as published in
Let's
Play Ball
a true story of patriotism by Liz Clayton
When I moved
to Toronto, Ontario last year I was prepared to cope with a lot of cultural
differences -- funny accents, milk in plastic bags, Don Cherry's suits, an
amusing but earnest tooth-and-nail fight for national pride, etc. What I was
NOT expecting was this nationalist (and in many ways, decidedly anti-American)
streak to have ventured into tampering with the unthinkable. On April 14,
1999, I learned what many American baseball fans visiting Toronto have already
known for years: Canada has fucked with the seventh inning stretch.
Sure, take your
pot-shots ("What, they had to make it a 10th inning stretch due to the lousy
exchange rate?") -- this is nothing to sneeze at. This is much stranger, and
much much worse. In Toronto, they, they... THEY DON'T SING "TAKE ME OUT TO
THE BALL GAME"!
That's right.
They sing something else. Taking a bold step that not only defies one of the
firmest institutions in perhaps the most tradition-steeped sport there is,
the Toronto Blue Jays display remarkable hubris in having replaced "Take Me
Out to the Ball Game" with a song ABOUT THEMSELVES — an insipid, gruesome
little number the chorus of which is "Let's Play Ball!" that extols the virtues
of the Toronto team and is punctuated by bizarre cow-print clad women standing
on the field and punching their fists into the air. Now, I've been a reluctant
attendee at SkyDome (which I like to think of as a retractable-dome covered
glorified McDonald's, as they seem to own every single point of purchase in
the place) anyway, but this just takes things too far. It's bad enough the
closest ball club to me is now the Blue Jays, but this seventh inning thing
is just a slap in the face. I've taken some small degree of satisfaction in
sitting these so-called stretches out, and even more satisfaction in watching
confused Americans (and there are always some) react when those familiar bars
do not transmit from the multi-million dollar sound-system, and when its hallowed
lyrics do not show up on the Jumbotron that dedicates 30% of its space to
advertising itself throughout each game. Meting out this tiny dose of pleasure
from a shared indignation, however, did not squelch my ire. When James approached
me to write something on Canadian baseball for the Gazette, the topic was
obvious: I gotta get to the bottom of this "Let's Play Ball" crap.
First I wanted
to set my conscience at ease that at least the nine or ten people that go
see the Montreal Expos don't have to worry about this kind of thing. Determined
to find out whether this problem was Canada-wide or merely limited to the
brilliant minds of the Blue Jays organization, I phoned the Expos front office
and spoke to Martine Peters regarding their seventh inning stretch procedure.
Bolstering my faith yet again in the obvious superiority of the National League
of Professional Baseball, Ms. Peters assured me that not only do they sing
"Take Me Out To The Ball Game" during the seventh inning stretch at Olympic
Stadium, they sing it in English! "Do you sing it in French also?" I asked.
"No," she said, "We sing it in English. Everything else at the game we do
in French."
I phoned up Howard Starkman, the VP of Media Relations for the Toronto Blue Jays in hopes that he might be able to answer my questions. As it turns out, the "Let's Play Ball" song is actually entitled "Okay Blue Jays". The "Okay Blue Jays" song was commissioned in 1980 as an advertising jingle to be used that season -- he couldn't explain how it made the leap from commercial jingle to scoreboard, but for some reason, in what was only the Jays' third season, it did. In 1981 or 1982, the Blue Jays got together with the Ontario Ministry of Health's "Participatction!" program (something like the President's Test for Physical Fitness, I'm guessing) and put official, uh, fitness people, on the field to lead the crowd in stretching. "Because it's the seventh inning stretch," Starkman astutely noted. Starkman further attributed the continued "success" of the "Let's Play Ball"/aerobics combo to the fact that "people become used to a routine" — a winning plan anytime. I asked Mr. Starkman if he was aware of any other teams that defied tradition and did something unusual (I was trying to be charitable here) during the seventh inning stretch. He said in Baltimore he seemed to recall "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" played some role, and inexplicably cited the Cubs' famed Harry Caray (and now guest celebrity) renditions as well — well, yes, Mr. Starkman, but they're still singing the right song. Grasping at straws, I asked him if he at least thought that in Toronto people were more inclined to stretch, to which he responded "Well... that depends on the crowd. When it's a big game, a tense game -- some people just aren't demonstrative, they come to be entertained, not to be the entertainment. I mean, if you don't want to stretch, you don't have to."