NEW YORK (AP) — It’s sung every summer in baseball stadiums around the United States. But the impact of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” goes much further than simply getting fans out of their seats for the 7th-inning stretch.
More than a century after Jack Norworth penned the lyrics, a nonprofit founded with the song’s royalties is celebrating 50 years of supporting young musicians — including the talent behind some of today’s most popular musicals. The ASCAP Foundation, the separate charitable arm for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, was established in 1975 after Norworth’s estate left a bequest of the future licensing payments for baseball’s unofficial anthem and his other hits.
“Just as all music begins with a song, the ASCAP Foundation began with a song,” said Paul Williams, the group’s president and a composer-lyricist whose award-winning career includes “Rainbow Connection.”
The organization provides money, lessons and mentorship at all career stages in an industry where that support is badly needed by artists who often toil for years working other gigs while trying to get their music before the right ears. To reach its semicentennial, however, the foundation has had to identify new funding streams and reinvent programming.
“Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” written in 1908, has since entered the public domain and no longer generates revenue. The foundation nowadays relies on a mix of philanthropies, corporate sponsors and general public donations. The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation is a longtime backer and storied New York law firm Paul Weiss has been a sponsor.
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