13 Nov Frank MacDonald’s baseball song

Frank MacDonald also sent us a song he wrote “many years ago.”

“There has never been a musician I could interest in it,” he writes. “Not being a singer myself, I converted into a talking blues that I entertain myself with from time to time in the car, As a old Brooklyn Dodger fan, you may enjoy it. As a Cleveland fan my chances to enjoy things have been few and far between since 1954.”

SANDLOT KID

He lived on a park bench, reading baseball box scores
And paid his way doing odd and end chores.
But he loved to remember when baseball was magic,
And said, “What happened to baseball was tragic.”
But from the deep center seats, he still coached every game
And cheered a good play, while adding, “It still not the same.”
And he’d go on about what it used to be like
When ball payers were ball players and a strike was a strike

Chorus:

He was the sandlot kid, dreaming things he never did,
A Triple A player without major league flair
Who grew old in a slum, happy to be a bleacher bum
Who loved every game he took in,
and died wishing the Dodgers would move back to Brooklyn

He’d talk to strangers over his coffee cup
About players that he’d met on their way up
“Duke and Mickey and Peewee and Stan
All thought I coulda been a big league utility man
He remembered their names, though they all forgot his
And he kept them alive from that time until this
At a Little League game, everyone stared when he roared
“Hang in there, kid, you look just like Whitey Ford!”

When the team was working out, he sat alone in the stands
He’d been tagged out trying to score on his plans
Just a tired old man in a battered baseball cap
A might-have-been waiting his turn at the bat
And yesterday, yes he’d of gone to the game
But he was tired and glad it was called by rain
And he lay down with an illness that never healed
And left a sad little note, saying “Bury me in Ebbet’s Field.

[Chorus]