"Take Me Out to the Ballgame" is actually about a girl

There is probably no song in America that is known by heart by more people than the perennial baseball favorite of the 7th-inning stretch, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," written in 1908. Probably a near-majority of American baseball fans who sing it know that writer Jack Norworth and composer Albert Von Tilze had never gone to a baseball game and did not actually much like the sport at all. But they did like making money and boy, did this tune ever do that for them.

The first recording of “Ball Game,” by Edward Meeker, was a huge success. Sheet music and piano rolls of the song flew out of music stores. While there had been other baseball songs - “The Baseball Polka,” “It’s Great at a Baseball Game” and the similarly titled “Take Your Girl To The Ball Game” – they were only bloop singles. “Take Me Out” was a home run.

Despite this huge success, Norworth did not attend his first baseball game until the late 1930s.

What we sing in stadiums is only the refrain (which made Crackerjack popcorn confection into a huge business). The verses are virtually unknown. And what the song was about was a girl named Kate.

“Katie Casey was baseball mad,
Had the fever and had it bad.
Just to root for the home town crew,
Ev'ry sou [common slang at the time for low-denomination coin] Katie blew. . .”

It’s interesting that the songwriters chose a woman as the subject of the verse, as baseball was traditionally a man’s sport. But as the verse progresses, the set-up unfolds with the gal telling her fella to forget the movie show because she wants to go to a ball game.

"On a Saturday her young beau
Called to see if she'd like to go
To see a show, but Miss Kate said "No,
I'll tell you what you can do."

In time, fans would forget the verses in favor of the catchy refrain. That didn’t stop Norworth from writing new verses in 1927, trading Katie Casey for another Irish girl named Nelly Kelly, and plugging the popular beach resort Coney Island. Again, those words sat on the bench at games.

What made the song really take off in MLB games, though, was the late Haray Caray, who in 1971, "lent his boundless enthusiasm and marginal musical talent to the song, establishing a sing-a-long tradition at both White Sox and Cubs games" ever since. That the song had been in the public domain by then and so could be sung royalty-free was a big help.



Caray died in 1998 and so today the song-leader baton is held by others.

Here is TMOTTB sung by Edward Meeker, recorded in September 1908 by Edison Record. These are the original 1908 lyrics.



The refrain still reverbs through Wrigley Field even to this very day as the Cubs, sadly down 3-1 in their quest for their first World Series championship since TMOTTB was written, still hope for the magic the song evokes to propel them onward.