Why Take Me Out to the Ballgame is baseball’s best tradition

It’s ONE, TWO, THREE strikes, you’re out!

While I wouldn’t call myself a cynic, I, like many people, have a healthy dose of cynicism regarding a lot of the mess that comes with my favorite sport. But one thing that saps all of the cynicism out of the game is the moment in the seventh inning stretch, when everyone stands and sings ye old classic, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

“Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was written in 1908 by two men who famously had never previously stepped foot in a ballpark. Co-songwriter Jack Norworth was inspired to write the song by an ad on the subway for the Polo Grounds. In fact, Norworth and Albert Von Trier didn’t attend an MLB game until decades after writing the song.       

Though the song is over a hundred years old, the tradition of singing it at the ballpark is quite a bit younger. It wasn’t until the 70s, when Chicago White Sox announcer Harry Caray began to sing it during the seventh inning stretch. Now, it’s ubiquitous at American ballgames.

At the ballpark, we only sing the famous chorus of the song (in fact, most fans will assume that the chorus is the entirety of the song), but there is a story being told in the song, a story that tells us a little about the history of female fans of the sport.

“Take Me Out to the Ballgame” tells the story of a fictional female baseball fan named Katie, who would only go on a date with a young man if it were to a ballgame. Unlike the supposedly demurer women of the generation before the youngsters of 1908, Kate was a woman at the turn of the century – she “was baseball mad,” spent all her money on games, knew all the players by name, and would argue with the umpire. She was a “new” woman.

While the song, as it is used now, may lack any political or gender connotations, it certainly is interesting to see that it once did (and serves as a good reminder that most anything is political when you get to the nitty gritty of it). But even deprived of its cultural context, there’s a lot to love about the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” For one, everyone does it, children and adults, hardcore fans and casuals. There’s not a lot of experiences in the world that can get a bunch of people up and singing in unison, virtually none that exist without the tinge of nationalism, but “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is just that.

The American national anthem, while, in its own way, a banger, only really speaks to Americans, and a good chunk of baseball players as well as baseball fans are not Americans, some may have a complicated relationship to the country. In beautiful contrast, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” with its simple lyrical enjoyment, serves an anthem for everyone who is enjoying a ballgame, from hardcore baseball fans to people who are just enjoying their day out and about at the ballpark.