No time to read? Listen to the podcast.

Finish this sentence: The three most often-sung songs in the U.S. are the Star Spangled Banner, Happy Birthday and _______________________.

Okay, your time is up, so here are some hints: April, 1908; the old New York City Ninth Avenue el; and an ad reading “Baseball Today at the Polo Grounds.” Still not sure? Would peanuts and Cracker Jack help?

In April, 1908, a 29-year-old song writer and vaudeville singer named Jack Norworth was riding the el when he saw that ad for baseball at the Polo Grounds. He thought a baseball song might be a nice addition to his act, which he performed with his wife, Nora Bayes. So, he began writing down rhymes on scraps of paper. Thirty minutes later, Norworth stood on the brink of music, and baseball, history. In his pocket were the words to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Norworth knew he had to keep the music in his act fresh, and over  the course of his career he would write more than three thousand songs. He was constantly on the lookout for ideas. At the moment, the lyrics in his pocket were merely the makings of another tune.

Norworth took his notes to Albert Von Tilzer, a former shoe salesman from Indiana who, for the previous two years, had been one of Norworth’s composing partners. It took Von Tilzer less than an hour to write the music and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was born. Norworth premiered the song on the stage of Brooklyn’s Amphion Theater in April or May of 1908.

It was, to use baseball vernacular, a hit. No, more than a hit. It was a home run. “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” sheet music sold almost as fast as it could be printed. Over the course of the next few months, the song knocked a string of competitive baseball-themed songs out of the box, as it were, including one by the legendary George M. Cohan.

Not a bad day’s work for Norworth and Von Tilzer, two guys who had never seen a baseball game.

Did I say day’s work? It seems the duo put about an hour into the song. And even that sounds excessive for eight lines of lyrics and about thirty seconds of music. Come to think of it, how did Norworth use it in his act? Thirty seconds is hardly enough time to cover a costume change.

As you might suspect, there’s more to it than that.

By it, I mean the song. And by more, I mean the words. Those eight familiar lines aren’t “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

They’re the chorus.

(Now sing along with Edward Meeker in this 1908 recording from Edison Records.)

“Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is the story of a young lass, one Katie Casey, who didn’t want her beau to take her to dinner and a show. She wanted those peanuts and Cracker Jack. She wanted to smell the fresh-mowed grass and hear the umpire cry, “Play ball.” She wanted her beau to take her out to the ball game.

That’s the song Norworth premiered in his act, the song that took Norworth a full thirty minutes to write.

Andy Strasberg, Bob Thompson and Tim Wiles, authors of the book Baseball’s Greatest Hit: The Story of Take Me Out to the Ball Game, dispute the more colorful aspects of this story. They present evidence that supports the claim that Norworth saw his first baseball game in 1908, at the urging of fellow vaudevillian Joe Laurie, Jr.

And they wonder how Norworth could have neatly printed his lyrics while riding in a subway car that treated its passengers like steel balls in a pinball machine. (According to the authors, Norworth claimed to have composed more than one song while riding the subway.)

But baseball is nothing if not legend, myth and folklore. So I’m inclined to suggest that Messrs. Strasberg, Thompson and Wales keep their well-researched facts and impeccable logic to themselves. Let the rest of us enjoy this baseball saga.

Norworth attended his first baseball game in 1938 or 1940 — there are contradicting reports. But he didn’t hear his song sung in a ballpark until 1958, as a guest of the newly relocated Los Angeles Dodgers.

Whatever may or may not be true about how “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” came to be baseball’s national anthem, one thing is certain. On that day in 1958 Norworth, unlike Katie Casey, didn’t spend every sou he had to see the game.

He got in for a song.