We get it that baseball possesses something poetic about it. As a result, many songwriters have taken on America’s pastime and delivered some pretty impressive material as a result. But we don’t want to give short shrift to the other sports that have been immortalized in song.
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The five songs in this list not only avoid baseball, but they avoid the “Big 3” American sports (baseball, football, and basketball) completely. It’s interesting that most of them are bittersweet and less than celebratory—which is perhaps why they hit home so well.
1. ”Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)” by Warren Zevon
Mitch Albom is an award-winning sportswriter, spent many years as a television personality, and wrote one of the biggest-selling non-fiction books of all time in Tuesdays with Morrie. But, come on, can any of that compare in coolness to writing a song with Warren Zevon?
The story goes that Zevon was interested in writing a song about a sport that hadn’t been done to death, and Albom suggested hockey. The pair settled on a story about a prototypical “goon,” which, in hockey parlance, is a player who starts fights and doesn’t worry about scoring goals. The story takes a kind of tragicomic turn at the end, but it’s hard to do anything but smile listening to this one, especially when special guest David Letterman comes on to belt out “Hit somebody!” like a crazed fan.
2. “Run for the Roses” by Dan Fogelberg
ABC was looking for a song to accompany its broadcast of the 1980 Kentucky Derby and turned to singer/songwriter Fogelberg. He did a great job of capturing the details of the horses who are reared to compete in this race, which is the most famous one in horse racing, the Sport of Kings.
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But Fogelberg also manages to make the song a metaphor for any kind of coming of age. After all, the Derby is fascinating in that it’s a race run by relative newcomers, since the horses who compete are only three years old and mostly just beginning their careers. It’s the chance of a lifetime in a lifetime of chance, Fogelberg sings. It’s high time you joined in the dance. Fogelberg would also include the song on his album The Innocent Age, where it somehow fit perfectly with the non-equine songs all around it.
3. “When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease” by Roy Harper
If you think that baseball has inspired a lot of American poetry, you should check out the wealth of verse written about cricket on the other side of the pond. It makes sense that there are more than a few cricket-based songs out there, and Harper’s elegiac ode to a player in the twilight of their career stands out.
Harper might be best-known by Americans as the guest vocalist on the Pink Floyd classic “Have a Cigar,” but he also carved out a career as a kind of cult singer/songwriter. “When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease” contains a lot of cricket terminology and references to famous players that might fly over the head of those who aren’t familiar with the sport. But a touchingly relatable situation plays out in the song, one which, Harper suggests, will come to us all: And it could be me and it could be thee.
4. “The Hitter” by Bruce Springsteen
Devils and Dust is one of the Bruce Springsteen albums that passes below the radar, probably because it’s far more akin to folk music than it is to rock and roll. The album also focuses on story songs, and “The Hitter” is one of the darkest. It profiles a boxer who comes from an era when the sport was in many ways rawer and even more violent than it is today. He takes a Raging Bull-like path, using his brutal skills to get to the top, only to take a bribe and throw a fight that earns him a bag of money and a lifetime of regret. The Boss frames the story around this pugilist visiting his estranged mother. Instead of a tearful reunion, it’s an emotionless exchange, with “The Hitter” wanting nothing more than to sleep for a few nights before making his way to his next street fight.
5. “The Sporting Life” by The Decemberists
The interesting thing about this track written by Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy is that the sport in question is never specified. We just know the action takes place on a playing field as part of a youth league of some sort. Soccer is probably the best guess, although lacrosse or field hockey are possibilities as well.
In any case, the narrator, while playing for an otherwise-dominant team, embarrasses himself by taking a header in front of everyone. Meloy does an amazing job sketching out characters that anyone familiar with youth sports would recognize, from the father wanting to relive his old glories through his son, to the coach leveling his scorn on his team’s lesser athletes. From his perspective sprawled out on the turf, the narrator draws our sympathy when he notes, They condescend and fix on me a frown / How they love the sporting life.
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