Welcome to From Insults To Respect.

The Baseball season is in high gear, so let’s listen to one of its greatest fans, Bob Dylan.

Listening to Bob’s Baseball Show

It begins with a few brief notes from an organ you might hear at a ball park. Then we hear a crowd apparently getting stirred up just as a game is about to get underway. And then we hear Bob welcoming us, and introducing this show’s theme:

Tonight we’re going to head out to the fields of dreams, schemes and themes, the ever widening diamond, to take a look at the national past time, baseball.

Bob then begins to recite a poem:

Nelly Kelly loved baseball games,
Knew the players, knew all their names,
You could see her there ev’ry day,
Shout “Hurray!” when they’d play.
Her boy friend by the name of Joe
Said, “To Coney Isle, dear, let’s go,”
Then Nelly started to fret and pout,
And to him I heard her shout.

Here, Bob begins to sing the poem’s next stanza, and to my surprise it turns out that this poem contains the original lyrics of a song that all fans are thoroughly familiar with–“Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

“Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack,
I don’t care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don’t win it’s a shame.
For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out,
At the old ball game.”

After singing this verse, Bob continues reciting the poem:

Nelly Kelly was sure some fan,
She would root just like any man,
Told the umpire he was wrong,
All along, good and strong.
When the score was just two to two,
Nelly Kelly knew what to do,
Just to cheer up the boys she knew,
She made the gang sing this song. 

At this point, Bob plays us a version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” by some artist, but doesn’t reveal who it is. Although it has the same lyrics with which we fans are all so familiar, the singer employs an entirely unique melody.

Next, Bob sends up to bat the swinging Mable Scott doing “Baseball Boogy.”

Do you, baby, know what it’s all about,
Get that bat baby,
You can hit a home run!
And when I wind up,
I’m pitching my all to you
So get your bat ready
And let’s see what you can do.

Man, that Mable can sure belt one right outta the park!

Next, Bob steps up to the plate and tells us,

In the 50’s, every red blooded American boy wanted either to play baseball or be Elvis Presley. Here’s a Rockabilly song by Chance Halladay that combines both.

The lyrics on this one are pretty wild. Here’s a little taste:

Grand slam,
Yes Ma’am
A clean sweep off of your feet.
A home run
Oh Honey Bun,
A smack on your lips.
Honey babe,
Come on, let’s cross home plate!

At one point, Bob tells us about a conversation he had with a famous actor.

I caught up with Charlie Sheen at a car wash. He’s a big baseball fan and he has a lot of opinions about the game.

Bob then plays us a recording of what Charlie had to say:

Baseball, to me, represents life. It’s about heroes and goats, it’s about success and failure. It’s about individual effort, it’s about team effort. Baseball is about the game within the game. It’s really the only game that is not governed by time. And the thing that makes me insane is the people who say baseball is boring. It’s just playing catch. They don’t understand the game within the game. They don’t understand that how much changes from pitch to pitch. It’s actually fractions of a second that a hitter has to make a decision that he is actually going to swing, and then put it either between guys or hit it over the fence.

From there, Bob plays us a little audio clip of an announcer calling the thrilling, yet poignant, moment when Ted Williams, at his last at bat of his career, hits a long home run. The reaction of the crowd is just heartwarming.

As the show goes on, we get to hear a powerful poem about how the sport celebrates the American dream, with Latin, Black, and White players joining together to thrill a San Francisco Giants crowd. Some of the lines have a distinct edge to them, a kinda kick in the pants to the time when the major leagues were a whites only affair. Here’s a little of what I mean:

And Juan Marichal comes up,
and the Chicano bleachers go loco again,
as Juan belts the first ball out of sight,
and rounds first and keeps going
and rounds second and rounds third,
and keeps going and hits paydirt
to the roars of the grungy populace.
As some nut presses the backstage panic button
for the tape-recorded National Anthem again,
to save the situation. But it don’t stop nobody this time,
in their revolution round the loaded white bases,
in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics,
in the territorio libre of Baseball.

Soon, we get a little sliver of the great Abbott and Costello “Who’s on first, What’s on Second” routine. And of course, there are tribute songs to Jackie Robinson and Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio. One of these have lyrics written by Woody Guthrie. Here’s Bob setting up the song:

Here’s another song about Joltin Joe, done by Billy Brag and Wilco, where they take the unfinished lyrics of Woody Guthrie and add music to them. Woody Guthrie of course was the American folk artist that at the time of his death in 19 and 67, Guthrie left behind 2500 songs, the lyrics about New York streets, film star idols, drinking, dying, and even spaceships for providing a completely different aspect of Woody’s public persona. Here’s a song that Woody wrote about Joe, the Yankee Clipper.

A few of the lyric are:

Joe with wife, Marilyn Monroe

Up along the clouds where the eagles roam
Joe cracked that ball to whine and moan
His buddies all laugh as they trot on in
Joe DiMaggio’s done it again! 

One of my favorite songs in Bob’s collection of baseball songs is The Treniers swinging version of “Say Hey,” which is about the magnificent Willie Mays. Part of the fun of it is that it actually has the participation of the Say Hey Kid himself.

Say hey, say who?
Say Willie,

He runs the bases like a choo-choo train

Swings around second like an aeroplane

His cap flies off when he passes third

And he heads home like an eagle bird.

Say hey, say who?

Say Willie

Say hey, say who?

Swinging at the plate

Say hey, say who?

Say Willie

That Giants kid is great

Let’s check out the email basket. I hope they don’t throw us a curve.

Today’s email is from Jamie Vincent from Las Vegas, Nevada. She writes, Dear Theme Time, I enjoy listening to baseball games late at night, but my parents say the radio keeps them up. What should I do?

Jamie, you should do what I used to do. When I was supposed to be asleep, I would take my radio and slip it under my pillow. Then put your ear next to the pillow, which you’re supposed to do with pillows anyway. This way you can hear the second game of a double header without bothering anyone else in the house. Thanks for your email, your private pillow pal.

As the show begins to wind down,  Bob plays us “Heart” from the Damn Yankees musical. Man, if that song doesn’t lift your spirits, I don’t know what will:

Listen, guys, this game is only half skill,
the other half, well you gotta have heart.
You’ve gotta have heart
All you really need is heart
When the odds are sayin’ you’ll never win
That’s when the grin should start
You’ve gotta have hope

Mustn’t sit around and mope
Nothin’s half as bad as it may appear
Wait’ll next year and hope
When your luck is battin’ zero
Get your chin up off the floor
Mister, you can be a hero
You can open any door, there’s nothin’ to it but to do it
You’ve gotta have heart
Miles ‘n miles n’ miles of heart!!!!

Well, there you have it, a little fun as we await the opening of next year’s fresh new season.

My Best,
Jeff

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

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