How baseball got its beat

10:53Nancy Faust:Take Me Out to the Ballgame was a suffragette anthem. Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jackets. I'm just trying to, where is the...

11:04John Thorn:No, but you're reflecting on the chorus. There are many other stanzas, and the original stanzas reflected an independent-minded woman who knows all about baseball and the players and wants to go to a game.

11:21Nancy Faust:Her name was Katie Casey.

11:23John Thorn:Katie Casey was baseball mad, had the fever and had it bad. Just to root for the hometown through every school, Katie Blue.

11:37Nancy Faust:When Katie's boyfriend asks if she wants to see a show, she says, nah, take me out to the ballgame.

11:46Nancy Faust:She knows all the players' names, and when the ump makes a bad call.

11:57Nancy Faust:And crucially, when the game is tied, she knows exactly what to do.

12:07Nancy Faust:She made the gang sing. And thus was born a new genre of music, baseball songs.

12:14John Thorn:The combination of sheet music and cylinder roll and 78 RPM records, it was a deluge in the 1910s. Baseball music was really, really popular. Not so much with fans as with publishers.

12:32Nancy Faust:So it was a marketing tool in some ways. Yeah. To get people to go to the games.

12:36John Thorn:Yeah, in fact, there were so many Tin Pan Alley. Look, George M. Cohan wrote a song that he issued in very nearly the same week as Take Me Out.

12:47Nancy Faust:It was called Take Your Girl to the Ballgame. And it was quickly followed up by other copycats, like I Want to Go to the Ballgame. The tune may sound familiar. But even with all this new baseball music produced by Tin Pan Alley, By and large, there still wasn't a lot of group singing going on at actual ballparks. John says a big reason for that was technical.

13:12John Thorn:The sound systems were primitive.

13:15Nancy Faust:A brass band was still the best backing track available until the radio came around. It's possible this new radio audience was responsible for the fresh wave of baseball music released in the decades that followed.

13:28John Thorn:Radio brought us Joe DiMaggio's song. Hello, Joe. What do you know? We need a hit, so here I go. 1941, Les Brown and his band of renown. Right one. Right two. Fill that up. And very stupid lyrics. Exceedingly dumb. But it's a catchy tune. And not a free. Jolton Joe DiMaggio. And Simon and Garfunkel, what, 25 years later, sang Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio? The nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

14:18John Thorn:Well, that's what we do with baseball. We turn lonely eyes to the game. The game, its strength is in the past, not in the present moment. so that marketers with relentless appeal to nonstop audio between innings may be making a mistake.

14:42Nancy Faust:But all that audio stayed outside the ballpark for decades.

14:46John Thorn:The idea that radio came in in 1920 didn't mean that fans were bringing radios to the ballparks until the 1950s.

14:57John Thorn:When transistor radios came in.

14:59Nancy Faust:At that point, fans sitting in the stands might hear a second-hand taste of the radio broadcast, carried through the air from a few rows over, where someone had the sound on transistor radio turned up.

15:14John Thorn:The idea of upsetting your neighbors by listening to rock music during the heat of a ballgame must have been daunting.

15:26Nancy Faust:John says some people brought earplugs to the ballpark. So you would bring your transistor radio and everybody around you would be hearing the music that you're playing.

15:36John Thorn:Correct.

15:37Nancy Faust:Correct. And if fans thought that was annoying, well, the volume was about to be turned way up.

15:44John Thorn:The idea that you would let go of attention and perhaps permit the strolling underneath the stands. This was a thing of the past.

15:56Nancy Faust:That's when we come back.

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18:02Nancy Faust:It's a hot summer evening in Chicago. July 1977. Stadium lights blaze down on the baseball field. Jerseys sticky with the summer humidity. The White Sox are at bat. Two runs down to the Kansas City Royals in a game they want to win badly. But they've got to get something going. The stands buzz with tension. Fans jump out of their seats. Beer and peanuts spill in the stands. The White Sox organist is beaming in her glass booth behind home plate. As the pitcher winds up for the next batter, she leans forward, her fingers hovering over the keys.

18:53Nancy Faust:And that's when, creeping up in the background, you start to hear it.

19:09Nancy Faust:A chorus of na-na goodbyes sneaking through the crowd, getting louder and louder as the fans start to catch on.

19:17John Thorn:And these fans, 45 ,000, 9-1-9, are really trying to help this ball club.

19:25Nancy Faust:The announcer has to raise his voice to be heard over the tidal wave of singing.

19:29John Thorn:Boy, is this some kind of fun?

19:31Nancy Faust:And this is when the White Sox explode.

19:34John Thorn:He ain't gonna play anywhere!

19:36Nancy Faust:They load the bases. Bat in four runs for the lead. Everybody's safe and there's a run in with the bases loaded. The other team is forced to take out their pitcher. That's what the Sox have needed. And as he steps off the mound, the Chicago fans serenade him off the pitch.

19:55Nancy Faust:Even louder.

20:02Nancy Faust:When you start to play and the whole stadium starts singing along, what were you thinking? What were you feeling?

20:11John Thorn:I thought, am I hearing things? I mean, I realize everybody's singing along.

20:18John Thorn:And it was more than just take me out to the ballgame to hear everybody singing along. It wasn't something I was used to. It wasn't very nice. It wasn't the kind of thing you'd typically hear at a ballgame. This was like taunting. I don't know. I was a little bit responsible.

20:40Nancy Faust:Nancy Faust did not mean to change the way we hear baseball forever. In fact, she didn't even mean to become a stadium organist. Did you grow up rooting for the White Sox? Is that how you ended up working with them?

20:52John Thorn:It's funny, I was just thrust into this position because my family were not sports fans at all. My true love was always animals. I grew up thinking perhaps I could be a veterinarian. I had no aspirations to become a baseball organist.

21:06Nancy Faust:But music ran in Nancy's family. Her mom was a professional organist. She taught Nancy how to play when she was four years old. When I was going to college, I was filling in for my mom when she couldn't make a job,

21:18John Thorn:playing music for luncheons or banquets that was attended by the general manager of the White Sox. And so he heard me play, and that's how this whole thing developed.

21:30Nancy Faust:When Nancy Faust walked into the organist's booth at White Sox Stadium for the first time, she was 23 years old. Her short blonde hair was pulled back into pigtails. She hadn't been to a baseball game in years. And she didn't know it, but she was about to revolutionize the game.

21:53Nancy Faust:The booth was like a fishbowl, with big single-pane windows on the front and sides. Sitting behind her organ, Nancy could see the whole stadium surrounding her. Thousands of seats. But Nancy says she wasn't that nervous.

22:07John Thorn:I knew I'd played a really mean anthem. I knew that was really good. And I think it was the year of the lowest attendance ever. And so even though the organ was out there in center field, there was very few people around me. So if I did mess up a little, nobody would have hurt a lot of people. Yeah, less pressure.

22:24Nancy Faust:Attendance had been an issue at White Sox games for years.

22:27John Thorn:Things were so bad in those days. I remember the general manager saying, oh, we had a crowd of 8 ,000 and we blew it. Nowadays, 8 ,000 just wouldn't cut it.

22:36Nancy Faust:It was an issue the team's previous manager had been obsessed with correcting. Bill Veck was convinced the answer was to juice up the fan experience. He injected adrenaline into the stands whenever he could. Most famously, with the exploding scoreboard. A 130-foot-wide electronic screen that launched fireworks, blasted sound effects, and lit up with pixelated pinwheels anytime the socks hit a home run. And Veck was also thinking about music.

23:06John Thorn:The first organist at Comiskey Park was hired in 1959 or 60, actually. Bill Vecco owned the team at that time, and he did something unusual. He placed the organ outdoors among the fans instead of in a booth, which is a traditional thing that you would do.

23:25Nancy Faust:But Nancy says the organist's repertoire was still pretty limited.

23:29John Thorn:The national anthem and taking after the ballgame and about an hour as people entered the field.

23:35Nancy Faust:In her first few years playing for the White Sox, Nancy stuck to the script she was given. But besides the musical skill set she'd been hired for, Nancy had a second talent. She's witty, quick on her feet. Her sense of humor has a surprising bite to it. So as she started to become more comfortable with the players and the mechanics of the game itself, Nancy let herself improvise more. She played off the things she saw happening around her.

24:02John Thorn:And the third year that I was there, Dick Allen was a sensational player, and he just commanded attention. And when he'd walk up to the plate, people left the bathrooms or left the popcorn stand. They wanted to see Dick Allen play because he was a great home run hitter. And so out of the blue, I played Jesus Christ Superstar for him because that was popular at the time. And it just seemed like I'd play it and he'd hit a home run.

24:31Nancy Faust:And the place went crazy. And if this story were a song, this is the moment where the whole orchestra would come in. The beat would pick up, the momentum would swell, because Nancy hit a groove. The fans who sat around her booth started coming to her with more ideas for other players on the team.

24:50John Thorn:They'd say, oh, that guy, he was in the watch department and the store closed and he was stuck in the watch department. So then I could play, does anybody know what time it is? You know, or something like that when he'd come to bed.

25:01Nancy Faust:So you were choosing the songs for the players, basically, with collaboration from the fans.

25:07John Thorn:Yes. And then it grew into, because I was the only music provider, you know, I'd see a rainbow in the sky or a cat run on the field or somebody throw an inflatable doll into the park. Somebody lost a ball in the sun. I were blinded by the light. And there was always just something kind of funny. There was a song for whatever happened. It wasn't even just the ballplayers.

25:28Nancy Faust:Before we get too carried away here, we should note, Nancy was not the first organist ever to do this. That honor goes to Gladys Gooding, who played the organ for the Brooklyn Dodgers three decades earlier, in the 1940s and 50s. She also riffed off players' names and the mood in the stadium, like Nancy would go on to do. But when the Dodgers relocated to Los Angeles in 1952, Gladys didn't go with them, and the tradition apparently stopped. When Nancy Faust and White Sox fans picked it up back in the 1970s, something was different. Maybe it was the timing, the big marketing swings from baseball team owners.

26:07Nancy Faust:Maybe it was that the organs were more commonplace in stadiums now, and fans came to the game ready to party. Or maybe it was just thanks to the special connection Nancy built with the fans surrounding her booth. The energy she brought to the game was contagious.

26:26Nancy Faust:It sounds like through your organ playing and the music, you were becoming almost like a part of the game. I guess you'd say that.

26:36John Thorn:I'd say I called myself like a soundtrack for whatever was happening, even more than just ballplayers. I don't even know that the players were paying attention to what I was playing. I thought they had their mind on the game.

26:49Nancy Faust:But the players most definitely were paying attention. In 1977, after that game where Nancy led fans in a sing-along to Hey Hey Goodbye, a visiting pitcher told a reporter, you stand out on the mound with runners on base and zisk at the plate and the crowd of 30 ,000 singing Kiss It Goodbye and it shakes your confidence.

27:11John Thorn:I have read in books since then, people recalling the old days when the players would say, oh, I hated to hear that. When I heard that, nah, nah, goodbye, they'd sit over there, just make them cringe.

27:22Nancy Faust:Meanwhile, Richie Zisk, the White Sox big home run hitter, said of the same fans, I don't know whether they come to see us or we come to see them, but I'll tell you this, it's helped. They get you charged up.

27:35John Thorn:So I guess I had an impact, but I just didn't know. You got in their head.

27:38Nancy Faust:You got in their head, Nancy.

27:40John Thorn:I have learned that. All right!

27:48Nancy Faust:Along with the legendary White Sox commentator Harry Carey, Nancy was part of cementing another tradition.

28:06Nancy Faust:They started singing along to take me out to the ballgame during every seventh inning stretch.

28:16Nancy Faust:The two of them put on a double act that other teams across the country would be inspired to follow. And it's a duet Nancy still carries on today. On her home organ, with her dog Cooper, who perches on an ottoman, front paws in the air, as he sings along. And one of the most amazing parts to me about this story is Nancy Faust cannot read music. All those songs she played off the cuff over the course of her career, she did all of that by ear. You sing her a few bars of anything, and she can play it back for you on the organ seconds later. So obviously, I had a request. So that's the main chorus of it, you know.

29:05Nancy Faust:I don't know, how does that feel?

29:11Nancy Faust:Something like that? Yes. Amazing. Nancy Faust retired from her job as the White Sox organist in 2010. White Sox fan and former president Barack Obama sent her a letter to personally congratulate her on her career. And that organ booth she occupied for decades is now dedicated to her.

29:31John Thorn:Is it just a great life?

29:35Nancy Faust:And every once in a while, Nancy comes out of retirement for special occasions like... Pope night.

29:43John Thorn:So I've been doing it. My religious son, you've got to have faith and don't stop believing.

29:49Nancy Faust:And yet, when she returns to the ballpark, there's a twinge of nostalgia. Most of the music is now planned ahead of time, loaded onto a soundboard.

29:59John Thorn:Eventually, when the parks had the ability to play can music, they asked the player, what would you like to hear? And this would inspire him. And so that's what they're doing now, and they call it walk-up music. So my job was more abbreviated then.

30:14Nancy Faust:Nancy is diplomatic in how she talks about this change. John Thorne, Major League Baseball's official historian, is less so.

30:23John Thorn:Baseball's strength is in its past.

30:26Nancy Faust:He's nostalgic for that feeling of sitting in the stands, hearing that crack as a baseball bat makes contact with the ball. It can almost take you back in time.

30:37John Thorn:I mean the ability of baseball to connect generations of fans. It's the hand to the grandson at the ballgame.

30:46Nancy Faust:To John Thorne, the booming loudspeakers, the mascot races, the electronic cues to clap, the walk-up songs, they're all distractions, things that pull his attention away from the game he loves. But for other baseball fans, I wonder if music has done the opposite, invited them in, forged the connection where they didn't feel one before. In one of your articles, you wrote that baseball music is memorable, neither for wit nor melody, but for its associations with the game we love. Can you describe what you mean by that?

31:23John Thorn:Baseball songs like baseball novels and baseball movies are by and large crappy. It was the Diane Cuck fan's last request, so here it is. Do they still play? Steve Goodman, Dying Cub Fans, Last Wish, and Simon and Garfunkel, Les Brown and his band of renown. These are all junk. These are all junk. Every bit of it. I guess when you say most of the music is terrible, what's funny is like, I guess when I really think about it, I'm like, is Sweet Caroline like the best song in the world? It's terrible. It's a horrible song.

32:03Nancy Faust:I mean...

32:09Nancy Faust:But then there's the deeper conversation about what gives a song its heft or what makes it good. To me, one of the most nostalgic kind of sounds is the singing, the fans. People standing together, participating in something together, singing together, off-key mostly. Right.

32:38Nancy Faust:And I feel like in a way, that act of standing and singing together is the thing that for a lot of people connects them to the past.

32:48John Thorn:I think you're right. And I think that the fan who experiences baseball only through video clips on his cell phone is missing the appeal. The appeal is to escape from yourself and be someone else at the ballpark or in front of the television and to commune not only with the past but with yourself.

33:18Nancy Faust:John, before I let you go, if there's one song that you would choose to walk up to, if you had to choose, what would it be?

33:32John Thorn:It would be Sister Winona Carr's The Ballgame.

33:35Nancy Faust:I actually don't know it. I'm not going to ask you to sing it unless you really feel compelled to.

33:40John Thorn:No, no, I will not volunteer. However, I do refer you to YouTube.

33:47Nancy Faust:Instead, we asked Nancy Faust to play us out.

34:10Nancy Faust:That's it for this week's show. If you have a favorite walk-up song, or if you're holding on to a musical sports memory that still gives you goosebumps every time you think of it, we want to hear them. Email us at throughline at npr.org, or call 872-588-8805 and leave a voicemail. And don't forget to tell us your name, where you're calling from, and please say, you're listening to Throughline from NPR. Throughline was created by me and Ramtin Adabloui. This episode was produced by me and Sarah Wyman. Julia Redpath. Jasmine Romero.

34:45John Thorn:Molly Marcelo. Amy Padula. Liana Semstrom. Irene Noguchi.

34:51Nancy Faust:This episode was fact-checked by Kevin Vocal. It was mixed by Jimmy Keighley. Music by Ramtinata Bluey and his band, Drop Electric. Thanks also to Johannes Durgey, Cheyenne Butler, and Josie Gautel. I'm Randa Dufetaj. Thanks for listening.

35:09John Thorn:This message comes from WFMT. Discover connections in classical music with WFMT's Exploring Music and new host Peter Vandergraaf. Listen Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. on 98.7 FM, WFMT.com, and the app.

35:26Nancy Faust:This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel?

35:30John Thorn:That's your drive for more. Capella University's FlexPath Learning Format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu. This message comes from Arctic Wolf. Arctic Wolf combines AI-led security operations with human expertise, helping teams detect, investigate, and respond at machine speed without building it themselves. More at arcticwolf.com slash NPR.