Take me out to the Ball Game ...

Buy me Some Peanuts & Cracker Jack ...

I Don't Care if I Never get Back ...

April 9, 2018 / Bronx Neighborhoods / Bronx Sports & Bronx Culture / Bronx Buzz NYC.

It's that time of year again, although given we had a snowfall on April 2nd, you'd never know it. The 2018 Major League Baseball season has begun and both the Yankees & the Mets are off and running. The Mets are in first place in the National League East with 7 / 1 after placing second to the last with their Spring Training record. And the Yankees, came in fifth place with their Spring Training record, and are now in the middle of the pack of the American League East with a 5 / 5 record.

American Baseball 7th Inning Stretch Song

I got a hankering for a bit of baseball and the 7th inning stretch, and the song that accompanies it, so what follows is a bit of the history of the Take Me Out To The Ball Game song.

The first baseball song was reportedly created in 1858 and was called The Baseball Polka Song. In 1908 a New York song writer, Jack Norworth, wrote the song and it was set to music by composer Albert Von Tilzer. It was performed in vaudeville acts and also in recordings.

The song was played at the 1934 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals, whose nickname was the Gashouse Gang because the players were a rowdy, boisterous and reportedly unbathed group. In 1935 the Marx Brothers used it in one of their films, A Night at the Opera. The war likely put its growth on hold, but it returned to popular culture in the 1950's and 1960's. In 1958, on the 50th anniversary of the song creation - the songwriter, Jack Norworth, was presented with a gold lifetime pass to the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball games.

Click here to learn more about the 7th inning stretch song entitled Take Me Out To The Ball Game.