page_title: Harry Caray
section_title: The seventh-inning stretch
hierarchical_section_title: Harry Caray / Career / The seventh-inning stretch
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Harry Caray in the Cardinals' announcing booth. He had just caught a foul ball with his net, which he kept with him, no matter for what team he was announcing.
context_page_description: Harry Caray was an American sportscaster on radio and television. He covered five Major League Baseball teams, beginning with 25 years of calling the games of the St. Louis Cardinals with two of these years also spent calling games for the St. Louis Browns. After a year working for the Oakland Athletics and eleven years with the Chicago White Sox, Caray spent the last sixteen years of his career as the announcer for the Chicago Cubs.
context_section_description: Caray is credited with popularizing the singing of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch.
  Throughout his broadcasting career, Caray would sing the song in his booth. There would only be a few people who could hear Caray sing: his broadcast partners, WMAQ Radio producer Jay Scott, and the select fans whose seats were near the booth. Scott suggested that Caray's singing be put on the stadium public address system, in the early 1970s, but Caray and station management rejected the idea . When owner Bill Veeck took over the White Sox in 1976, he would observe Caray and some fans singing the song and wanted to incorporate Caray into a stadium-wide event.
  It was a few games into the 1976 season when Veeck secretly placed a public-address microphone into Caray's booth and turned it on once Nancy Faust, the Comiskey Park organist, began playing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", so that everyone in the park could hear Caray singing. Veeck asked Caray if he would sing regularly, but the announcer initially wanted no part of it. Veeck advised Caray that he had already taped the announcer singing during commercial breaks and said he could play that recording if Caray preferred. When Caray questioned the idea, Veeck explained, "Anybody in the ballpark hearing you sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’  knows that he can sing as well as you can. Probably better than you can. So he or she sings along. Hell, if you had a good singing voice, you'd intimidate them, and nobody would join in."
  Caray finally agreed to sing it live, accompanied by Faust on the organ, and went on to become famous for singing the tune, continuing to do so at Wrigley Field after becoming the broadcaster of the Chicago Cubs, using a hand-held microphone and holding it out outside the booth window.
  Many of these performances began with Caray speaking directly to the baseball fans in attendance either about the state of the day's game, or the Chicago weather, while the park organ held the opening chord of the song. Then with his trademark opening, "All right! Lemme hear ya! Ah-One! Ah-Two! Ah-Three!" Harry would launch into his distinctive, down-tempo version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". During his tenure announcing games at Comiskey Park and later Wrigley Field, he would often replace "root, root, root for the home team" with "root, root, root for the White Sox/Cubbies". For the lyrics "One, Two, Three, strikes you're out ..." Harry would usually hold the microphone out to the crowd to punctuate the climactic end of the song. And if the visitors were ahead in that game, Harry would typically make a plea to the home team's offense: "Let's get some runs!"
  Once Caray died in 1998, the Cubs would bring in guest conductors of the song, this tradition is still alive to this day. His wife and grandson, Chip Caray, were the first people to guest conduct the song following his death.
  During the 2009 NHL Winter Classic at Wrigley Field, as the Chicago Blackhawks hosted the Detroit Red Wings on New Year's Day 2009, former Blackhawks players Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and Denis Savard and former Cubs players Ryne Sandberg and Ferguson Jenkins sang a hockey-themed version of the seventh-inning stretch; "Take Me Out to the Hockey Game" used lines such as "Root, root, root for the Blackhawks" and "One, two, three pucks, you're out." The Blackhawks would do this again in 2010 during the White Sox – Cubs game at Wrigley Field. This time, it was members of the Stanley Cup winning team.
caption: Caray using his net to catch a foul ball in the Cardinals broadcast booth, 1957. He continued this practice when he worked for other teams.
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