This year marks the 100th anniversary of the song.
Jack Norworth, a successful vaudeville entertainer and songwriter, wrote “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in 1908 on some scrap paper on a train ride to Manhattan. Norworth provided those paper scrap lyrics to Albert Von Tilzer, who composed the music, which in turn was published by the York Music Company. Before the year was over, a hit song was born.
Jack Norworth spent 15 minutes writing this classic, which today is sung during the seventh inning stretch at nearly every ball park in the country.
Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer were posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. Over the course of a long and successful career, Norworth wrote or co-wrote thousands of other songs, including “Shine On, Harvest Moon” (1908). He died on September 1, 1959, in Laguna Beach, California. Albert Von Tilzer was equally prolific. He composed for Broadway and film and is remembered for his popular work “I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time” (1920). He died on October 1, 1956, in Los Angeles, California.
The original, handwritten lyrics of Norworth and Von Tilzer’s most celebrated collaboration now reside among the treasured collections of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.
