Best Baseball Songs Ever: The Harry Simeone Songsters – It’s a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame
The Harry Simeone Songsters – It’s a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame (1960)
Vin Scully: simply the greatest
I grew up hating the Dodgers and by extension the entire city of Los Angeles. Not only was I raised to believe that Los Angles was a bastion of sin and depravity, but the Dodgers were my beloved Cincinnati Reds’ big rivals in the 1970s and as such represented everything despicable about the world.
To my own shock and dismay I would end up moving to Los Angeles, where for 12 of the 14 years I was there, I could see the lights of Dodger Stadium shine bright over the hill from the window of my Silver Lake bungalow. Unable to resist its call, I would attend about 175 games. While I quickly grew to love southern California, I clung to my contempt of the Dodgers, silently rooting for injuries. After a few seasons of sustaining myself with the fumes of my youthful malice, oddly, injuries no longer held their allure. I feared I had become weak for the bile in my heart had evaporated in the warm Los Angeles sun. I no longer really wanted the Dodgers to get hurt, just to lose. I was on a disturbing trajectory. My 11 year-old self was disgusted with me. For a few seasons a disconcerting ambivalence took hold – I hoped simply to see a good game – but when the Dodgers picked up Greg Maddux for the stretch run in 2006, I actually found myself pulling for the ol’ Bums. Clearly, I had become estranged from my core values. In a (perhaps, misguided) attempt to save myself, I would flee the city in the off-season.
There was, however, never a day that I didn’t root for Vin Scully, the legendary Dodgers broadcaster. When I first got to Los Angeles, there were no games streaming on the internet, but there was Vin Scully on the radio and on TV. In exile from the Reds, I took refuge in Vin and he immediately cast his spell. The man is simply a joy, his love of baseball and life itself is contagious. As an added bonus, he was the perfect counterpoint to the cynical, right-wing mutterings I had become accustomed to from the Reds’ Marty Brennaman. Incredibly, Vin has been calling games since 1950 and will retire after this season – never having lost a beat. To this day, there is no one better. If a baseball stadium is a church, the broadcaster is the game’s minister. When he is gone, inevitably, Vin’s flock will be lost without him. And I suppose I will, too. Despite my protestations, through the art of his gentle persuasion he exorcised much of the hate from my heart.
Which brings us to the Harry Simeone Songsters’ great contribution to the 20th century: “It’s a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame.” The first forty seconds of the song begins each Dodger broadcast and as such has come to invoke a Pavlovian response in me. Where the Songsters go, Vin will soon follow. It is a tune that is the perfect beginning to a baseball broadcast, it gives permission to slip into a better, blissful place for the next three hours: “Let’s go, batter up! We’re taking the afternoon off!” Then, in a Hollywood rarity, Vin Scully takes over and exceeds the expectations of the pre-game hype.
Harry Simeone Singers – It’s A Beautiful Day for a Ballgame – MP3
Since it would be wrong to play this song and not listen to Vin afterward, here’s the master himself calling the 9th inning of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game versus the Chicago Cubs on September 9, 1965.
Vin Scully (and Sandy Koufax) are Perfect MP3
For a great recounting of Kirk Gibson’s home run in the 1988 series, click here ….
Song of the Day: The Vagrants – I Can’t Make a Friend
The Vagrants: Once lost, now they're found
The Lonesome Beehive is self-sabotaging, unnecessarily aloof and apparently types about itself in the third person. Therefore, the Lonesome Beehive knows all about not being able to make a friend … so until further notice this lost chestnut from The Vagrants is this site’s official theme song.
Buy the album here.
The Vagrants – I Can’t Make a Friend MP3
Check out a great piece on the band from NPR here:
Best Baseball Songs Ever: SF Seals – Dock Ellis
SF Seals – Dock Ellis
"sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't"
On June 12, 1970, Dock Ellis performed the greatest single-game achievement in baseball history when he pitched a no-hitter while on acid. He was also under the influence of speed, many ballplayers’ drug of choice in the 1960s and 70s (now they enjoy their amphetamine boost via Ritalin), while LSD was and is still only considered a performance-enhancing drug when playing the guitar.
Ellis was “effectively wild” that afternoon in San Diego, walking eight batters and hitting one. Dock would later recount, “I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate.”
The SF Seals, named after the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, provide the best and most compelling anthem to commemorate this monumental event, their fuzzed-out guitars providing a delirious compliment to the insane thoughts which were clearly pulsing through Dock Ellis’s mind. “Take a trip one summer’s day / Don’t forget you have to play … ”
Ellis would later become a drug counselor, which I assume meant he counseled people to take drugs. It’s got to be kind of hard to tell a kid not to get high when you were lit up like the 4th of July and threw a no-hitter.
SF Seals – Dock Ellis MP3
The brilliant animated video made by James Blagden using an interview with Dock is a must-see.
Honorable mention goes to Todd Snider’s “America’s Favorite Past Time” for his take on Dock’s infamous trip.
Todd Snider – America’s Favorite Past Time MP3
Song of the Day: The Moondoggies – Changing
If the Moondoggies were just named, say, The Moon Dogs, I bet they wouldn’t have just played down the street at our local pizza emporium, the Treehouse; so I guess I shouldn’t complain. But the fact is, this band should be much bigger than they are and all they need to do is make one little change. How ironic that their best song is about … changing and how hard it is.
It’s okay, though, Moondoggies. If the seven beers I drank at your show last night are any indication, I don’t feel like changing either.
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Here’s video of them playing at a KEXP mural concert in August 2009.
Best Baseball Songs Ever – Jonathan Richman – The Fenway
Jonathan Richman Saw Ted Williams Go Yard
Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers – The Fenway
To my great shame, I’ve never been to Fenway Park, but I am grateful to Jonathan Richman for taking me there in song. Jonathan sings that he was born near Fenway and ever since it has been a place “where I dream my dreams.” While Richman is famous for invoking nostalgia for a time that perhaps never was – more an indictment on the nature of nostalgia than on the authenticity of Richman’s recollections – in baseball he’s found a subject that transcends such silly hair-splitting. When he sings “there’s an echo from an era that’s already past and gone,” he might as well be singing about himself.
lonesomebeehive 