“Take Me Out to the Ball Game”

The best-known baseball song found its way into American culture via the New York subway, where Tin Pan Alley’s Jack Norworth jotted down the lyrics in 1908. The complete song describes how “baseball-mad” Katie Casey urges her beau to take her to the game rather than a show. Crowd renditions of the chorus did not become a customary seventh-inning stretch ritual until the 1970s, when Chicago White Sox announcer Harry Caray led fans in rousing sing-a-longs that caught on nationwide.