![]() (He also said, more succinctly: “Sweet Caroline sucks.” )Įven Fenway employees have damned the song with faint praise. Jared Carrabis, a baseball writer for Barstool Sports, tweeted that the song is the “I’m not a diehard but I think diehards sing this so if I sing it then people will think I am but I’m still not” anthem. How do you feel right now? ‘So good! So good!’” “Hey, you spent $400 to bring your family to a game and they just blew a nine-run lead to your most hated rival. “Each night they shamefully scream out the words to “Sweet Caroline” as if everything is all good even when it isn’t,” Underhill wrote. During the tumultuous Bobby Valentine-managed season of 2012, MassLive’s Nick Underhill blasted the fans for singing and swaying away as the Sox squandered a 9-0 lead against the Yankees, lost the game 15-9 and fell to 4-10 on the season. ![]() Some of the grievances stem from the baseball purist’s notion that “Sweet Caroline” is a bellwether of “pink hat” fandom - in other words, baseball treated as a social outing, not as a competitive game. Other baseball teams around the country also played it in solidarity with Boston in the aftermath of the attacks.Īs Steinberg told the Globe in 2013, for some, the song is “as much a part of a visit to Boston and Fenway Park as having clam chowder or a lobster roll.” In 2013, Diamond appeared at Fenway to perform the song after the Boston Marathon bombings, and said he would donate royalties from the song to One Fund Boston. Regardless of the song’s inspiration, it has staying power as part of quintessential Boston culture. The song was about my wife at the time - her name was Marsha - and I couldn’t get a ‘Marsha’ rhyme.” “I was writing a song in Memphis, Tennessee, for a session. “It was such an innocent, wonderful picture, I immediately felt there was a song in there.”ĭiamond has backed away from that claim in recent years, saying that the song was about his then-wife, Marsha, during an appearance on Today in 2014. “It was a picture of a little girl dressed to the nines in her riding gear, next to her pony,” Diamond said. I thought she might be embarrassed, but she seemed to be struck by it and really, really happy.”ĭiamond claimed he was inspired by a photograph of the then nine-year-old Kennedy that he saw in a magazine while staying at a hotel in Memphis. “I’m happy to have gotten it off my chest and to have expressed it to Caroline. 1 record and probably is the biggest, most important song of my career, and I have to thank her for the inspiration,” Diamond told the Associated Press. ![]() Diamond cemented that tie in 2007 by revealing that the song was about New England’s own Caroline Kennedy, for whom he performed it on her 50th birthday. “So we started playing it each day in 2002.”Īs the song’s popularity at Fenway Park began to grow, its creator became increasingly tied to the team - and to Boston itself. “I wanted it to be the middle of the eighth, because you want your more festive songs to occur when the home team is coming up to bat,” Steinberg said in the interview. He also believed that standardizing the song by always playing it in the middle of the eighth inning would give it staying power. Steinberg theorized that the song may have “transformative powers,” and would thus be able to lift the spirits of a crowd even when victory wasn’t imminent. It all started with a baby named Caroline.ĭuring a 1997 game at Fenway, Amy Tobey, who was one of the employees in charge of music at the ballpark during that season, played “Sweet Caroline” because someone she knew had recently given birth to a baby of that name, according to MLB.com. So how did a nearly 50-year-old song with no apparent local ties become an integral part of the Fenway game experience? And can it survive a perpetual tide of scorn from both music snobs and sports purists alike to preserve its eighth-inning dominance? To examine the song’s future, it’s best to return to the beginning. The cheesy song didn’t arrive on the scene until 1997, the same year that Wally the Green Monster and the giant Coke bottles made their debut. For a younger generation of Red Sox of fans, Fenway Park is synonymous with “Sweet Caroline.” Yet the famous tradition of the entire stadium belting out Neil Diamond’s 1969 hit during the 8th inning - a custom both beloved and loathed, depending on who you ask - is a fairly recent phenomenon.
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