If They Don't Win It's A Shame

Written in 15 minutes on a scrap of paper by Jack Norworth in 1908, Take Me Out To The Ballgame is a baseball classic.

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Baseball is a game of statistics and traditions, and it just wouldn't be a baseball game without the singing of Take Me Out To The Ballgame during the "Seventh Inning Stretch."

Noone knows for sure how the Seventh Inning Stretch originated, or why Take Me Out To The Ballgame is sung. Some attribute the Seventh Inning Stretch to President William Howard Taft. It was during the 1910 season opening game between the Washington Senators and the Phildelphia Athletics at Griffith Stadium when Taft, weighing in at over 300 pounds, could no longer bear the confines of his small, wooden seat and rose to stretch his legs. It was the middle of the seventh inning. The rest of the crowd, thinking that the President was about to exit, also rose. He did not leave, and as the game resumed play, he sat down again, as did the rest of the crowd.

It is also said that Taft began the tradition of the President delivering the first pitch of a new season at that same game.

While the latter may be true, historians have produced an 1869 document which describes an earlier origin of the tradition.

Harry Wright of the Cincinnati Red Stockings made note of a behavior the crowd would engage in during the course of every game. He described how between the halves of the seventh inning, the fans would rise and stretch their legs for relief from sitting on the hard benches for so long.

In a broadcasting career spanning 53 years and four franchises, Harry Caray was a baseball tradition in himself.

The "Mayor Of Rush Street" was well known for his oversized, black-rimmed glasses and trademark calls of "Let's Get Some Runs!" and "Holy Cow!"

Caray would also lead the fans in a raucous chorus of Take Me Out To The Ballgame.

Harry Caray was inducted into the Baseball Hall Of Fame in 1989 and passed away in 1998.

His son Skip broadcasts for the Atlanta Braves and his grandson Chip is a studio host for Fox Sports.