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06/26/2005: Cardinal Nation is in a bit of a twitter....
over the fact that the broadcast rights to Cardinal games in the St. Louis area might be shifting from KMOX radio (aka, "the mighty MOX" for their longtime domination of the St. Louis airwaves) to much smaller, less powerful KTRS. Over at The Cardinals Birdhouse Rex Duncan, writing about that possible shift, writes:
The game of baseball and its relationship with fans is hidebound in tradition. Can anyone imagine not singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” before the home half of the seventh inning?Hmmmmmm.... how quickly we forget.
Not to pick on Rex (who's a hell of a good writer, one of the best (if not the best) on The Birdhouse roster), but actually for the longest time (from the early seventies, if not earlier, IIRC, to the mid-90s when Anheuser-Busch sold the team to the current ownership group) they never played "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in St. Louis during the seventh inning stretch; they played "Here Comes the King" (the Budweiser ad jingle) instead of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" (which they played between the seventh and eighth innings).
And what about the depressing period after 9/11, when "God Bless America" replaced "Take Me Out..." as the seventh-inning stretch tune in every professional ballpark? The less said about that the better, I say. I only hope that's run its course. Especially if the Yankees make the postseason again; I'm getting so f*cking sick of hearing Ronan Tynan singing "God Bless America" I'm going to have an apoplectic fit if I hear it one more time...
But alas, hearing something other than "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the the seventh inning stretch is depressingly common....
So much for the sacredness of tradition, I fear.
Len on 06.26.05 @ 12:22 PM CST
