I have a question for you. Although I need not ask it, do you recall the most wonderful baseball tune of them all. “Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd”, we see this song cheered allover, energetic and loud. Yes it’s fun. Yes it’s catchy. But does it stay loyal to the game? Does this classical American ring, accurately depict its even more classical representation? I happen to believe it does not and below my friends, is why…
Imagine for a moment that you are in a baseball stadium. You are eating hotdogs, drinking beer, and enjoying Americas #1 sport |
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Then “Take Me Out To the Ball Game Comes On”. The songs pleasant rhyme and soothing tune does nothing but solidify your seemingly perfect mood. Songs however cannot be measured solely by such things. Tunes and melodies do not make good music. It is instead the combination of good melody with good meaning. Lets look at the meaning of this song… |
“ Take me out to the ball game, Take me out to the crowd”. The first statement I have no problem with. However, because the second sentence is structured parallel to the first, we assume the two are meant to have similar meaning. In the first sentence, the speaker is simply asking to go to the ball game, and we can infer from the overall tone that it[‘]s because he enjoys the game. The second sentence however asks to go to the crowd, and if it’s parallel structured self took on a similar meaning as the first sentence, it would be because the speaker likes the crowd. This is preposterous. No one in their right mind goes to a game, a baseball game for that matter, for the crowd. What is this guy trying to pull honestly!? Oh but it gets worse. “Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks”. This is actually, what first got my attention to this
| song’s lack of credibility. In a standard package of cracker jacks, a consumer can find a medley of “ caramel coated popcorn and peanuts” says www.crackerjack.com. So essentially, if we use the definition in place of the “cracker jacks” symbol, we hear “Buy me some peanuts and caramel coated popcorn and peanuts”. |
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Now I don’t have to be the first to say that the repetitive nature of this sentence does nothing less than disgust the reader. I mean, even now, sitting in my chair, I have a violent urge to get up and free my hour old dinner from its warm acidic prison (an execution prison that is, because after all, no food stays in this prison for life, but instead meets a nastier fate, and is digested by various intestines). But if we resist the urge to…throw up… what’s next? What next is there to disgrace the name of an already disgraceful game? I apologize ahead of time for repeating, “Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks” but “Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks, I don't care if I ever get back”. What the hell is going on here? The speaker has, without doubt lost it. “I don’t care if I ever gat back”? Why, I ask you, would he not get back?! He’s at a baseball game, and I don’t want to be blunt but it’s not exactly the most dangerous of family activities. Is it a coincidence that the last word of this, alien sentence, rhymes with “crackerjack”? I think not! The second clause’s only purpose is to provide the word “back” at the end so the first clause rhymes with something. What brainwashing, drug dealing, freak wrote this song, and how, more importantly, did he manage to get everyone to willingly listen to it, sing it even!
Look how far down the page you are. Go on, I’ll wait, look back and review all the problems in this song. Should a song have this many problems? Should anything publicly accepted have so many wholes? This is not to mention the short length of this tune. I count ten lines total. Ten lines, and yet it’s surplus of problems and fallacies surpasses any tune I have, as of yet laid eyes on.
So don’t cheer or sing, don’t dance or swing, but tap your neighbor, do him a favor, hand him my thoughts, and let the truth un-clot. Take me away from the ball game; take me away from the crowd.
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"Take Me Out To the Ball Game" : As Seen at 5AM