Carly Simon - Take Me Out To The Ballgame (1994)

During his time with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s, the great Jackie Robinson and his wife were having trouble buying a home in Connecticut. Despite his hard won acceptance as a sensational baseball player, many people - even those who rooted for him - did not want his family living in their neighborhood. 

After a newspaper article detailed the Robinsons' failed attempts to purchase a nice suburban home caught the eye of a woman named Andrea Simon, she helped the Dodger legend fulfill his dream. Simon was the wife of Richard Simon of the renowned Simon and Schuster book publishing firm and mother of pop singer-songwriter, Carly Simon.

The two families became close friends. The Robinsons even lived with the Simons while the baseball pioneer's new home was under construction. The star frequently played ball with Carly and her family in the Simon's backyard and she grew up bleeding Dodger blue. (Tommy Lasorda would have been so proud of her.) For further insight read why Carly Simon was named the unofficial Dodgers' mascot.

In 2011, Simon reminisced about that period of her youth with Diane Rehm of NPR, "I'm not sure whether my falling in love with baseball came first or whether my getting to know Jackie Robinson and his wife Rachel and his three kids - and they're moving in with us for a year and a half - had anything to do with my loving baseball."

In 1994 Ken Burns gifted the world with Baseball, his outstanding documentary chronicling the history of the sport. Included in the film's soundtrack are two versions of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" by Carly Simon.

One of Simon's two covers is a slow, almost acapella arrangement that is quite moving and features only the famous chorus we all know and sing at ballgames. A little piano is added at the end for color.

The second version is more upbeat, employs additional singers, and interestingly includes the original verses from 1908 that nobody ever sings. I didn't even know they existed until researching this article.

The verses tell the tale of a young woman who loves baseball and won't accept a date with a suitor who wants to take her to the theater. She'll only go out with him if he takes her to the game instead. Perhaps nobody sings the verses today because they make the song too long and a bit unwieldy. Musically, they're not nearly as remarkable as the famous chorus.

A side note unrelated to Simon's recordings: neither Jack Norworth nor Albert Von Tilzer - the song's composers - had ever attended a baseball game when they wrote the song. It would be decades after they wrote it before either of them would actually visit a a ballpark. It reminds me of how Brian Wilson wrote all of those great surfing songs even though he never caught a wave in his life, or how Billy Joel wrote the emotional track, "Goodnight Saigon," without ever having served in Viet Nam.

Finally, you can read about the feminist history of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and the real woman who inspired the song, Trixie Friganza, at Smithsonianmag.org.