Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Jack Norworth (1879–1959); Albert von Tilzer (1878–1956) 

When Albert von Tilzer and Jack Norworth wrote “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” neither had ever been to a baseball game. 

Norworth was born John Godfrey Knauff and changed his name to Jack Norworth when he went into show business. His father was the choir director at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and the theatre was not considered a reputable profession. Following a few years at sea, he landed in New York City at age twenty to embark on a show business career. He appeared in a number of Broadway theater productions (including the Ziegfeld Follies of 1909), on early radio, and in early sound films. He was portrayed by Dennis Morgan in the 1944 musical film Shine On Harvest Moon, the movie being named for his second most famous song. The royalties from all of Norworth’s songs were donated to the ASCAP Foundation.

Von Tilzer was born Elias Gumbinsky in Indianapolis to Polish/Jewish immigrants. He and his brothers, Julius, Jack, Will, and Harry, were all musically inclined, with Harry running away to join the circus at the age of sixteen. Eventually, he had steady work in traveling burlesque and vaudeville shows, and Albert followed in his tracks, deciding to quit high school and take his music skills out into the world. Brothers Will and Jack joined Harry and Albert in Manhattan, and over the years, in different permutations of partnership, they founded or managed, between the four of them, four different music publishing houses. In 1929 with the success of the sound film The Jazz Singer, movie musicals became possible. Seeing opportunity, Albert left his brothers behind in New York and relocated to LA where he and his wife Caddie stayed for the rest of their lives. He kept composing and collaborated with many lyricists, including Lew Brown, Harry MacPherson, George Whiting, and Ted Fiorito. 

Everyone thinks this song and ball games have been together forever, but the first time it was linked to live game was prior to the opening game of the Los Angeles Prep baseball season in 1934. It has become one of the most performed songs in history. All but forgotten is the intro: 

Katie Casey was baseball mad, 
Had the fever and had it bad.
Just to root for the home town crew,
Ev’ry sou
Katie blew.
On a Saturday her young beau
Called to see if she’d like to go
To see a show, but Miss Kate said “No
But I’ll tell you what you can do:
Take me out to the ball game . . .”

The second verse begins with:
When the score was just two to two, 
Katie Casey knew what to do, 
Just to cheer up the boys she knew, 
She made the gang sing this song: 
Take me out to the ball game . . . 

I wondered: Is this the first mention of cheerleading in a song? I did a little research and found that “the first cheer” is reported to have occurred during a football game at Princeton in the 1880’s. Not long after, Princeton formed an all-male “pep club.” Men dominated cheerleading until World War II, and then, as happened with just about every profession during that war, women filled the vacancies. The rest is history. But it all began with Katie Casey. 

By the way, Norworth and Von Tilzer eventually saw a baseball game, but not until the 1920s.