Yes, our long winter wait is over, as baseball season begins Monday (yeah, yeah, I know there's a game on Sunday but the Giants start Monday and that's when my season begins), and thus my two sons, my daughter, my brother, my nephew and myself can begin our yearly fascination with the great game of baseball.
I first discovered "Gee, It's a Wonderful Game" on Ken Burns' documentary Baseball and the song captures wonderfully (so to speak) the joy of being a baseball fan. Written by Michigan native and all-time great American sportswriter and short story writer Ring Lardner in 1911 (a new Jukebox record for oldest song featured), it's a paean to the early days of the sport at a time when baseball was the only national pastime. Lardner (memorably portrayed by John Sayles in the film Eight Men Out) deftly weaves historical figures and early great baseball players with shared names (Christopher Columbus and Giants' great Christy Mathewson, Napoleon Bonaparte and Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie) into a narrative where he freely admits that much like Sam Cooke he doesn't know much about history--but he knows a lot about baseball. Lardner also ties in Frank Chance of "Tinker to Evers to Chance" fame as well as definitely the meanest as well as perhaps the best player of all time, one Tyus Cobb. It's a tour de force of baseball and fandom if ever there was one--and I'd be willing to bet this is the only one that ever was.
Performed by Ann Arbor (it's a great day on Jukebox for Michiganders) brass ensemble The Dodworth Saxhorn Band, "Gee, It's a Wonderful Game" features just the kind of instrumentation you'd expect for a tune from 1911--tubas, trumpets, saxophones, and a surprising dearth of electric guitars. Oh, well, you can't have everything.
Lyric Sheet: "Baseball, baseball/Ain't it a dandy old game?"
It sure is.
Enjoy:
Peace,
emaycee
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