The song has a feminist twist
Baseball is known as “America’s pastime,” a tradition so embedded in U.S. culture that the songwriters who penned “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in 1908 did so even though they had never actually seen a game themselves. The song’s familiar chorus about snacking on Cracker Jack and rooting for the home team is often sung during the seventh-inning stretch at baseball games, but the tune’s lesser-known verses have a surprisingly feminist twist.
The song tells the tale of a baseball-loving woman named Katie Casey, described in the lyrics as “mad” for the sport. Katie saw every game, knew all the players, and was confident enough in her knowledge of the rules to “[tell] the umpire he was wrong.” The portrayal of a passionate female sports fan was progressive for its time, but it was not exactly factual. Instead, the lyrics are believed to have been inspired by actress and activist Trixie Friganza, who songwriter Jack Norworth was believed to be having an affair with at the time. Friganza was involved in New York’s suffrage movement, and was reportedly a fan of the New York Giants. Her image also appeared on two early editions of sheet music for the song. In 1927, long after his alleged affair with Friganza had ended and seven years after women won the right to vote, Norworth slightly reimagined some of the lyrics to the famous song. He did keep his female protagonist, but inexplicably changed Katie Casey’s name to Nelly Kelly.
The songwriters had never been to a baseball game
Along with “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Happy Birthday,” “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is one of the most recognizable songs in American history. Written in 1908 by songwriter Jack Norworth and composer Albert Von Tilzer, the tune was one of many popular baseball songs that made waves at the time. But unlike those other onetime chart-toppers, the catchy song went on to become an intergenerational cultural fixture, traditionally played during the game’s seventh-inning stretch at stadiums across North America. You would think this legendary anthem for America’s pastime came from a diehard baseball fan, but the truth is that neither Norworth nor Von Tilzer had ever even been to a baseball game when they penned the tune.
The idea for the song came to Norworth not while he was sitting in the stands, but instead, of all places, on the New York City subway. According to legend, he was taking a trip across town in spring 1908 when he saw a subway advertisement for a New York Giants home game at Polo Grounds stadium in upper Manhattan. Inspiration struck the songwriter, and he quickly jotted some words on a scrap of paper. Von Tilzer completed the music shortly after, and on May 2, 1908, the pair registered the song with the U.S. Copyright Office. On the same day, an ad for the sheet music appeared in the entertainment trade paper the New York Clipper, and before the year was out, it was the No. 1 song on the pop charts. In 1940, Norworth finally attended a Brooklyn Dodgers game at Ebbets Field, where he was honored for his contributions to baseball. He claimed it was his first baseball game. Despite its early success on the charts, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” doesn’t appear to have been played or performed at a Major League Game until the 1934 World Series. It was much more recently still, in 1971, when Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck caught legendary announcer Harry Caray singing the song to the entire stadium (possibly not realizing the public microphone was on nearby) that it became the essential singalong tradition that it remains today.
Was the song written as an ode to women’s liberation?
Drawing on the rarely sung opening verse to America’s century-old baseball anthem and other archival research, George Boziwick, former curator for the Music and Recorded Sound Division at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, will make that case on Monday evening.
The song has been widely accepted to be the nation’s third most popular, after “Happy Birthday” and “The Star Spangled Banner.” In “Baseball’s Greatest Hits: The Story of Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” Andy Strasberg, Bob Thompson and Tim Wiles recall that Jack Norworth, a 29-year-old actor who would go on to write “Shine On, Harvest Moon,” was supposedly inspired to write the lyrics when he was riding the old Ninth Avenue el and spotted an ad for the Polo Grounds.
The song made its public debut in 1908 at the old Amphion opera house on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn.
Mr. Boziwick argues that the song was inspired by Trixie Friganza, the actress with whom Norworth was having an affair at the time. The opening verse recounts her enthusiasm for baseball and her preference for a ballgame rather than the theater:
Katie Casey was base ball mad,Had the fever and had it bad;Just to root for the home town crew,ev’ry sou Katie blew.On a Saturday, her young beaucalled 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:”
The chorus began with the proverbial answer, “Take me out to the ball game.” The second verse elaborates on Katie’s bona fides as a fan.
Katie Casey saw all the games,Knew the players by their first names;Told the umpire he was wrong,all along good and strong.When the score was just two to two,Katie Casey knew what to do,Just to cheer up the boys she knew,She made the gang sing this song:In addition to being an actress, apparently a Giants fan, and being featured on the cover of two editions of the sheet music for the song, Friganza was an advocate for women’s suffrage. In her obituary, The New York Times noted: “In 1908, she went with a few other hardy pioneer suffragettes to try to see the mayor of New York. But she won from the crowd the only jeers she ever had heard.”
“I contend the Norworth song was all about Trixie,” Mr. Boziwick said. “None of the other baseball songs that came out around that time have the message of inclusion — of a woman who was knowledgeable about the game, about an Irish immigrant and about what could be more American than baseball — and of a woman’s acceptability as part of the rooting crowd.”
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