Baseball in the air

Walk-up music for each player ready? Check. Stadium organ and PA system working? Check. Kiss-cam song cued up? Check.

Today, Friday April 9, is the home opener for the San Francisco Giants. Oracle Park will be rocking. We will be able to smell the garlic fries from Sonoma.

Our team has already played six games this season, played pretty well, and it’s great to have them back. The home opener, though, that’s when it feels like the season has begun in earnest.

(I say “our team” because, although I was born in Oakland, my blood type is O, for Giant’s Orange. My family’s predominant blood type is B, as in Baseball. Baseball is important.)

Baseball is also a magical thing. As important as baseball has been in American history, it deserves great songs. There is a roster full of first-string tunes about the game, but these are three of the favorite baseball songs of this writer.

‘Centerfield’

It took John Fogerty about 15 years to shake off the ghosts of Creedence Clearwater Revival. In 1985, he released a solo album called “Centerfield” that contained the hit song of the same name.

The single “Centerfield” confused many people and provided a fun lesson in punctuation. Taken out of context, the phrase “put me in coach” could be a reference to air travel. The actual first line from the song’s chorus, “Put me in, Coach,” is clearly about playing on a team sport.

“Centerfield” is a classic rock song that can be heard in every baseball stadium in America, from little league to the Major Leagues. Baseball fans will hear either the signature hand claps from the beginning of the song or the entire feel-good rock and roll song itself. It is played before the game as fans file in, during the game to excite the players and crowd, and afterwards to whet the appetites for more.

Despite being no stranger to plagiarism lawsuits himself, Fogerty lifts a line from Chuck Berry’s “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” in the first verse of his song. He belts, “Roundin’ third and headed for home is a brown-eyed handsome man…” and follows it with a guitar lick that could have been played by Berry himself.

Fogerty sings of three Baseball Hall of Famers by name in the song: Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, and Ty Cobb, all centerfielders. In 2010, Fogerty achieved a rare honor when he and his song “Centerfield” were also inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, located in picturesque Cooperstown, New York.

‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’

One of the most quaint and much appreciated customs at a Major League baseball game is the seventh inning stretch. Tradition has it that mid-inning, the crowd stands in unison, stretches its legs, raises their collective voice and sings “Take Me Out to The Ballgame.”

The genesis for the “stretch” is debated, but a popular explanation says it began on Opening Day in 1910, in a game between the Washington Senators and the visiting Philadelphia Athletics. It is said that during the middle of the seventh inning, President Howard Taft needed to stretch his ample (6’2”, 350 lbs) frame and rose from his seat in the presidential box.

Fans in attendance, all loyal Americans, stood along with their stiff President. It is felt this is where the tradition took firm root in the celebration of the pastime.

The song that is now sung by the crowd during that break, “Take Me Out to The Ballgame,” was copywritten in 1908. It was written by Norworth and von Tilzer, neither of whom had ever attended a professional game. The first time it was played at a baseball game was at a high school game in Los Angeles in 1934.

The most famous version of the song was probably the rendition preferred by beloved Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Carey anytime he lead the crowd in its singing. The loveliest version is Carly Simon’s from Ken Burn’s “Baseball.”

The most unusual version was probably when some 9,000 kazooists performed the song during Jerry Garcia Night in 2010 at a San Francisco Giants game. The hands-down best rendition was done last July by Chicago Cubs diehard Bill Murray, remotely, with an impressively large stuffed brown bear.

‘Home Run Willie’

A San Francisco Giants game is also the setting of an obscure but wonderful baseball song called “Home Run Willie,” by Salinas singer/songwriter Larry Hosford. SF Giants announcer Duane Kuiper once called it “the perfect baseball song.”

In his song, Hosford describes in a folksy rocking chair style a real situation the great Willie Mays found himself in towards the end of his astonishing career. When he was 41 years old, dealing with aging legs and playing for the visiting New York Mets, Mays came up to the plate at Candlestick Park to pinch hit. The result is charmingly predictable.

The old sounds of the park; the stadium organ playing the occasional stanza, the corny songs played over the steel horn-shaped PA speakers, the nine-volt transistor radios providing explanations by the announcers, are all gone. We now hear a multi-lingual cacophony of sounds when we watch our team. All the great music is still there, though, guiding us through a great time at the game.