Baseball's Sweet Soundtrack

Ruth Roberts was honored at Shea Stadium in 1996.

Baseball has a long history of songs. Most of them are novelties and not great, but many of them are memorable. Some tunes have stuck with me over the years. "It's a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame," "I Love Mickey" and "Meet the Mets" all share a middle of the road sounds and lyrics that are corny, but evocative.

I never realized they all shared the same songwriters: Ruth Roberts, who died yesterday, and Bill Katz who passed away in 1988. I had never connected the songs before, but when I heard the same team had written all three songs, it made sense.

"Beautiful Day" will always trigger memories of my youthful "blue period" when I indiscriminately was a fan of the Chicago Cubs. Although New York Mets' announcer Ron Darling noted during the broadcast tonight that the song is used by the Los Angeles Dodgers, WGN used it in the 1970s to open Cubs' broadcasts. Who can resist a line like, "It's a beautiful day for a home run, but even a triple's okay?"