Just in time for Opening Day! Our local NPR affiliate featured an interview yesterday with Jeff Campbell of Hungry for Music, discussing his seventh cd compilation of baseball songs.

Numerous versions, as one might expect, of "Take me out to the Ballgame": Stan Musial, George Winston, a yiddish one. (Now if only they could get Wing to sing it!) Artists as diverse as Bob Dylan, Jerry Jeff Walker, Tom Paxton, Paul Simon. Springsteen's "Glory Days" is on one -- but I didn't see Fogerty's "Center Field" or my favorite baseball moment in song -- "Paradise by the Dashboard Light"!

I heard a couple of them on the radio -- they were more a novelty than anything -- "Ichiro, Ichiro, Ichiro" sung to of that "Figaro, Figaro, Figaro" song from "Barber of Seville". A song about some player named Biff Pocoroba -- the guy deserves a song since he has a baseball player's name.

Good stuff! Plus the proceeds to go a great cause -- helps school kids in the DC area obtain musical instruments.

Diamond Cuts

I've heard a bunch of those over the years, as Jeff is head of the Music & Poetry committee of SABR .

There are bad baseball recordings just like any other genre, but the subject brings out good stuff from places you don't expect. The usually loathsome and unfunny Garrison Keillor did a hilarious parody of "Casey at the Bat" ...which retells the basic story if Casey had been on the visiting team (Keillor uses a honking New England accent). It's on one of those HFM compilations, I think.

Yeah, Bill W -- he mentioned at the end of the interview that he has a great job -- goes to Orioles games and keeps track of stats which then get published in a couple different baseball rags. So after the show he was heading up to Camden Yards.