The surprising feminist history of baseball’s biggest anthem
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Nearly every baseball fan knows "Take Me Out To The Ball Game."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing) Take me out to the...
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Singing) Ball game.
SUMMERS: Or they think they do. Fans have been belting out the chorus during the seventh-inning stretch of Major League baseball games ever since announcer Harry Caray started the tradition in Chicago 50 years ago. But there's a lot more to this song than peanuts and Cracker Jack, as NPR's Chloe Veltman reports.
CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: The 1908 baseball season was epic. Following a dramatic three-way National League tiebreaker, the Chicago Cubs vanquished the Detroit Tigers 4 to 1 to win the World Series.
SUSAN CLERMONT: There was so much hype. It really boosted the sales of the songs.
VELTMAN: Retired Library of Congress music specialist Susan Clermont is an expert on baseball songs. She says, "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" was by far the most popular of the many new songs that hoped to capitalize on baseball's wild popularity that year. The rollicking waltz by lyricist Jack Norworth and composer Albert von Tilzer was an instant vaudeville theater favorite.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME")
EDWARD MEEKER: (Singing) Take me out to the ball game. Take me out with the crowd.
VELTMAN: The song performed here in 1908 by Edward Meeker was not only catchy. It also had unusual lyrics. At a time when women did not yet have the right to vote but were playing in women's leagues and filling the stand at occasional ladies days, Clermont says, "Take Me Out" celebrates a fictional young woman's deep and abiding passion for baseball.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME")
MEEKER: (Singing) Katie Casey saw all the games, knew the players by their first names, told the umpire he was wrong all along, good and strong.
CLERMONT: She didn't want to just go to the ballpark and sit in the bleachers and be silent or whatever. She wanted to participate.
VELTMAN: George Boziwick, the author of the book "The Music Of Baseball" has worked to identify the specific real-life woman who inspired Katie Casey.
GEORGE BOZIWICK: Trixie Friganza was a major vaudevillian star, and she was a noted suffragist herself.
VELTMAN: Boziwick says there's no way of knowing for certain if Friganza served as the song's root, root, rooting muse. But she was having an affair with "Take Me Out" lyricist Jack Norworth at the time, and her portrait appears on some versions of the sheet music.
BOZIWICK: She was independent and modern. And I think she just fit the bill.
VELTMAN: After organs started to appear at ballparks in the 1940s, "Take Me Out" gradually made its way from the vaudeville stage to the stands. Today, the song - or at least its chorus - is among the three most recognized tunes in the U.S., alongside "Happy Birthday" and "The Star-Spangled Banner," which, of course, is also sung at ballparks. Chloe Veltman, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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