MY BASEBALL WEEK, DAY 2: THE SEVENTH INNING STRETCH

by the Editor

As RR has already, in his own inimitable way, put it so well: along with crying, there is no God in baseball.  So does God really want to be recognized at every baseball game?  Does Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" really need to still be heard during the 7^th inning stretch?  Does American exceptionalism really have to be emphasized at most major league games?  I get why Padres media-wrangler John Dever came up with the idea after 9/11 and I get why Bush and the Yankees and Bud Selig ran with it, but isn’t it time to get back to Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and ONLY Take Me Out?  After the Star Spangled Banner, do we really need another dose of enforced patriotism, heavily injected with Christianity, later in the game?  (And remember: it is not appropriate to pray for anything in baseball, oh, maybe that no one gets hurt, but NEVER for your team or favorite player to come out on top.)  And if you HAVE to consider another song, I'm STRONGLY in the "This Land is Your Land" camp, ya know, Woody Guthrie's REPUDIATION of God Bless America!  I think that the music at a baseball game is important, and this present travesty should be put to rest.

I must have started piano lessons when I was around eight or nine.  I liked it okay and practiced fairly regularly for several years.  My teacher was Mrs. Cruikshank.  We entered thru her garage, very quietly, and took our seat if there was another student before us.  The lessons were on an upright, but she also had a baby grand.  She was a great lady, encouraging and not too stern.  I embarked on a pretty unremarkable musical path, the classics, some of my favorites being Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette (the Alfred Hitchcock TV Show theme) and some difficult Beethoven (Prelude in C# Minor perhaps?) that I could hardly really play.  Mrs. Cruikshank suffered from some kind of disability, as she would slowly shuffle, as opposed to walk, from spot to spot.  But she could really play that classical piano.  The worst thing about the whole experience was recitals.  I'm still terrified to play the piano solo.  I can play a keyboard with other players fine, and I can sing a capella in front of people too, but alone on the piano?  Terrifying. 

My second stint with piano lessons came about 20 years later in Los Angeles, right around when I was visiting Dodger Stadium on a regular basis.  I wasn't doing anything musical at the time; my first son had just been born and you know how that goes.  But something was gnawing a hole in me, and I felt like I had to have some kind of musical outlet, so I convinced my wife that for our collective sanity, I take piano lessons.  I can't remember my teacher's name, but he looked like Stephen Hawking, without the apparatus attachments.  He was mobile but seemed to have some sort of leg disability.  He talked about "pedagogy" a lot, stuff I didn't really understand.  Under his tutelage, I embarked on pieces by Bach and Schumann.  I actually introduced him to Philip Glass; I bought the sheet music to "Introduction" from GLASSWORKS.  It seemed to befuddle him at first, but then he "got" it and guided me along so that I can still play it pretty decently today.  I never had to appear at a recital with him.  After a year or so, I stopped the lessons, but because of time issues and not because I wasn't enjoying them.

Which brings us to a couple of months ago and finally meeting a "new" neighbor who's been in the hood here for a year or so.  Yes, she's a piano teacher, so I figured, what the heck, the time's right to brush up on my skills.  Her mobility seems to be just fine, and we had an initial "conference", and I think this might work out.  She has a student "recital" every spring, and I kinda begged her to let me stay out of it, and she seemed okay with that.  I start my first lesson today and I decided that in addition to Schumann, Keith Jarrett, Bach, and "Abide With Me" (see, I'm not totally anti-religious), Take Me Out to the Ball Game might be a good addition to my repertoire.  It doesn't seem too difficult; maybe I can learn it well enough to actually perform it solo!  In any case, someone has to continue the Take Me Out tradition: this is the song, BY ITSELF, that BELONGS in the 7th inning stretch.   

TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW: ALL ABOARD! NEXT STOP OAKLAND!