So with baseball season officially underway, and the Cardinals having already poisoned our screens, it’s time for the annual argument about baseball songs.
But, because “the national pastime”, we have to start with the anthem:
Now, there are many, many lists in this world that can chart things like this, but I just want to look at the history of some of them. And since blind objectivity & tilting at windmills are [DFO] standards, let’s do this ourselves.
Now, to properly assess baseball songs, you really need to look at the eras, rather than the individual songs, because they are going to be products of their times. Songs from the 40s & 50s can’t really match up to 80s & 90s rockers. To start my arbitrary historical tour of baseball tunes, we’re going back to the 40s.
Now, “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” dates from 1908 and has a bunch more lines than the little kids & fat drunks belt out during the 7th inning stretch.
It’s more spoken-word poem than song, and its merits as a song are really a ballad about being young & pursuing a dream. The song was popularized by Gene Kelly & Frank Sinatra when they tapped it into our grandparents’ heads in 1949.
It’s got what Americans love most – kitsch & history. Sure those times don’t exist any more, but that’s what makes it endearing to lots of people – the “once was” that never actually was.
Of course, as Elton John once said, the best way to become famous in America is to record a baseball or Christmas song. And if you could combine the two, that’d make for immortality.
So, Bob Hope’s conductor Les Brown recorded one of the most famous baseball songs in 1941, when he tied in his signature big band sound with the most popular player of his day. The results? A quintessential song about American’s pastime in the months before the war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q6odQuCxFU
After the war, as baseball’s integration started, Count Basie got his licks in with a song about the pioneer of the era. Fascination with Jackie & Basie’s smooth orchestration made this a big hit with some small crossover appeal.
Both songs have the big band sound that Americans loved, but the “race music” era meant that the two would never really meet.
Anyway, I don’t want to clog up too much space on a Saturday night, but I just figured I’d dive into the musical history books for a change. Next week, I’ll parse some songs from the 1950s.
Tonight’s sports:
- MLB:
- New York Yankees at Washington Nationals – 7:00PM | FOX / Sportsnet
- Arizona Diamondbacks at San Diego Padres – 9:00PM | FS1 / Sportsnet360
- UFC Fight Night: Whittaker vs. Till: From Abu Dhabi
- Prelims – 5:00PM | ESPN / TSN2
- Main card – 8:00PM | ESPN / TSN3
- Left turns:
- NASCAR XFINITY Series: Kansas Lottery 250 – 5:00PM | NBCSN / TSN
- Fútbol:
- Liga MX:
- Guadalajara vs. León – 8:00PM | TELMUN
- Cruz Azúl vs. Santos Laguna – 9:30PM | UNI
- MLS is Back Tournament:
- Orlando vs. Montreal – 8:00PM | ESPN2 / TSN
- Philadelphia vs. New England – 10:30PM | ESPN2 / TSN
- Liga MX:
- Southern hemisphere tackle sports:
- Super Rugby Aotearoa Round 7:
- Blues vs. Chiefs – 11;30PM | TSN2
- Australian Rules Football:
- West Coast vs. Collingwood – 1:30AM | TSN / FS2
- Super Rugby Aotearoa Round 7:
It is so nice having a full docket back on the schedule.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShkBruG9Xug&feature=emb_logo
“You feel the way your heart’s beating a mile a minute thanks to the end of that Essendon game, Rikki? That’s the way Dick Cheney feels ALL THE TIME.”
What a game, huh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvI5oy25QO4&feature=emb_logo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=LrZw9p3FzNM&feature=emb_logo
Not sure if this is LA sacrilege but Jeni’s > Salt & Straw
There are no losers with LA ice cream. We have a LOT of good places.
I’m two beers in. One at 8.4% and the other at 8.1%. I have to decide if I’m tired and want to go to bed or get lit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNpMC4FslNk
I’m not going to watch this game but I think SD’s current uniform options are good.
No wonder she hates butter.
Most unintentionally hilarious scene in cinema history.
Currently on ESPN there’s a UFC fight where one guy’s package seems stuffed.
Check it out if you dare.
I pay my taxes, I don’t go to church on Sundays, and I report all my Communist neighbors to the authorities; is it so much to ask that a nice woman named Dominique fall into my life?
Don’t go to church?? JAIL HIM!!
She has good hops.
Well I did say “fall into my life” so that makes sense
He was always fun to watch.
The Preznit said he was keeping his eye on Hanna and Douglas, but failed to mention that he was keeping an extra keen eye on Gonzalo, given the South of the Border name and all…
“It’s okay, I’ll keep an eye on that little fella. See if he grows up into a big, strong, strapping lad.” – Matt Gaetz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1287143403625631746
AAA to the rescue!
Now that was a $54 well spent.
I watched an inning of baseball, I’m good for a while
Jesus! What kind of fanatic are you?
And John Saxon makes three. RIP to the suave but tough white guy in Enter The Dragon.
Now that dude had a career.
I’m not sure how this works or if it works, but it works.
The makers of Mr. Robot must have misread their photography textbooks and think it’s the rule of three hundredths.
Well, my dream of the Yankees going undefeated in a short and very silly season seems all but dead.
Why would anyone want that?
Same kind of person that wants to see plucky Jeff Bezos get to $200 billion.
I see.
Person
Woman
Man
Camera
TV
Can I be president now?
I can think of at least two people you’d make a better President than.
Unfortunately, both of them are the ones running for the major parties.
“I’d like a wurd.”
-G.W.B.
-Trent Green
Twitter reaction to the Favre-Trump pic is “So I guess Brett Favre is still sending out dick pics” and that’s a quality joke.
Indeed. Did Favre send them out or was it the Orange Weenus?
Good question. As they are idiots, they’re both probably proud of the pic.
Damnit!!
Every fucking youtube video I click on gives some fucking Trump ad or some concealed carry ad. Aren’t these fuckers good enough at what they do to know that I am a fucking liberal through and through and would respond “suck dirty stump water through a pygmy blowgun” if I was allowed to do so without providing my personal information to them? Stupid motherfuckers.
No, they aren’t. I just tonight saw that ad of someone using a crowbar to break into an elderly woman’s home. It was basically indistinguishable from a 80’s ADT ad. It was quite hilarious.
Regis’s greatest accomplishment… being Ken Tremendous’s father-in-law?
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Not trying to steal Moose’s gig here, but….
The German 6th Army that was surrounded outside Stalingrad probably had it worse than any soldiers in history. But the Americans who had to fight the Pacific war might be a close 2nd. I’m pretty stupid, but it seems to me that as bad as things seem now, jeezis could they be worse.
The documentaries I’ve seen of Americans in the Pacific during the war tell me otherwise:
This particular documentary series had the hottest WWII woman of any of the documentaries.
Think it was better for those Germans having 20th Century supplies and medicine, or worse since they probably knew that Napoleon did the same exact thing 100 years earlier with the exact same result?
they probably knew that Napoleon did the same exact thing 100 years earlier with the exact same result
They probably weren’t history majors.
They could count to three though.
Erstens, zweitens und drittens reichs, ja?
I’d bet most German students knew about Napoleon’s retreat. Like the US in Viet Nam, they thought they were better and could succeed while making the exact same mistakes.
There are thousands of situations of being surrounded or hopeless retreat in terrible conditions throughout the history of conflict that were equivalent, the US opponents on several islands that would fight to the death would like a word for instance. Napoleon’s men retreating from Russia were basically in the same climatic conditions and casualty percentage with similar volume of troops. Just a few years ago we had a little civil war that was worse. Just now we are doing it to our selves with completely avoidable chaotic stupidity rather than opposing economic/ moral positions that were extreme.
baseball closers and high school girls have at least one thing in common: they almost gotta make everything so gotdamn dramatic.
My motto of “Never date an actress” started way back in high school.
Regular HS girls were dramatic enough but the girls that acted in the school plays? Fuggedaboutit!
Yanx starter lasts 1 0/3 innings. Go nats.
Baseball catching guy apparently has a pitch sheet on his glove to decide which pitches to call in which situations. All of his catches are going to have asterisks by them pretty soon.
in covid sports news, the semi final games were cancelled today in the MLL due to two players testing positive. If they can’t keep players healthy for a single week without travel, How are the other sports going to do it?
Stay safe my interweb friends and please be safe and wear the damn mask.
Bret Farva is FINISHED when the people of Green B—….oh right. Never mind.
Farva is of no relation to that small dicked Magat.
Get sexy down by the lake.
you said you wouldn’t post the pictures
Dad looks toooooo good in the boxers to keep it quiet.
Cool car…
I wish my grocery chain were handling the federal COVID response.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/how-heb-became-emergency-preparedness-model/
Due to my extreme self-centeredness, I cannot remember if you are anywhere near where Hanna is hitting. You are safe, I trust?
I am 25 miles north of San Antonio, so really no concern for my area. Was actually hoping for a little rain out of this since we haven’t had any in 2 months and my yard is a crispy critter. However, all the action looks be trending to the south of me, I’ll be lucky to get an inch of rain over the weekend. Hope it all works out okay for the folks south of me that are in the crosshairs, they really have enough on their plates with the virus. Thanks for inquiring…
New Braunfels?
Bulverde/Spring Branch on US281N. Halfway between NB and Boerne on SH 46. I pay my taxes in NB.
“Stephen King
Beer. Depression. Cocaine. Typewriting. Suicidal musings. The late-seventies and early-eighties must have been one nightmarish smog for Stephen King, relying on his vices to keep the real horror at bay during a period where he it got so bad that he’s since claimed he can’t remember writing Cujo. Textbook alcoholic author, one of King’s biggest anxieties was the prospect of losing his creative spark if sobriety were ever to win out, which of course, following an intervention at the end of the decade, it did, not sullying his fearsome literary output one bit. He later admitted, “I always drank, from when it was legal for me to drink. And there was never a time for me when the goal wasn’t to get as hammered as I could possibly afford to. I never understood social drinking, that’s always seemed to me like kissing your sister.”
Drink of choice – Beer
Beer – his biggest vice of all – was almost always consumed at home. “I didn’t go out and drink in bars, because they were full of assholes like me,” he told The Guardian recently.”
I wonder what his board name is here at DFO.
Otto
Otto Parts?
Sill
I don’t really like King’s novels either, but Jesus, I don’t hate the guy.
Goddammit!!!! Scroll down, Horatio, scroll down.
Sill.
re; I don’t really like King’s novels either, but Jesus, I don’t hate the guy.
By Danielle de Wolfe
I call bullshit. No way in hell he started drinking at 21.
Legal drinking age used to be 18.
No way in hell he started drinking at 18.
Given that he grew up in an impoverished father-less home with a mother that had to work full time, you are no doubt correct. Same situation worked out ok for Bill Clinton, though. But who is more financially secure at this point? And King bags on Trump more than Clinton does. My vote goes for King.
Don’t be an ass. I was between here:
and here:
That was high school senior. Now it was DEFINITELY between the above and here:
Would that be booze or drugs? Or maybe both…
Gotta be both, it was for me.
No he started younger. It’s in On Writing. I think the way it is written, he’s making the point that in high school he wasn’t drinking all the time. Once he was older and independent, he was always on the bottle to one extent or another.
Dude’s clearly not a very good writer.
That’s why he is a huge seller!
The link to this caught my eye earlier. Year I graduated HS. Surprisingly, despite the amount of drugs I was taking back then, I remember a disproportionately large percentage of the events listed here.
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/1977-events-rock-movies-pop-culture/
Tell us more about your drug use.
Trying to trigger the PTSD, eh?
Everything but heroin. Everything.
I’m much better now, though.
One of us!
Bad ass.
never forget
https://twitter.com/patrickcotnoir/status/1287104311416233984
Regis Philbin died today. Looks like his Gazpacho soup isn’t the only thing that has gone cold….
“Grrrr. I know that little homo fucked Kathy Lee.”
—Frank Gifford
found a funny:
Developmental psychologist say that a child should be starting to sound off in the comments by 18 months
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/reds-matt-davidson-placed-on-il-after-positive-covid-19-test-one-day-after-starting/ar-BB17bVFi?ocid=msedgntp
?itemid=11546162
LOL
Figured I would not have to scroll down very far to find a reference to this event.
Wow, Mango doesn’t nearly as corpulent in that photograph as he does otherwise.
Still doesn’t know how to not stand awkwardly though.
Moobs still look pretty hefty.
He holds it in his hips and ass.
My Favre hate was steady for quite some time. This upse is a notch or two.
“Heat of 10,000 supernovae”?
naw like 3 or 4
That’s probably adequate for the job.
trippy
https://prohbtd.com/read/alcoholics-anonymous-how-lsd-almost-became-the-13th-step/
This is fine.
Liga MX will play until there are more COVID cases and then they’ll cancel games like they already have.
So, just like it will be for baseball, basketball, football, etc…
Still feels like an exhibition with no one in the stands.
Roseanne’s rendition of the anthem is exactly what that shitty song deserved
Quelle Fucking Surprise!
Did Brett get Donnie to sharpie him in a respectable sized dick?
He’s President, not God
Sadly, that will probably get him a few votes in Wisconsin. Maybe Aaron Rodgers could balance it out by threatening to throw an interception on every single pass for the rest of his contract if Wisconsin goes to Mango?