Non-Hit Hits Top Ten: Centerfield (#3)

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Yesterday was the first day of fall. Some years you can’t tell it. You can today! I had to get the jeans and sweatshirts out (and they don’t fit because of my weight loss…I know, hard to feel sorry for me ). Meanwhile, I’ve reached the top three of the songs on this first list (yes, there will have to be more of these) of songs that “everybody” knows but were never Billboard top 40 hits. Here’s today’s song, that has its own channel! #3: Centerfield - John Fogerty Yeah, you’ll hear this on MLB all the time. And at every ball park. The unofficial theme song of baseball. Of course, John Fogerty is a master of putting multiple meanings in his songs. Look at some of the Creedence Clearwater Revival songs, for instance. He’s so good at it that he has to insist that “Bad Moon Rising” is really JUST about a storm! Here you have him comparing his comeback (he was tied up by his former manager/owner of CCR’s record label for nearly a decade to prevent him from recording music…and it made him so bitter that, for a long time, he refused to do CCR songs in concert) to the grand old game. The connection is there, when he quotes Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”’s line about the baseball player hitting a home run (“rounding third and heading for home, it’s a brown eyed handsome man”). It’s a crime that legal issues deprived us of Fogerty’s music for a decade, but MAN did he make up for it. Now, despite the ubiquitous nature of this song for six months a year, it did not make the Billboard top 40. That’s okay. It’s as American as baseball itself. Centerfield Written by John Fogerty Recorded by John Fogerty From Centerfield, 1985 Billboard chart peak position: #44 Got a beat-up glove: