Baseball

"Baseball"
Song by Ozma
Album	Rock and Roll Part Three
Released	January 1, 2000
Length	5:35
Label	Kung Fu Records
Writer(s)	Ryen Slegr Daniel Brummel Jose Galvez
Producer(s)	Bruce Witkin
Status	Officially released
Rock and Roll Part Three track listing
"If I Only Had a Heart" (6) "Baseball" (7) "Rocks" (8)
Songs of Inaudible Trucks and Cars
Songs of Inaudible Trucks and Cars track listing
"Iceland" (11) "Baseball" (12)

"Baseball" is the seventh track from Rock and Roll Part Three. A live version of this song appeared as the twelfth and final track on 1999s Songs of Inaudible Trucks and Cars.

Appearances

• Songs of Inaudible Trucks and Cars
• Rock and Roll Part Three
• All Areas Vol. 22 (2001)

Overview

See Ozma song explanations - 2000

Daniel Brummel recalls the song springing from fond childhood memories of baseball that, "got compressed into a love song somehow." In 2022, Brummel broke down the creation of the song for Spin Rate

Just prior to Mother’s Day in May of 1996, I had sketched out a song for my mom on my Casio MT-100 and recorded it my Fostex XR-5 four track. Originally being about love of family and home, it began with the line “When I feel the morning grass, I let down my guard, because love comes from the dirt in my own backyard.” I played it for my mom on that Mother’s Day, which was one of only two times I remember my music making her cry. Ryen Slegr and Jose Galvez were co-writers on the song, and we finished the chorus lyrics over AOL Instant Messenger, with the rhymes “Can you still remember/April to November/You and I were members/The best team in baseball.” I remember my Dad remarking that the line “Every time I think I finish being young, I catch myself having fun” was a feeling that people of all ages could relate to. We finished writing the song in time to make it a staple of our early live sets, and I engineered a full-band live recording in the Henry Mancini Electronic Music Laboratory at LACHSA, which made it onto our first CD, “Songs of Inaudible Trucks and Cars,” ... Somewhere along the line, in one of Ozma’s songwriting sessions, the morning grass and dirt of my parents’ backyard morphed into the outfield grass and infield dirt of the ballfield. We were very into experiments in wordplay at the time, and I got excited about the possibilities inherent in framing a song around my favorite sport. (“The cross is in the ballpark,” said Paul Simon in “The Obvious Child.”) Pretty much all of Ozma’s songs from that era were either about unrequited love or romance gone wrong, and “Baseball” was no exception. The bridge was about Amy Hurst, one of the first girls I had ever kissed. We met at the California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA) in July of 1996. Her nicknamed was “Gorilla” because the Michael Crichton book and movie “Congo” were out at that time, which are centered around a gorilla named Amy. (Ozma’s song “Rain of the Golden Gorilla” was also about her.) After summer school, Amy went back to Redding and I went back to Pasadena, which explains the line “So I drive straight up I-5 to let you know I’m still alive.” Between the Mother’s Day melody, the lost girlfriend, and the ballfield, the song covers a lot of ground. - Daniel Brummel, [citation needed]

Lyrics

When I feel the morning grass
I let down my guard
Because love comes from the dirt
In my own backyard

Every time I think I've finished being young
I catch myself having fun
But the moment passes as the sun moves on
So I turn myself back to you

On a diamond in the rough
I spent my better years
And I still see her in the crowd
With diamonds in her ears
And it's depressing that
I can't forget the tune the organist played
La da da da da da da, la da da da da

Every time I think I've finished being young
I catch myself having fun
But the moment passes as the sun moves on
So I turn myself back to you

Is our season over?
No four-leaf clover
I feel it getting colder
Now that it's late fall
Can you still remember?
April to November
You and I were members:
The best team in baseball

And so we play our games
I've got a girlfriend
You've found a new guy
But it's not the same
And so I drive
Straight up I-5
To let you know I'm still alive

Every time I think I've finished being young
I catch myself having fun
But the moment passes as the sun moves on
So I turn myself back to you

Is our season over?
No four-leaf clover
I feel it getting colder
Now that it's late fall
Can you still remember?
April to November
You and I were members:
The best team in baseball

See also

• Ozma
• List of Ozma songs
• Rock and Roll Part Three