Edward Meeker. Meeker's recording was selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". 

To download the easy alphanotes sheet music, look here. Enjoy!

Below are the lyrics of the 1908 version, which is out of copyright.

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:"

Chorus

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:

— Take Me Out to the Ball Game, 1908 version

Though not so indicated in the lyrics, the chorus is usually sung with a pause in the middle of the word "Cracker", giving 'Cracker Jack' a pronunciation "Crac—ker Jack". Also, there is a noticeable pause between the first and second words "root". 

The song (or at least its chorus) has been recorded or cited countless times since it was written. The original music and 1908 lyrics of the song are now in the public domain in the United States (worldwide copyright remains until 70 years after the composers' deaths), but the copyright to the revised 1927 lyrics remains in effect. It has been used as an instrumental underscore or introduction to many films or skits having to do with baseball.

The first verse of the 1927 version is sung by Dan Hornsby for Columbia Records 1544-D (148277). The Hoosier Hot Shots recorded the song in 1936. Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra at the start of the MGM musical film, Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), a movie that also features a song about the famous and fictitious double play combination, O'Brien to Ryan to Goldberg.

In the early to mid-1980s, the Kidsongs Kids recorded a different version of this song for A Day at Old MacDonald's Farm.

In the mid-1990s, a Major League Baseball ad campaign featured versions of the song performed by musicians of several different genres. An alternative rock version by the Goo Goo Dolls was also recorded. Multiple genre Louisiana singer-songwriter Dr. John and pop singer Carly Simon both recorded different versions of the song for the PBS documentary series Baseball, by Ken Burns.

In 2001, Nike aired a commercial featuring a diverse group of Major League Baseball players singing lines of the song in their native languages. The players and languages featured were Ken Griffey Jr. (American English), Alex Rodriguez (Caribbean Spanish), Chan Ho Park (Korean), Kazuhiro Sasaki (Japanese), Graeme Lloyd (Australian English), Éric Gagné (Québécois French), Andruw Jones (Dutch), John Franco (Italian), Iván Rodríguez (Caribbean Spanish), and Mark McGwire (American English).

To download the easy alphanotes sheet music, look here. Enjoy!