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In "The Baseball Songbook," musicologist and singer Jerry Silverman explores a musical golden age of sport.

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June 19, 2007 | Ever heard of Katie Casey? Even if you haven't, you've probably sung a song about her dozens if not hundreds of times. In fact, you probably know the lyrics of that song by heart, or at least the chorus of it.

"Katie Casey was baseball mad/Had the fever and had it bad/Just to root for the hometown crew/Every sou Katie blew," it begins.

Familiar? No? Here's the rest of the verse: "On a Saturday her young beau/Called to see if she'd like to go/To see a show, but Miss Kate said 'No, /I'll tell you what you can do.'"

In "The Baseball Songbook," musicologist and folk singer Jerry Silverman collects Katie's tale and 40 others from the first half-century or so of baseball history. The book features sheet music from songs written between 1867 and 1922, as well as an introduction to each song by Silverman and a CD of him singing unadorned versions of the first verse and chorus of each, accompanying himself on the guitar.

It's a fascinating look at a time when baseball songs were a staple of mainstream popular music, none more popular than that one about Katie Casey. And what is it that Katie wanted her beau to do? Let's go to the chorus:

"Take me out to the ballgame ..."

Silverman, 76, is the author of many books of music instruction and song collections. He says he did most of his research for "The Baseball Songbook" at the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music at Johns Hopkins University. The book stops at 1922 because after that there are copyright issues, and Silverman says venerable music publishing house Alfred Publishing "didn't want to get involved in permissions and royalties and all that stuff."

But there's plenty here. The popular styles of the times are represented, from the martial-sounding "The Bat and the Ball," published two years after the end of the Civil War, through the comic vaudeville numbers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many featuring standard characters of the day such as the buffoonish Irishman, and on to songs about the Federal League and Babe Ruth.

There's even one co-written by -- and about -- Hall of Fame pitcher Rube Marquard, who was involved in show business through his wife, singing star Blossom Seeley.

Almost all of the songs will be new to almost everyone, though one title, "Slide, Kelly, Slide," might ring a bell even if the song itself doesn't.

Some of the big songwriters of the era are here, including George M. Cohan and Irving Berlin, both represented by work that would have to be classified as not their best.

Silverman grew up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan in, oddly enough, the Bronx. He says he's now, "by default," a New York Yankees fan. I spoke to him Monday by phone from his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Why a baseball songbook? Why baseball songs?

My most recent book before the baseball book was a collection of songs of the Holocaust called "The Undying Flame: Ballads and Songs of the Holocaust," which follows the line of what a musicologist does, digs up songs which used to be sung, perhaps, and should be at least remembered, and certainly there are no songs that need to be remembered more than songs of the Holocaust.

The baseball stuff, in a much lighter vein of course, follows the same path. Through other books that I've done I've come across two or three songs with baseball subjects, and my curiosity was whetted. I thought if there were two or three maybe there was more. And sure enough, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of baseball songs dating back to the Civil War period and up to the present day.

Next page: Why does "We Will Rock You" get sung at ballgames today? Plus: Where are the Negro Leagues songs?