Baseball Fans Don't Know Jack (Norworth)
There's a small, worn grave embedded in the earth in Anaheim, Calif. You can barely make out the name on the marker, which is within view of Anaheim Stadium, where the Angels play.
When fans arise for the seventh-inning stretch to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," few of them realize that the man responsible for baseball's unofficial theme song, Jack Norworth, is buried not five minutes away.
Norworth had never even attended a major league game before penning the song everyone now associates with going to a ballpark. The guy was riding a New York subway in 1908, when he was inspired by an ad for the Polo Grounds, where the San Francisco Giants once played.
Tim Wiles, co-author of "Baseball's Greatest Hit: The Story of Take Me Out to the Ball Game," remembers Norworth, and he wishes others did, too.
"I don't think Jack Norworth is at all fully appreciated by society," said Wiles, who serves as director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
