Forget the Super Bowl. This Sunday is baseball’s Opening Day, and for my money, it’s the best day of the sporting year. Granted there’s only one game on Sunday, and it’s a night game (how’d you do that Opening Day?). But it means that baseball is back, and I won’t have to suffer through basketball and hockey highlights on SportsCenter any more. In honor of this momentous occasion, I’ve put together a mix of my favorite baseball-related songs. Put me in coach!
Centerfield - John Fogarty
Besides baseball’s folk tradition of songs (Take Me Out to the Ballgame, etc.), Centerfield is probably the best known baseball song. And there’s a reason for that: it’s catchy (no pun!) and fun and everything you want in a song about America’s past time. The song gets bonus points for it’s use in Bull Durham, my favorite baseball movie.
Glory Days - Bruce Springsteen
If Centerfield is full of hope and joy, Glory Days is its counterpoint. I imagine the wide-eyed player starting out in the first song found himself a bit jaded and nostalgic at the end of his career in this one.
Point of fact: despite the Boss’s infallibility, there is no pitch named the “Speedball.” Although, if Dice-K can invent the Gyroball, I suppose anything is possible.
Piazza, New York Catcher - Belle & Sebastian
This is definitely not a typical baseball song. The lyrics are more of a meditation on the problems of leading a public life. Mike Piazza, then catching for the New York Mets, is just a vehicle for this exploration. I love the line, “The statue’s crying too, and well he may.” “Well he may” sounds just like “Willie Mays,” the subject of a real statue outside the Giants ballpark.
Interesting fact: Cory Branan, whose typical wheelhouse is country/folk/rock, does an amazing live cover of this song.
Baseball - Ozma
A lot of folks call Ozma a Weezer copycat act. And while that may be true, it doesn’t make their songs any less catchy (still no pun!). That said, Baseball could be a Weezer song. The verses are sparsely accompanied (a la The Sweater Song) and build to crescendo later in the song. Still, it’s a good song dealing with the end of a relationship and the recognition of time passing. The line, “Every time I think I’m finished being young, I catch myself having fun” is particularly evocative.
Baseball here is a metaphor for life (heard that one before?), and the speaker and his former lover were the “best team in baseball” when they were together. It’s a solid effort from Weez… er… I mean Ozma.
Tessie - Dropkick Murphys
Here’s the story: in 1903, a bunch of hooligan Boston fans buoyed their team to an improbable victory in the first World Series by taunting the Pittsburgh Pirates with a song called Tessie (You Are the Only, Only, Only). Fast forward 100 years to 2004: the Dropkick Murphys, in an effort to break the Red Sox 86-year World Series drought, recorded Tessie, a song detailing those events. Somehow it worked, and this song has been a staple at Fenway Park ever since.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a die hard Red Sox fan, and the night they won the series in ‘04 was one of the best nights of my life. Let’s just say the room got a little dusty when that game was over. So this song has a special place in my heart.
So there you have the beginning of my baseball weekend. And now my picks for the season. NL playoffs: Dodgers, Phillies, Cubs, and Braves (wild card). AL playoffs: Angels, Red Sox, Tigers, Yankees (wild card). World Series: Tigers over Cubs in six.
