First Gloves: Duke Snider

When I was a teenager, there was a nostalgic but sort of crappy song called “Talkin’ Baseball” by a guy named Terry Cashman. That’s not his real name, which is actually Dennis Minogue. Under his real name he’d been a very, very, very minor league player in the Tigers’ system in 1960 before embarking on a musical career.

Though Cashman couldn’t really play baseball, he did love it, and was inspired to write this particular tune. It became pretty popular, though not in the sense of being a Billboard hit or anything. What I mean is that it got him noticed in baseball circles, allowed him to perform the tune at induction ceremonies in Cooperstown, and earned him the nickname “The Balladeer of Baseball.”

The song taps into the nostalgia of baseball in the 1950s at a time when people were really unhappy with the sport over the 1981 players’ strike. Because of its refrain, the song is often known by an alternate name, “Willie, Mickey, and the Duke.”