This article originally appeared on VICE Sports in August 2014."Take Me Out to the Ballgame" is the perfect song to accompany baseball in that it is joyful but also really, really boring, like a cake made out of mashed potatoes and mayonnaise. It's a simple, childish melody best heard while singing along tunelessly in a large crowd of bellowing strangers—there's just not that much you can do with it, musically. That doesn't mean that people haven't tried, however. Oh Lord, how they have tried! The Goo Goo Dolls tried in 1996, when they made a commercial for Major League Baseball:
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The song was also attempted by a collection of artists—including the Allman Brothers, Nils Lofgren, Melissa Etheridge, James Brown, MC Hammer, and Ozzy Osbourne—in a spot for the 1993 All-Star game that one YouTube user describes as "A little baseball/music fun from 20 years ago":As is often the case with covers, when artists try to make "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" their own they often end up cramming it into odd genres. Like this Quebecois rap version, which is mostly in French and apparently made by some dudes in a slow-pitch softball league:
Or the version made by country rock band Lonestar, appropriated by this YouTube user for some Little League highlights:Or this cover, which sounds more or less like you'd imagine a band called Metal Patriots to sound:Or this, which… Jesus. It was probably made for some kind of DDR game, I guess? I can't think of any other reason for it to exist, frankly. I can't imagine anyone will listen to this entire song, but you should try to make it to where the vocals come in, which is where it gets REALLY bad.
I'm sorry.Harry Cheadle really is sorry. Follow him on Twitter.