This page is where you’ll find some of my favorite baseball-related music; here’s a Chuck Berry song performed by Robert Cray and the man himself from a 1986 all-star concert celebrating Berry’s 60th birthday, preserved in the documentary, “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll” – ‘Brown-Eyed Handsome Man.’
The “baseball” link?—it’s at the end of the song:
“Two, three count with nobody on
He hit a high fly into the stand
Rounding third he was headed for home
It was a brown-eyed handsome man
That won the game, it was a brown-eyed handsome man”
From 1977 to 1998, “This Week in Baseball” was Major League Baseball’s syndicated weekend highlight show, a half-hour where fans could get a look at the week’s top plays and storylines of the season. Though off the air for many years, one thing people remember fondly about the show is the closing theme, an instrumental called “Gathering Crowds.” Play it loud and pretend you’re pitching, catching, or hitting the ball in slow motion. You’ll feel better.
More baseball-related nostalgia with “Glory Days,” the fifth single released from Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The U.S.A. album, and a video that went into heavy rotation on MTV when it debuted back in June 1985. The coolest thing was that Springsteen really did have a friend back in high school who could throw that speedball by you.
Before Game 5 of the 1968 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers, José Feliciano sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” to a national television audience. The reaction was so negative in some quarters, it nearly derailed his career. But it freed artists ever since to perform the song their own way, with their own voice.
Chuck Prophet’s tribute to San Francisco and the Say Hey Kid, “Willie Mays Is Up At Bat” from his 2012 album “Temple Beautiful”
“We kind of leaned a little more toward the mythological side of things, but, I mean, Willie Mays is very real. There’s also a whole host of characters on the record, from the Mitchell Brothers to Redman to Jim Jones—a lot of people who probably wouldn’t be caught dead with Willie Mays, or Willie Mays probably wouldn’t be caught dead with them. We knew he was going to be on the record somehow, and he’s a very real person, and he’s sort of the hero of the record. He’s a kinda quiet guy, and he’s a man of substance and stood up to racism. There’s probably a lot of thick books written about him, but all we knew about him is that he always swung for the fence.”
Magnet Magazine, February 6, 2012