I’m not a huge baseball fan and neither is my roommate, but we have a dispute to settle. I won’t tell you which side I’m on, I’ll just let you assume that I’m on whichever side is right.
Is it a regular thing at most baseball games to sing “Take Me Out To the Ballgame” in the 7th inning stretch? Or is that just a Cubs thing?
Thanks!
Other stadiums do have music prior to the bottom of the 7th, I believe the organist at Busch plays “The King of Beers”, but I doubt anything compares to what goes at Wrigley.
I haven’t been to an Astros game since they played in the 'Dome, but I’m pretty sure I recall singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the 7th inning stretch when I did go.
Not anymore.
A few years ago (after the brewery sold the team), TMOTTBG returned to its rightful place in the middle of the 7th. The Budweiser ad now comes in the 8th.
The Seattle Mariners have ferry boat races during the 7th inning stretch.
Hydroplanes, not ferry boats. A ferry boat race would be significantly less entertaining:) But TMOTTBG is still sung at some point.
It is sung in the middle of the 7th in every Major League ballpark, and probably every minor league, independent league and semi-pro game in the USA.
It’s always done at every game. The Cubs have their own special way though.
Haj
Can anyone give me the lyrics to the song it’s the chorus of? I think it’s old enough to be public domain now.
If you get the soundtrack to Ken Burns’ “Baseball” you can hear two different versions of the song sung with the verses, one by Carly Simon.
Some teams have different seventh-inning stretch traditions. The Orioles, for example, play John Denver’s “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” for some stupid reason. And, late in the 2001 season, they all started playing “God Bless America.” Some still do. Most stick with the chorus of “Take Me Out…” And we can thank Bill Veeck for that.
And for what it’s worth, in the wake of 911 a lot of parks opted to sing “God Bless America” in lieu of TMOTTBP. It seems that both are being sung now, from time to time.
I like to sing the former one word off in the lyrics. You have to get your jollies where you can…
And for you audiophiles, here’s what is believed to be the earliest recording of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”, done in the year it was composed.
No, the hydroplane races are in the 6th inning, where they belong.
The seventh inning stretch is TMOTTBG followed by Louie Louie.
(occasionally, they’re preceeded by God Bless America, but always TMOTTBG and Louie Louie)
The Yankees, like many (all?) MLB teams, have added “God Bless America” to the Seventh Inning Stretch, but also continue to play the traditional “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” afterwards. For some reason I’ve never been able to fathom, they then play “Cotton-eyed Joe.”
And the ground crew continues to perform “YMCA” when they groom the infield in the 5th, a tradition that started during the 1996 pennant run. Mercifully, they have abandoned the “Macarena.”
“Throw me out as the game ball,
knock me out of the park,
I’ve lost my peanuts, I’m crackers, Jack:
hit me so hard that I’ll never come back,
'cause I’m root toot toot Tooty-Fruity,
It’s no joke, I’m insane.
Yes, I’m one, two, three strikes short
of a full ball game!”
Trinopus
(The first five lines were from Sternecky and Doyle’s “Walt Kelly’s Pogo,” and the last three lines are original.)
So that’s what Ozzy was singing! 
I doubt even Ozzy knows for sure. Listen to the MP3 here (for PCs) and here (for Macs) .
“Let’s go out to the ballgame… Let’s go out tuurrda crooood… Take me in ugnninna…” Classic.
If the Cubs had picked him over Billy Corgin last night, they’d be going to the Series.