I’m sure no one cares but me, but this song has always bugged me – art is the stuff that won’t turn you loose. I can give you a video montage for which a less-raucous rendition could make the soundtrack:
A 4 AM monologue/soliloquy/lullabye sung by a grandfather to his fussing grandson. “The cross is in the ballpark” is repeated in a way that suggests the theme is an attainable redemption, a message aimed most at Sonny, the narrator’s son. The instrumentation crowds the poetry, but I like it as a redemption hymn.
The second repetition of “Why deny the obvious, child?” seems explicitly religious to me:
Some people say the sky is just the sky
But I say, “Why deny the obvious, child?”
That’s proof by assertion, but it seems to argue that the whole song is a mildly-enthusiastic pomo paean to the redemptive power of faith. That much is just fun for me, and I like my reading better than any other I’ve seen.
And that’s just the song. If you take on the back-story that leads to my montage above, there’s a three-act reconciliation rom-com in there, with a sweet sidebar on fatherhood.
What’s the vitally important obvious fact being denied? What broke up Sonny’s marriage? And how do the three men in the song go about fixing it?
I wrote that much in February (you remember – huggy, schmoozy, long-forgotten February) on Facebook. Yesterday, I looked at the original video for this song and guess what I saw? Keep in mind that Paul Simon has said “The cross is in the ballpark” refers to the Pope’s visit to Yankee Stadium.
If you don’t see it, you haven’t been to Mass lately.
I have no dog in this hunt, although I am always interested in the lies poets tell about their work. But there is a sweet story here about how fathers and sons can fix themselves, buried under all that instrumental camouflage.
Here’s a cleaner take. It’s made by Swedes, so you can understand the words.
What’s this song really about? Why deny the obvious?
