While getting Charlie Sheen to throw out the first pitch at this year’s World Series didn’t pan out, Bill Murray will be singing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” during game 3 of the Chicago Cubs versus the Cleveland Indians tonight at Wrigley Field. We can only hope that Murray will perform the tune in the style of smug and smarmy lounge lizard Nick Ocean.
Evanston-born, Wilmette-raised Murray is a lifelong Cubs fan, and was baptized as such in 1987, when the comedian filled in for announcer Caray. Murray also cracked open a couple brewskis with Caray in the announcer’s booth on August 8, 1988, the evening that the Chicago Cubs played their first night game at Wrigley Field:
Murray even crashed a White House briefing just last week, eschewing politics to talk Cubs baseball. And a nation wished that more of their Facebook friends would follow suit:
It has been a longstanding tradition that celebrities come out and lead the Cubs crowd in a sing-along of the song—written by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer in 1908—during the seventh-inning stretch. Cheap Trick’s been there, that jagoff Donald Trump butchered it, and nobody did it better than Cubs announcer Harry Caray.
Game 3 of the World Series airs tonight on Fox.