Free The Soul of Baseball by Joe Posnanski Page A

a man who looked like he had recently escaped from Folsom Prison was awarded a free “Men’s Wearhouse makeover.” “I wonder how it will turn out?” Buck said two or three times. It turned out the way you might expect. After the makeover, the man wore a suit, which nicely covered his arm tattoos. He looked as if he had been paroled from Folsom Prison. Buck was impressed. “They really did a number on that guy,” he said.
    During the seventh-inning stretch, “Deep in the Heart of Texas” played. Buck sang along—of course he sang. There was never a time when I heard people singing and Buck did not join in. In this case, Buck did not know the words, and he could not keep up with the lyrics as they flashed up on the video board. But he tried.
 
    The stars at night
    are la-la bright
    Deep in the heart of Texas
    The la-la sky la-la la-la
     
    Buck’s favorite baseball promotion, as always, was the Kiss Cam. This was a ballpark staple all over America. Cameras scanned the crowd and looked for men and women (or boys and girls) sitting next to each other. Music played—always a song like Tom Jones’s version of “Kiss” or the Dixie Cups’ “Chapel of Love.” Once the camera locked in on the couple, one of two things could happen:

They kissed.
They did not kiss and were booed.

    “Mr. O’Neil, can I have your autograph?” a woman asked just as the Kiss Cam was about to begin.
    “Yes, of course, dear, in just a moment,” Buck said, and then he pointed to the video board. “I want to see this first.”
    This would be an archetypal Kiss Cam, with all of the usual story lines. First, the camera focused in on a couple of kids, clearly on their first or second date. Unspoken questions rushed through the crowd: Will he have the nerve? Will she? Does she want him to kiss her? Who will make the move? What will happen to them after the cameras turn away? The kids’ faces reddened, they giggled, he looked hesitantly into her eyes, she faintly shook her head no, he froze, paralyzed, and the longer they remained on the screen, the more uncomfortable it was to watch. But there’s no turning away. “She wants you to kiss her!” Buck shouted.
    “How do you know that?”
    “I can see it in her eyes.”
    The boy, being no older than sixteen, saw nothing but clouds in her eyes, and for another two or three excruciating seconds, the boos engulfed them. Her look changed then, her eyes pleaded: End this . The tension punctured with a safe peck on the cheek, an uncertain ending. The camera spun away to a middle-aged couple, drunk on beer and attention, and they groped and made out until that too became uncomfortable to watch. The Kiss Cam spotted an old couple and the cheers turned up louder, but apparently not loud enough to jolt him to awareness. He stared off into the distance, and she slapped his shoulder with her purse. He woke from his daze and sprang into action, first shouting “What?” and then leaning over to kiss her. Finally the Kiss Cam found an angry young couple, still not finished with a fight. He drank his beer, she turned away, they would not even look at each other even as the boos swelled louder and louder. She kept looking away. He kept drinking his beer.
    “Come on,” Buck yelled, “kiss the lady!” He did not.
    “Of course, for seven dollars, maybe he should drink the beer,” he said. And he turned back to the woman next to him, kissed her gently on the cheek, and signed an autograph.
     
     
     
    C RACKER J ACK IS utterly intertwined with baseball, of course, mostly because of the song. Every day at every ballpark in every big city and little town across America, people sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” In 1908, Jack Norworth, an old song-and-dance man in vaudeville, wrote that song in fifteen minutes while riding the New York subway. In the middle of Jack Norworth’s song is perhaps the most effective advertising line in the history of songwriting.
 
    Buy me some peanuts and Cracker