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Exhibition Baseball Americana

Baseball Americana

Trixie, Jack, and Nora

Trixie Friganza, ca. 1907–1920. Reproductions. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (037.01.00)
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Jack Norworth, ca. 1907–1920. Reproductions. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (037.00.00)
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Nora Bayes, ca. 1907–1920. Reproductions. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (037.02.00)
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Trixie, Jack, and Nora

Historians have pointed to Trixie Friganza as the real-life inspiration for Katie Casey of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” who is depicted in the usually unsung verses as an independent, well-informed fan leading “the gang” in cheers. The song’s lyricist, Jack Norwith, left his wife for Friganza, a popular vaudevillian and women’s suffrage activist, but then abruptly married another star performer, Nora Bayes. Perhaps without irony, the next season the couple wrote “Let’s Get the Umpire’s Goat” (1909).