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RIP Ruth Roberts

Gwreck Jul 01 2011 01:22 PM

Co-Writer of this immortal tune: Meet the Mets, meet the Mets, Step right up and greet the Mets. Bring your kiddies, bring your wife, Guaranteed to have the time of your life. Because the Mets are really sockin' the ball, Knockin' those home runs over the wall. East side, West side, everybody's coming down, To meet the M-E-T-S Mets, of New York town. Oh, the butcher and the baker and the people on the streets, Where did they go? To MEET THE METS! Oh, they're hollerin' and cheerin' and they're jumpin' in their seats, Where did they go? To MEET THE METS! All the fans are true to the orange and blue, So hurry up and come on down - 'cause we've got ourselves a ball club, The Mets of New York town! Give 'em a yell! Give 'em a hand! And let 'em know you're rootin' in the stands! Come on and... Meet the Mets, meet the Mets, Step right up and greet the Mets. Bring your kiddies, bring your wife, Guaranteed to have the time of your life. Because the Mets are really sockin' the ball, Knockin' those home runs over the wall. East side, West side, everybody's coming down, To meet the M-E-T-S Mets, Of New York town, Of New York town!

John Cougar Lunchbucket Jul 01 2011 01:57 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

metirish Jul 01 2011 01:59 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

My kid sings a version on "Meet the Mets", often when we are walking down the street or in our local diner to the delight of some old Mets fans that work there. Immortal is right.

G-Fafif Jul 01 2011 02:00 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

Best team anthem ever. Make me want to stand and place my right hand over my heart. Thanks Ruth Robert and Bill Katz.

Benjamin Grimm Jul 01 2011 02:26 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

G-Fafif wrote: Best team anthem ever. Absolutely.

metsguyinmichigan Jul 01 2011 03:10 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

I never heard this line until sometime in the last five years: Oh, the butcher and the baker and the people on the streets, Where did they go? To MEET THE METS! Oh, they're hollerin' and cheerin' and they're jumpin' in their seats, Where did they go? To MEET THE METS! All the fans are true to the orange and blue, So hurry up and come on down - 'cause we've got ourselves a ball club, The Mets of New York town! I get a little weepy listing to the song. I'm guessing the replacement verses of "hot dogs, green grass, all out at Shea, guaranteed to have a heck of a day" in the later version over the "bring the kiddies, bring the wife" line was some sort of PC move.

G-Fafif Jul 01 2011 03:19 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

metsguyinmichigan wrote: I never heard this line until sometime in the last five years: Oh, the butcher and the baker and the people on the streets, Where did they go? To MEET THE METS! Oh, they're hollerin' and cheerin' and they're jumpin' in their seats, Where did they go? To MEET THE METS! All the fans are true to the orange and blue, So hurry up and come on down - 'cause we've got ourselves a ball club, The Mets of New York town! I get a little weepy listing to the song. I'm guessing the replacement verses of "hot dogs, green grass, all out at Shea, guaranteed to have a heck of a day" in the later version over the "bring the kiddies, bring the wife" line was some sort of PC move. I think it was mostly about misguided marketing and modernization rather than that dreadful "PC" phrase that's infected the public discourse for far too long (/hops off soapbox). Worse than tinkering with the classic lyrics was the chirpy Hooray For Everything! delivery the second version offered. The Mets, transitioning from de Roulet despair to Cashen resurgence, were having a crisis of confidence before their results-driven renaissance and were (semi-reasonably) questioning everything about themselves in the early '80s. They even tinkered with changing the name of the team (it got into the papers and they shot it down), so it probably seemed to their benefit to "update" the image. The image pre-1984 wasn't doing anything for them at the gate, so, uh, it must be the image's fault. I'm glad "MTM" has survived and flourished in the 21st century. I love that the butcher and the baker and the people down the street emerged from the shadows of their meat market and their bakery and wherever they were hiding. Though, post-2008, I kinda like that somebody thought to shoehorn Shea in there.

Ceetar Jul 01 2011 04:24 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

I like both sets of lyrics. They could probably tweak it very very slightly.. Hot Dogs, green grass, all out ON Shea.

TheOldMole Jul 01 2011 05:07 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

I like the original.

Edgy DC Jul 01 2011 07:56 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

G-Fafif wrote: The Mets, transitioning from de Roulet despair to Cashen resurgence, were having a crisis of confidence before their results-driven renaissance and were (semi-reasonably) questioning everything about themselves in the early '80s. They even tinkered with changing the name of the team (it got into the papers and they shot it down), so it probably seemed to their benefit to "update" the image. The image pre-1984 wasn't doing anything for them at the gate, so, uh, it must be the image's fault. Reasonably serious plans were in place to astroturf the field. A more-serious 16-year-old Edgy showed up for the home opener and canvassed the crowd with an anti-turf petition. Even got Jim Wohlford to sign it. Then-third base coach Bobby Valentine took a pass, but took the time to explain to me why not, and I loved him for it.

G-Fafif Jul 02 2011 03:10 AM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

Decent history of the song in the Wall Street Journal. A Mets Jingle Outlasts Its Author By JOSHUA ROBINSON Even to the most assiduous student of Mets lore, the name Ruth Roberts probably never rang a bell. But when she died Thursday night at the age of 84, she left behind one of the most universally recognizable elements of the franchise: "Meet the Mets,'' the catchy, brassy anthem she wrote in 1961. For half a century, this peppy jingle, which was written to encourage a skeptical town to "step right up and greet the Mets," which were then a brand-new team, has followed the franchise to two new ballparks. Through good seasons and bad, it has optimistically guaranteed that the Mets will deliver "the time of your life." "It's one of the most charming, endearing parts of the Mets' history," said Bob Thompson, a professor of music at SUNY Purchase and the head of the Baseball Music Project. "It was about the honesty and the purity of the game. It turned the spotlight away from the players and onto the fans." "Meet the Mets'' is actually slightly older than the team itself. It was commissioned in the fall of 1961 before the team's inaugural season. Roberts wrote it with her long-time collaborator, the composer Bill Katz, who died in 1988. At a time when sports music was dominated by fight songs about crushing the opposition to a fine paste, "Meet the Mets" stood apart by sounding decidedly chummy. Fittingly perhaps, given the Mets' years of futility, the song barely mentions winning. The single reference to success on the field—"Because the Mets are really sockin' the ball / Knockin' those home runs over the wall"—has, more often than not, stood as an empty promise. Sam Roberts, Ruth's brother, pointed out that the song was always meant to have that friendly tone. "This song is not about baseball," he said in a recent telephone interview. "It's not about the game and there's nothing violent about it. It's about having a nice day at the ballpark." The song remains in the Citi Field organist's repertoire. Versions are played during the SNY television and WFAN radio game broadcasts. But the primary sources of royalties on the song, according to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), are reruns of two popular syndicated shows, "Seinfeld'' and "Everybody Loves Raymond,'' in which the song made cameos. "Meet the Mets'' was by no means Roberts's only hit. In fact, it was not even her only baseball-themed hit. A gifted pianist, she began traveling from her home in Port Chester, N.Y. to the legendary Brill Building on Broadway to sell songs when she was in high school. One of her biggest hits was "The First Thing Ev'ry Morning (And the Last Thing Ev'ry Night)," performed by Dean Martin. Her first major sports song was "Mr. Touchdown, USA," which she wrote with Katz and her husband, Gene Piller, in 1950. Six years later, they had their first baseball hit with "I Love Mickey,'' about Mickey Mantle. And in 1960, they penned "It's a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame,'' which used to be a fixture at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. So by 1961, when the Mets and the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson were trying to craft their image in a market that still resented the loss of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, Roberts and Katz were already well established. Several months before kicking off their inaugural season, the Mets decided to place their branding in the hands of New Yorkers. They ran a contest for a logo and also put out a call for a theme song. Roberts's entry was one of 19 songs they considered. (the team also paid a New York cartoonist $1,000 for a logo design that showed the Manhattan skyline set inside a baseball with cursive letters—a logo that the team still uses.) After some edits were made by the Mets' general manager, the song was finally released to the public in the spring of 1963. The original version was performed by the Glenn Osser Orchestra. It was played on the radio and inside the Polo Grounds in a bid to generate buzz for a team that had just lost 120 games. For the fans who could not get enough of it, the Mets sold 45-rpm records of "Meet the Mets'' for $1 as a souvenir of the Polo Grounds, the Mets' home during their first two seasons of existence. One side of the disc featured the classic version with vocals while the other had an instrumental rendition. According to one news report from May 1963, the records were immediately popular. The Mets sold more than 4,000 copies at the ballpark and through the mail during the first two months of the season. And in case fans still needed more "Meet the Mets,'' they could buy the sheet music for 85 cents. Over the years, artists have tried to update the song. In 1999, there was a rhythm-and-blues version floating around. And in 1984, the Mets tried to jazz up the music and tweak the lyrics, replacing "Bring your kiddies, bring your wife / Guaranteed to have the time of your life," with, "Hot dogs, green grass all out at Shea / Guaranteed to have a heck of a day." But none of changes ever eclipsed the original version. "It's so stylized, it couldn't have been written in any other period but the early 1960s," Thompson said. "It's so corny—and that's what makes it beautiful."

G-Fafif Jul 07 2011 01:12 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

How one imagines the song was received in the early days... “Hey Mabel!” “What is it, Harry?” “Let’s go to the ballgame!” “What ballgame? You haven’t been to a ballgame since 1957.” “I know, but I have the strangest yen to go to one.” “Since when?” “Since I got this invitation.” “Invitation, Harry?” “Yeah, Mabel. Says we should meet the Mets.” “We, Harry?” “It’s very specific. Says I gotta bring ya. And the kids.” “Freddie and Frieda don’t care about baseball, Harry.” “That’s just because they’ve never had the chance to do this before.” “To do what, Harry?” “To meet the Mets!” “Meet the Mets?” “Meet the Mets!” “The invitation give ya any more details than that, Harry?” “Uh…somethin’ about steppin’ up to greet the Mets. Guess maybe they’re tellin’ us we’re all gonna be in the nosebleeds.” “Doesn’t sound that great, Harry.” “Nah, Mabel, it’ll be swell. Says right here we’re guaranteed to have the time of our life!” “I find that hard to believe, Harry.” The rest of the conversation, imagined here.

themetfairy Jul 07 2011 01:32 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

That was truly inspired Greg - a wonderful tribute.

G-Fafif Jul 08 2011 02:24 AM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

Thanks TMF.

G-Fafif Jul 12 2011 03:27 AM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

Richard Sandomir, vaguely backhanded in his appreciation of the recently deceased. They are not great songs (were you expecting Sondheim to write an ode to Hot Rod Kanehl?), but they put listeners in a cheerful mood as if they were following the bouncing baseball with Mitch Miller. Howie Rose, however, totally gets it: The song struck 9-year-old Howie Rose, a future Mets play-by-play announcer, as a “peppy, happy, optimistic song that gave you the feeling that there were better days ahead.” Six years later, he was at Shea for Game 3 of the first National League Championship Series against the Braves. The Mets were leading Atlanta, 2-0, in the best-of-five series. And Jane Jarvis, the stadium organist, was playing “Meet the Mets.” Rose said: “I’d always heard it as background music because it signaled that the game was about to begin. But that day, when she started playing it, I got an undeniable rush, you know, goose bumps. And all of a sudden, it sounded serious, and the realization hit: all those days when a day like this was a far-fetched dream led up to this moment. Oh my God, they’re coming out of the dugout to win a pennant today.” Today, Rose views the Roberts-Katz composition as nothing less than the Mets’ defining anthem, not bad for a team that has not always delivered fans the “the time of your life,” as the song guarantees. “I literally feel and see 50 years of baseball,” Rose said. He said he had a personal affinity for one line — “ ’Cause we’ve got ourselves a ball club ” — from one of the rarely sung middle verses. “That’s where you separate the men from the boys,” he said.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Jul 12 2011 05:53 AM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

It turned the spotlight away from the players and onto the fans. To me this is/was what MtM is all about, and what the Mets as an organization ought to be all about, and what the Wilpons basically destroyed while patting themselves on the back. The Mets' most defining characteristic has been that symbiotic hospitality between the fans and the organization. The Mets welcomed the East Side and West Side, the Butchers and Bakers and the People in the Street. Everybody's coming down. Today the Wilpons would prefer the butchers watch on SNY, and on those occasions when they 'come on down' they stay the f out of the Acela Club.

Edgy DC Jul 12 2011 06:07 AM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

Well, we could get a bunch of punks and bumrush the place. When they haul us in, we can use the song in our defense.

TheOldMole Jul 12 2011 01:31 PM Re: RIP Ruth Roberts

I'm up for it.