John Fogerty's 1985 single "Centerfield" had only modest chart success, topping out at #44 on the Billboard Hot 100. 28 years later, it is on the must-play list at every baseball game with an adequate sound system. The song references players both real - Mays, Cobb and DiMaggio - and fictional - Casey at the Bat. Part of Fogerty's inspiration came from a Chuck Berry song, "Brown Eyed Handsome Man." The following lyric was lifted directly from the Berry tune:
Rounding third he was headed for home,To me, "Centerfield" is so much more than a baseball song. No rock tune better encapsulates the pure joy of a beautiful summer day. Eat your hearts out, Beach Boys!
It was a brown eyed handsome man.
Wanna get your music geek on/drive yourself insane? Try to do the claps and sing the guitar riff at the same time without messing up the rhythm of either. It's a cross-rhythm. If you can do it, go sign yourself up for percussion lessons right now!
My Baseball Fantasy
Vermont League: lost, 4-5-1 (25-18-7 overall, 1st place out of 12 teams)
Maryland League: lost, 1-9 (25-24-1, 6th of 10)
Public League: 80.5 Rotisserie points (3rd of 12)
My Player of the Week: Mike Trout (Center Fielder, Angels) with 3 home runs, 10 RBI, 7 runs, 1 stolen base and a .313 batting average
I am playing in three very different fantasy baseball leagues this year. This is my fourth year in the Vermont league with Mock and his cousins. It's a live online draft, head-to-head league. I am commissioner and three-time defending champion (coincidence, I swear). The Yahoo! public league is live online draft, Rotisserie. New this year is the Maryland league, started by a high school friend who wanted a league his kids could join - an auto draft, head-to-head league.
My daughter technically has a team in the Maryland league, too, though she is essentially a non-participant. Her one parameter as I helped her set up for the auto-draft was that she didn't want any Yankees on her team. She has ignored her team ever since. Oh well, free win for everyone else.
For the most part, all three teams are doing well. My Maryland league team survived a weak start - partially due to not entirely understanding the league rules - to climb to second place as recently as a week ago. As you can see, though, I had my hat handed to me in my most recent matchup and my standing tumbled.
Mike Trout, one of last year's wunderkinds, also started the season slow but has been a beast of late. I had first pick in the public league draft and grabbed the Angel outfielder, Yahoo!'s top-rated fantasy player heading into the season. His performance will be key to my own success.
Go Trout! The slow start couldn't last forever.
ReplyDelete"The Boys of Summer" remains my favorite summer song. I wasn't immediately familiar with "Centerfield," but "put me in coach, I'm ready to play" was immediately identifiable, so maybe it's just one of those songs I either only had partial memory of, or had never heard the whole thing because it was in one of those compilation commercials. Great vintage clips in the video, though!
The video is really nice - a wonderful snippet of baseball culture all its own.
Delete'Wanna get your music geek on/drive yourself insane? Try to do the claps and sing the guitar riff at the same time without messing up the rhythm of either. It's a cross-rhythm. If you can do it, go sign yourself up for percussion lessons right now!'
ReplyDeleteI just tried it with this soft, little timid hum. I had to! I need to try it again because I was too busy wanting to laugh at myself.
I had a friend in high school who figured it out and would challenge the rest of us to try. I never could do it. I've gotten a lot better at cross-rhythms over the year so if I actually sat down with it for a bit and thought it through, I might have a shot. Meanwhile, he's now a professional jazz musician.
DeleteOkay, so I tried it in the shower. And now I'm back at the kitchen table listening to the intro and trying it again and again. What do you mean by he 'figured it out?' That makes it sound like a math problem. Drumming comes from the intestines.
DeleteCross-rhythms ARE a math problem. Drumming from the gut is all well and good but from time to time, you do need to sort out what's on the page. Intellectual understanding is useful.
DeleteTry beating 2 beats in one hand for every 3 in the other. Or 3 against 4. Hearing and imitating the pattern is not the same as getting your two limbs to act independently of one another. Subdividing the beats can help you figure it out. I learned both of those patterns - the second with the help of a mnemonic. So, I think I could probably sort out "Centerfield," too, but I'd need to put some thought into it.
No. Just no.
DeleteHa! Can't say I didn't warn you. It is a quick route to madness. But this stuff is worth learning if you're going to get serious with the drums.
Delete:) That's not what I meant. What I meant is, breaking it down like that is like taking apart the mechanism that just knows and incapacitating it.
Delete'Hearing and imitating the pattern is not the same as getting your two limbs to act independently of one another.'
No. It's not the same. But subdividing the beats is a sure way to bring too much awareness to bear on the more natural simultaneous division/synchronization of all four limbs which occurs the more you simply listen and hit. Drums are not the same as reading music for piano. There are no notes to be got wrong or right -- eg, no, that's not a B, it's an E. It's more like developing an innate response to the spine of a song.
I will be quick to say that I could be wrong, simply because I lack training and exposure. But based on the constant rhythm that flows through me even when the music isn't playing, I do feel a strong conviction about everything I've written.
Okay, Ringo...
DeleteYou should still learn cross-rhythms if you want to get good. Neal Peart would say so, too. Oh and there's no harm in learning to read a percussion score, either. Just sayin'...
Sticking my tongue out at you.
DeleteFollow your bliss, Suze. It's all tools for the tool box.
Delete:) I know. And thank you for the encouragement.
DeleteAnytime.
DeleteHey Squid, speaking of Neil, I wonder if you've ever turned your musico-analytic ear towards this particular puzzle (if it's even really a puzzle at all).
DeleteWow, no idea! I poked around, too, but couldn't find anything.
DeleteOh, and I didn't know about the Chuck Berry lyrics. Very cool!
ReplyDelete(Poor Fogerty... wasn't he once sued by a record company for essentially stealing from himself? i.e., using CCR riffs in a solo record.)
Apparently so. I guess he ended up signing away a lot of his rights to the CCR material, too, just to avoid further legal entanglements.
DeleteReading this and watching the video were a great way to start the morning! I love that song!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Nan. Happy Mother's Day!
DeleteBaseball isn't big in Australia, but I used to play softball, which is a similar game.
ReplyDeleteI have my Liebster post up, if you would like to read my answers, Squid and thanks again for including me on your list.
Baseball has not had as much success internationally as basketball though I know there have been a few Aussies in the Major Leagues over the years.
DeleteI shall go check it out, Carolyn!
That would be my one stipulation: No Yankees. Your daughter is brilliant as ever. Happy song to end the day.
ReplyDeleteI always wince a little when I know I need to pick a Yankee - especially when it's A-Rod.
DeleteI remember teaching myself the guitar riff to "Centerfield" after the first time I heard it on the radio. Although now I mostly associate it in my head with the movie "Bull Durham."
ReplyDeleteI first started playing fantasy baseball in the mid 1980s in NYC. Not that many people played then and I remember it being called Rotisserie baseball. The ritual eventually became that you would look forward to the day of the week the USA today would come out with their stat page (I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday) and then you would by hand enter the stats and calculate the weekly standings.
Bull Durham - I adore that movie.
DeleteI'm a relative late-comer to fantasy sports but now I'm obsessed. I'm no good at football but I've done reasonably well with baseball. I don't think I could have endured back in the do-it-yourself days. The whole thing's so much easier when a computer can do most of the work for you.
This is the first I knew that anyone had ever written a song all about baseball. Shows how much I know ;)
ReplyDeleteWe do have this classic from the Olympics one year, though:
http://youtu.be/DocNM9WyQRg
Oh gawd, it's still awkward all these years later!
Oh, my! They all seem like such nice people, too - certainly not deserving of such humiliation on national television.
Delete