Center Field

Willy Mays' over-the-shoulder catch - the man could play center field.

Truth be known I always played right field and I have a song for that one too, but this one is probably my favorite baseball song of all time. The inimitable John Fogerty's classic "Center Field" has some wonderful baseball lines like this one....

A roundin' third and headin' for home,
It's a brown-eyed handsome man.
Even someone with relatively sad baseball playing skills like me can dream. I did improve somewhat with age, but then my knees started going and I gained weight, so I never really achieved baseball glory, but I do like the sport. It's very American in that it's a series of personal contests between pitcher and batter with a break between. American football is like that too. There's a reason we never warmed to "football" the way everyone else in the world did. We need to see the little individual victories - the pass caught, the home run hit, the slam dunk. In soccer, you get a bunch of guys running around kicking a ball for two hours and the final score might wind up being 2 to 0. That's just downright unAmerican. 

Here's Fogerty singing about the great American sport and a nice video of vintage film from America's great baseball history.
 
Didn't that make you want to just dig up your old baseball glove and go throw a few with some kid you've got laying around the house playing video games?

Tom