Wry British take on the allure of baseball

From the BBC: "At the same point in the same innings of nearly every major league game that is played anywhere in America, the spectators rise to their feet and sing along to the same song, just as they have done for years.

It is called Take Me Out To The Ball Game, even though it is always sung by people who are already in one.

And the tradition is known as the seventh-inning stretch because it is sometimes accompanied by a kind of half-hearted, shuffling callisthenics.

Imagine that, after the tea interval in every cricket test match, the crowd performed a primary school music-and-movement session to the tune of My Old Man Said Follow The Van.

This is still America though, and at my local stadium the playing of this timelessly charming song is sponsored by an oil company.

Take Me Out To The Ballpark, by the way, has an interesting history.

It was written 100 years ago and became well-known in America because cinema audiences took to singing it when they still had to endure maddening pauses as the projectionist changed reels of film."

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