This week's sermons are about a topic that really isn't that near and dear to my heart--at least not as near and dear as it is to many people, especially men. But there are still elements of it that I appreciate, even love, and this is the time of year to do so. As I've often said, I'm not really a sports fan, however, since my mid 20s, I have developed a love for the game of baseball. I have a team in each league that I root for each year (I even got to see them play each other in the 2016 World Series), but I don't follow it obsessively. In fact, I don't really follow it at all until after the All-Star break, which is why I think it's too early to get excited over the fact that the Chicago Cubs are currently leading in the National League Central Division. But I still get excited when spring finally rolls around and the new season begins.
It's kind of a circuitous route to this week's album, so please bear with me...
When
I was about 10 years old, my mother--the town librarian--brought home
some cassette tapes of old radio broadcasts from the 1930s and 1940s,
thinking that her son would enjoy them. She was right. I immediately
fell in love with old programs like "The Lone Ranger" and his
great-nephew "The Green Hornet"--and, no, I'm not making up that
familial factoid. These tapes were also responsible, at least in part,
for fostering in me a love of comedy. There were two tapes that Mom
brought home that entertained me so much, I'm surprised I didn't wear
them out. The first was a broadcast of (Stan) Laurel and (Oliver)
Hardy, specifically one in which Stan was getting married. ("My name?
Laurel. They call me Stanley for short.") The other tape was a
broadcast of (William "Bud") Abbott and (Lou) Costello that aired on 17
April, 1947, in which Costello was invited to play for the New York
Yankees temporarily, filling in for Joe DiMaggio who was on the DL.
(You can hear the complete broadcast at: https://archive.org/details/
The
program featured a performance of their most well-known routine "Who's
On First?" I laughed myself senseless and listened to it so many times,
I committed not just that routine, but the entire broadcast to
memory--in fact, listening to it again, I still remembered many of the
jokes, actress Marilyn Maxwell singing "Do You Know What It Means To
Miss New Orleans?", and even the ads for Camel cigarettes ("Camels suit
my T-Zone to a T.")
I
was so taken with "Who's On First?" that my dad suggested that we
perform it together during "talent night" at our upcoming church
retreat. So I typed up a script and we rehearsed it diligently. We had
it down. At the last minute, Dad had to work and was not able to
attend the retreat. However, my sister Heather had been watching us
rehearse and absorbed what we were doing. Knowing my love of
entertaining an audience, she offered to fill in for Dad.
Needless
to say, we were a hit. We were asked to do it at church retreats many
times over the next few years. We eventually retired it just because
our specific audience had seen it so many times that they no longer
laughed, even though they requested that we do it. We didn't perform it
again for at least 20 years until our aunt asked us to reprise it for a
fundraising dinner at a minor league ballpark. I was surprised at how
easily it came back to us. We were asked to do it one more time, after
which we preemptively retired it again, just to keep it from getting
stale, especially for us.
I've
been thinking about this a lot because next month, the Paoli Mennonite
Fellowship (PMF)--the church in which we grew up--is celebrating its
50th anniversary. (I feel so old--it seems like just yesterday, they
celebrated their 25th!) Heather and I have been asked to perform "Who's
On First?" again. We've agreed to do it and even though we now live
2,000 miles away from each other, we've been working hard on re-memorizing it (right,
Sis?).
If
you're not familiar with the routine, I highly recommend doing so
(preferrably by Abbott and Costello, not Allen and Freeling). They
performed it many times during their career going back as early as
1937. While they seldom performed it exactly the same way more than
once, many consider their finest performance to be in their 1945 film, The Naughty Nineties. Decades after both Abbott and Costello passed away, "Who's On First?" still endures. In 1999, Time
magazine named it the greatest comedy sketch of the twentieth century.
It was adapted into a board game in the 1970s and a childrens book in
2013. And in spite of the fact that neither Abbott nor Costello was
professionally involved in Major League Baseball in any capacity, a gold
record of "Who's On First?" was placed in the Baseball Hall of Fame in
Cooperstown, New York, and a video of the routine from The Naughty Nineties plays continuously. It's this little tidbit that inspired my selection of this week's album.
Being
selected for the Baseball Hall of Fame is an impressive feat. But I
truly believe it's an even more impressive feat to be honoured by the
Hall of Fame if, like Abbott and Costello, you were not involved in the
sport. In fact, off the top of my head, I can only think of one other
person who has done this--and please feel free to let me know if there
are others I don't know about. In 2010, to celebrate the 25th
anniversary of perhaps his best known (solo) song, rock and roll legend
John Fogerty was honoured by the Baseball Hall of Fame for the title
track to his 1985 album Centerfield. During the ceremony, Fogerty
even performed the song with a guitar shaped like a baseball bat, which
he said only plays one song.
The
other historical significance of this album is that it opens with his
late-1984 single "The Old Man Down the Road," for which he was sued by
his former label which claimed that it sounded too much like the
Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Run Through the Jungle," which he
wrote and sang fifteen years earlier, but which the label owned the
rights to. To put it succinctly, Fogerty was accused of plagiarizing
himself. In 1988, a six-person jury said he didn't.
Like any album by a really talented artist that yields a massive hit
song, there are quite a few other songs on the album as well--many of
them as good as, possibly even better, than the big hit (including "The Old Man Down the Road"). So, in spite
of where this rant started out, I proudly submit the album that feels
like it can only be played in the spring, this year celebrating its 40th anniversary (my, how time flies!) John Fogerty's Centerfield.
Until
next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbiours, and please remember
that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for
you!
Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!
The Reverned Will the Thrill
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