Baseball Song Followup

Following up on last week's post about "Van Lingle Mungo"...

There's another great baseball song that you should know about: "Talkin' Baseball: Willie, Mickey, and the Duke" by Terry Cashman. I've just started singing it to my daughter, and she loves it just as much as "Van Lingle Mungo." I don't think she has any idea what it's about (baseball in the 1950s) or what a "willie mickey and the duke" is but she just loves the melodies, and I love singing it to her.

"Talkin' Baseball" is just one of Terry Cashman's homages to baseball. He also wrote versions of the song for a variety of teams, and he wrote one for that great episode of "The Simpsons" where Mr. Burns recruits professional baseball players to compete in a charity softball game.

In the past, I've also sung "The D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song" by Danny Kaye, but that's not really a bedtime song. Too much action.

The reason I know the words to all these songs is that for many years I've own a CD called "Baseball's Greatest Hits," which compiles just what the name implies: great baseball songs. It's got "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio," "I Love Mickey," and many more. It also has a dramatic reading of "Casey at the Bat" by the man who made it famous, De Wolf Hopper, back around the turn of the century, and a clip of audio captured by a reporter who talked to Tommy Lasorda after Dave Kingman hit three home runs against Tommy's Dodgers. It is a masterpiece of profanity that has to be heard to be believed.

If you want to get these songs, here are some links to make it easy:

Van Lingle Mungo via iTunes

Terry Cashman's Greatest Baseball Hits via iTunes

Baseball's Greatest Hits via Amazon.com.