It’s not mysterious as to why some baseball players’ names get dropped in popular songs. Eddie Vedder is widely known as a devoted Cubs fan, so naturally, he made a reference to the North Side legend Ernie Banks in his song, “All the Way,” which was about his beloved team. Yankees fan Paul Simon famously made Joe DiMaggio a memorable part of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.” When Kanye West name-checked Barry Bonds in 2007 as a way to compare himself to another prolific hitmaker, the Giants’ slugger had just surpassed Henry Aaron as Major League Baseball’s all-time home run leader.
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Other lyricists were less obvious with their baseball name-drops. The three songs discussed here include references to baseball players who are particularly unique and creative. In each case, dropping a ballplayer’s name into the lyrics made an already-interesting song all the more intriguing.
1. A Tribe Called Quest‘s “Check the Rhime“
This group’s six-album discography is loaded with sports references, but the bulk of them came courtesy of the late Phife Dawg. Q-Tip has named-checked a few athletes, too, such as former Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela on “Steve Biko (Stir It Up)” (Valenzuela on the pitch, curveball, catch it) and race car driver Mario Andretti on “Award Tour” (See, lyrically, I’m Mario Andretti on the MOMO). Q-Tip’s best-known athlete name-drop is likely the one he slipped into their 1991 hit from The Low End Theory, “Check the Rhime.”
Okay, if knowledge is the key then just show me the lock
Got the scrawny legs but I move just like Lou Brock
A Tribe Called Quest didn’t just reference contemporary athletes, and they had to go back to the ‘60s and ‘70s to work in this allusion to the Cardinals and Cubs outfielder. Over 19 major-league seasons, Brock stole 938 bases, and he held the major league records for career stolen bases and total steals in a season (118) until both records were broken by Rickey Henderson.
By the time A Tribe Called Quest started recording The Low End Theory, Henderson had taken over the single-season stolen bases record for eight years; he likely set the career stolen base record while they were recording the album, in fact. But the Brock reference stuck—and it probably made for a better rhyme than “Henderson.”
2. Beyoncé‘s “Déjà Vu“
It’s hardly a surprise to hear Jay-Z drop the name of a baseball player in Beyoncé’s 2006 hit from B’Day. After all, he had referenced Ken Griffey Jr. and Yankees Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera in other songs, while his sports agency, Roc Nation Sports, has represented superstars like Robinson Canó, CC Sabathia, and Yoenis Céspedes.
The part that may come across as puzzling, at least to those who are at least casual fans of America’s national pastime, is that it’s Juan Pierre who Jay-Z name-checks in the first line of the first verse: I used to run base like Juan Pierre / Now I run the bass, hi-hat, and the snare.
Pierre had a successful 14-year major league career but never made an All-Star team or played for the Yankees or Mets. So how did the speedy outfielder, whose best seasons came in relative obscurity with the Florida (now Miami) Marlins, grab the attention of a New York sports fan like Jay-Z? Pierre’s own best guess is that his name stuck with Jay-Z after the Marlins beat the Yankees in the 2003 World Series. Pierre knew that Jay-Z was present for one of the games of that series, as the two actually had a brief exchange when the rapper called out to him from behind the visitors’ dugout at Yankee Stadium.
[RELATED: The Story Behind the Baseball Classic “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”]
3. Bob Dylan, “Catfish”
Lots of musical acts that name-check athletes are known for their baseball fandom, but Bob Dylan? Maybe not as much. Dylan may not be an ardent follower of any particular team, but he has expressed some baseball-related opinions, such as disliking the amount of player movement from team to team (much like Jerry Seinfeld’s well-known aversion to “rooting for laundry”). However, Dylan is enough of a baseball fan to have written and recorded the song, “Catfish” about Hall of Fame pitcher Catfish Hunter. He co-wrote the song with Jacques Levy for Dylan’s album Desire, though it was left off the album.
When Desire was being recorded in 1975, Hunter was in the midst of his first season with the Yankees, after having signed a five-year, $3.35 million contract that was the largest deal for any player in the major leagues. He was the first bona fide star to sign a new deal as a free agent–a development that ultimately led to the players changing teams more often. So it’s conceivable that Dylan chose to write about Hunter, not primarily because of his admiration for his pitching skills, but because the changes in baseball’s structure were something that interested him. Dylan addressed that angle in the song’s lyrics.
Used to work on Mr. Finley’s farm
But the old man wouldn’t pay
So he packed his glove and took his arm
And one day he just ran away
The beginning of the verse refers to the Oakland Athletics’ owner, Charles O. Finley, whose breach of Hunter’s contract resulted in the pitcher becoming a free agent and, subsequently, a member of the Yankees for the last five years of his career. Dylan’s “Catfish” was finally released on The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 in 1991, 16 years after Dylan recorded it and nearly 12 years after Hunter pitched his last game.
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