Word: songfulness
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...Norworth still needed music to accompany his verse. He sought the help of his friend Albert von Tilzer, a Broadway songwriter and the creator of popular songs like "The Alcoholic Blues" and "I May Be Gone for a Long, Long Time," whose waltz-like melody made the tune complete. On May 2, 1908, the U.S. Copyright Office received two copies of their song - and most likely filed them away with the hundreds of other odes to baseball that had come before it. (Among the less popular: the largely forgotten "Baseball Polka," created by a Buffalo ballplayer.) "Take...
...because of baseball. It wasn't part of any regular tradition as it is these days, but it struck a sentimental chord with baseball fans, reminding them of the glory and heroism of legendary players like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson. In 1958, on the song's 50th anniversary, MLB gave Norworth - who had finally attended his first game in 1940 - a gold lifetime ball park pass...
...wasn't until the 1970s that the song found its current exalted status as baseball's alternative anthem, thanks to Hall of Fame broadcaster Harry Caray, then an announcer at Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox. Sitting in his booth, Caray would often sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" with nearby fans. One day, then-owner Bill Veeck noticed the impromptu choir. The following game, he outfitted Caray's booth with a secret microphone, and a tradition was born. Caray eventually moved to Wrigley Field with the Chicago Cubs, bringing his seventh-inning singing with...
...home team in 2006; the hoarse and possibly inebriated Eddie Vedder, who sounds like he's asking someone to buy him "some peanuts and crack;" and in an appalling lack of judgment by the Cubs front office, Ozzy Osbourne, who sang not a single word of the song correctly. Thankfully, no chickens were harmed. And mysteriously famous American Idol castoff William Hung? Perhaps it's better to forget that altogether...
...Europe, some of whom pay thousands of dollars to stay at jungle lodges where Indian medicine men guide them through all-night ayahuasca rituals. Sting and Tori Amos have admitted sampling it in Latin America, where it is legal, as has Paul Simon, who chronicled the experience in his song "Spirit Voices." "It heals the body and the spirit," says Eustacio Payaguaje, 51, a Cofán Indian shaman who regularly treks to Bogotá to lead weekend ayahuasca ceremonies in the city. "It is medicine for the soul." (Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From...