Tune Tuesday – Centerfield – Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian

Having been able to get out and help with my daughter’s T-ball games over the past couple weeks has me in a baseball mood. My Detroit Tigers are not doing as well as I had hoped, but there is a lot of baseball left in the season.

For Tune Tuesday, I picked a great baseball song that is played in stadiums all over the country. “Centerfield” by John Fogerty, who coincidentally turns 79 today.

Fogerty took quite a bit of time off after leaving CCR and two solo albums. When it was time for his comeback, he called the album Centerfield before he’d even written the song. He says the song basically wrote itself. “I was practicing a song, and I came up with that guitar riff that starts the song,” he said. “I went into the studio, playing the guitar with a drumbeat and it just came out.”

The song was the B-side of “Rock and Roll Girls,” and only reached #44 on the charts. However, because of the play it gets at ball games, it certainly has become well known!

In 2010, John Fogerty became the only musician to be celebrated at the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony when “Centerfield” was honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame. It is a baseball classic.