Baseball (ish) Songs: Live Ukulele Session
I was driving home from Cooperstown a few weeks ago after Hall of Fame Induction weekend, shuffling my huge playlist of favorite songs, when two came up in quick succession that happened to have baseball references in their lyrics.
First, I thought, “lol universe, good joke!” because the universe always sends me messages through music. And then I realized it was also a good theme for a ukulele session.
So here are some songs that mention baseball, but aren’t about baseball specifically. I’m still wondering if I should have tried to do the Beastie Boys’ “Hey Ladies” (”more hits than Sadaharu Oh”) or “Sure Shot” (”mad hits like I was Rod Carew”), but it’s probably for the best.
AND I discovered the source of the Paul Simon story about using DiMaggio’s name instead of Mickey Mantle’s! It was briefly discussed during a 1970 episode of the Dick Cavett show on which they both appeared. The conversation starts at 22:38, and apparently Paul and Mickey talked about it more during the commercial break that they cut to immediately following that convo. (I’m still trying to track down the NY Daily News article referenced, but it’s been scrubbed from the site. Of course.)
Simon talks a bit about the DiMaggio lyric too around the 11:45 mark, if you’re interested.
Oh yeah, and I said “Centerfold” in the video, when I obviously meant “Centerfield.” J. Geils Band is not John Fogerty — and whether that’s a good thing or a bad one, I’ll leave up to you.
The three songs in this set are:
- Simon & Garfunkel, “Mrs. Robinson”
- Belle & Sebastian, “Piazza, New York Catcher”
- Buffalo Tom, “Kitchen Door”
Finally, last year’s Ukulele Alphabet project featured two baseball-related songs mentioned in this session:
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