Steve Goodman, of course. Talkin' Baseball. Right Field (my position), and bunches and bunches of others.
Are there football songs (aside from school fight songs: On Wisconsin, etc)? Yes; though I've never heard these. (I have to filter out a lot of soccer anthems.) Google has "You'll never walk alone" classified as a football song; apparently because it is popular with "association football" clubs.
Tennis--The Tennis Song wasn't exactly about tennis.
Maybe the songs for team sports are less ironic. Score one for team sports, then.
"D-O-D-G-E-R-S" by Danny Kaye.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGhaPurfYEA
Back in the spring of 1986- of all years- a Klezmer band performed a song about the Red Sox on the Prairie Home Companion. I've never been able to find it on the Internet, but I recall a bit of the lyrics. (I suspect that the song stuck in my mind because of the Red Sox loss of the World Series some 6 months later.)
ReplyDeleteFenway..frankfurters and beer...
From New Hampshire to the ocean
Sox fans are in motion
Hoping without reason
For a better season
Than we had last year...
Mazeltov
Mad Magazine did a parody of the Notre Dame fight song. Pivnick Tech instead of Notre Dame.
All I recall is the end: "...while her undergrads get sick and transfer to USC."
@ Richard - Also, in a sort of bridge or chorus
ReplyDeleteOhhh, Ohhh,
Give it to 'em let 'em see the fastball.
Give it to 'em let 'em see the fastball.
“The Great Joe Bob,” a regional tragedy.
ReplyDeletehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=36aQrJciJxQ
"Six Months out of Every Year"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNRd0s1bFII
I had not previously been aware of Centerfield. Turns out that I had stopped listening to pop radio by the time it came out. Centerfield is much better than PPM's Right Field in expressing the hold that baseball held for generations of kids: "I can be centerfield." Baseball as dreams and hopes.
ReplyDeleteHere is a better video for Centerfield, because it has film from some iconic baseball moments of the postwar era. Such as Al Gionifriddo's catch of Joe D- and Joe D's kicking the base path when he saw the catch. (Nor had I been aware of PPM's Right Field.) Another Centerfield w baseball fotos.
Caring greatly about baseball history at one point in my life, I recognised many of the photos in Centerfield. Significantly, most dated from the era just before the years I started following the Red Sox in 1965, which in turn was nearly a decade before I followed baseball in general.
ReplyDeleteI was terrible at baseball and mostly just like the statistics and history. I recognise few names other than Mike Trout and Mookie Betts at this point.
And a song about cricket. (Warning: There's a malapropism that goes beyond lightning and the lightning bug.)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQfz48VJk1U