Ah, spring. The birds are chirping, the potholes are in full bloom and it’s baseball season once again.
Ah, spring. The birds are chirping, the potholes are in full bloom and it’s baseball season once again.
As I reminisced about the role baseball has played in my life, I couldn’t help but wonder – where did the seventh inning stretch come from? And what’s up with “Take Me Out to the Ball Game?”
According to the History Channel, the seventh-inning can be traced back to the early 20th century, possibly earlier. The most well-known story involves American president William Howard Taft, who served from 1909 to 1913. Taft threw the traditional first pitch in Washington against the Philadelphia Athletics on April 14, 1910. During the seventh inning, Taft stood up to stretch his legs, and everyone else stood up out of respect, thinking he was on his way out.
However, there’s a letter from Harry Wright, who was manager of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, dating back to 1869 referring to a seventh-inning stretch for “(spectators to) enjoy the relief afforded by relaxation from a long posture on hard benches.”
Like Babe Ruth’s famous “calling the shot” home run, there’s really no way of knowing what the full truth is.
As for the song associated with the seventh-inning stretch, its origins, too, stretch back to the early 1900s. The verse that became one of the most recognized songs in North America is actually part of a longer ditty about a baseball-loving girl who asks her boyfriend to take her to a ballgame rather than a show. The song caught on with vaudeville acts and nickelodeons (early motion picture theatres, where admission was only a nickel); the song used to play at intermission at the movies.
Jack Nortworth wrote the lyrics to the song while Albert Von Tilzer composed the music. Nortworth wrote the lyrics on an envelope, inspired by a subway sign that read “Baseball Today, Polo Grounds.” at the time, neither he nor Von Tilzer attended a baseball game. That scrap of paper is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Perhaps the late, great Chicago Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray described the song best as “a song that reflects the charisma of baseball.”
While baseball doesn’t have its origins in Canada (that honour belongs to the aforementioned Cooperstown), there’s no shortage of love for the springtime sport north of the USA.
Whether you’re enjoying it from home, online or you’re lucky enough to spend a day at the ballpark itself, with the start of the MLB season, now is the perfect time to dive in and root, root, root for your home team.
Play ball, Agassiz-Harrison.
adam.louis@ ahobserver.com
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