The Silly, Hard-to-Sing Tune that Bonded Us

“So, I say D, I say DO, DOD, DODG, DODGERS, team, team, team…”

These words represent the first line of the Los Angeles Dodgers song, written in 1962 by Sylvia Fine and Herbie Baker, and made famous by Fine’s husband, musical film star Danny Kaye, for whom they wrote it. I’m not a singer or a baseball fan, but The Dodgers Song is the one and only song I have in my musical performance repertoire.

My sister Eliana—who, like me, was not a singer or a baseball fan—knew the entire song too. On occasion we would spontaneously break out singing our own rendition of The Dodgers Song together. It was a bridge that temporarily lifted the strains of our sibling relationship, characterized by each’s annoyance at the mere existence of the other. I never set out to learn the words, but one summer I heard it so many times that I just absorbed them. Eliana must have done the same.

***

When we were young, my three sisters and I spent summers at our cabin in Lake Arrowhead, a cabin we shared with our cousins, three boys, who were all avid Dodgers fans. During those summer months, the height of baseball season, I got a glimpse into their world of sports and competition, but especially Dodgers baseball.

Robby, Jimmy, and Donny were spaced right between my sisters and me in age. And that summer of 1962, when The Dodgers Song was first broadcast, between the seven of us, we covered nearly all ages between 4 and 12. I was 10.

My sister Eliana—who, like me, was not a singer or a baseball fan—knew the entire song too. On occasion we would spontaneously break out singing our own rendition of The Dodgers Song together. It was a bridge that temporarily lifted the strains of our sibling relationship, characterized by each’s annoyance at the mere existence of the other. I never set out to learn the words, but one summer I heard it so many times that I just absorbed them. Eliana must have done the same.

While we girls spent afternoons quietly working on sewing projects, reading, or doing jigsaw puzzles, the boys fought, yelling over who would read the sports section in the L.A.Times first, or who got to hold the transistor radio broadcasting the Dodgers baseball game live. If the sound wasn’t turned up high enough on the radio, Jimmy would snatch it out of Robby’s hand and run away with it. Scrambling over the couch, where we girls were likely sitting quietly, Robby chasing behind, he’d holler, “It’s mine, I got it first!”

All that commotion didn’t endear me to the game of baseball (or boys for that matter) but when The Dodgers Song was broadcast over the radio during inning breaks, I found some common ground with my cousins. The song brought the game of baseball into a theatrical light, something I could more readily relate to. So, I paid attention when I heard it, and I began to learn some of the names of the team’s players from the song’s lyrics. Eventually those lyrics were archived into the recesses of my brain.

Three decades later, in 1993, years after we sold our Lake Arrowhead cabin, we returned as adults to the lake, staying in a rental condo. Time had changed our family configuration. Our group now included my parents, sisters, husbands and all our children—a new generation of cousins. One night after dinner, deciding whether we should play board games or cards, or make up a play for entertainment, Eliana and I looked to one another with sisterly intuition and broke out in song—the only one we knew.

For Eliana and me, The Dodgers Song became an easy, innate connection in an otherwise uneasy relationship. She and I were the two middle sisters in our family of four girls. She was two years younger than me, but of similar size, build and coloring—we were fair-haired and freckle-faced, like our father. When we were young, people always confused us or thought we were twins. I didn’t want to be compared to her. She was awkward in her body, I was graceful in mine, and her awkwardness made me uncomfortable. She wished she was a boy. I was a girly girl. With her creative spirit, she always seemed a bit lost in this world. It was only through our creativity that we occasionally connected, sometimes through baking together, and every decade or so, by joining in on The Dodgers Song.

All that commotion didn’t endear me to the game of baseball (or boys for that matter) but when The Dodgers Song was broadcast over the radio during inning breaks, I found some common ground with my cousins. The song brought the game of baseball into a theatrical light, something I could more readily relate to.

The lyrics to The Dodgers Song are tricky, involving names of lots of ball players, and play-by-play game coverage. And the melody loops around. It’s easy to mix up the lyrics while the progress of the game unfolds throughout the song.

When Eliana and I sang together, between us, we could generally get through the entire song, each of us taking turns, leading one another through the complicated, but humorous parts. Sometimes we got lost, but singing together we would laugh and keep going until we circled back to where we’d gone astray, ultimately making it to the end of the song victoriously.

The Dodgers Song as performed by sister team Eliana and Jan:

***

When I was 66 and Eliana was 64, I went on a two-week trip to China with a small group of people on an organized tour. Days before I left, Eliana had some lab tests done associated with a medical concern. While I was in China our older sister, Davia, called to tell me the results. Eliana had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She was given three weeks to live.

“Don’t come home early,” Davia said. “Judy and I will be here with Eliana. You can come see her when you get back.” When I returned from China, I would join my sisters who were taking care of her through her final days.

It was a complicated moment. My sister was dying. We were not close on the surface but still tethered by family. I was grateful that Davia and Judy were with her and that they didn’t ask me to come home early. Eliana had no children. She had never married.

The day I got the news in China about Eliana, our group went on a long bus excursion. Returning from our visit to an ancient temple site and looking for a diversion on the bus, one of our fellow travelers stood up and said, “Let’s sing some songs.”

We were a group of about a dozen . It was early on in our trip, and we were still getting acquainted. The woman who suggested we sing got the ball rolling. She chose a song but no one else knew, so she sang solo. This set the tone for more performance-singing than sing-along singing, and others became intimidated. Understandably, nobody wanted to sing by themselves. I didn’t either, but when it came to my turn, I thought of my sister Eliana. And I had only one song in my repertoire, The Dodgers Song.

I did the best I could standing at the back of the bus, singing by myself as we rode along through the interior roads of China. But I couldn’t get through the song without Eliana by my side. I got caught up in that melodious loop and kept circling back to the ninth inning of the baseball game, over and over again. Two of the men on the tour were Giants fans from San Francisco, so they at least had some inkling of what I was singing about. It was a ridiculous performance, though my fellow travelers clapped politely when I finished.

When Eliana and I sang together, between us, we could generally get through the entire song, each of us taking turns, leading one another through the complicated, but humorous parts. Sometimes we got lost, but singing together we would laugh and keep going until we circled back to where we’d gone astray, ultimately making it to the end of the song victoriously.

The day after I returned home from China, I boarded another plane for Colorado to be with Eliana and my other two sisters, who were there caring for her.

Eliana’s three-week death sentence was extended day by day as we took turns looking after her. All our kids—Eliana’s six nephews and nieces—came one weekend to say their final goodbyes. By now Eliana was quite frail, her skin yellowing more each day, her energy measured. But we were together as a family like in the old days of summers in Lake Arrowhead.

One evening we were gathered together in Eliana’s living room, hanging out, passing time.

“Let’s do something,” said one of the kids. “Who wants to play cards, do a jigsaw puzzle, or make up a play?”

I looked at Eliana. She caught my eye. We each knew what the other was thinking…The Dodgers Song.

Eliana didn’t have much time left. She had made peace with that. Her life had not been easy. She’d struggled with relationships and work; she’d survived breast cancer but battled depression and now pancreatic cancer. My discomfort with her, something I couldn’t clearly identify, had seemed embedded in us from the start, and was just one of her many trials during her lifetime. Now in spite of her diminished energy and measured time, she was surrounded by her family, relishing these moments of attention.

“So, I say D, I say DO, DOD, DODG, DODGERS, team, team, team…”

One last time, together, she and I sang the entire song. Even the tricky part.

Now, years after Eliana’s death, I remember how a silly song learned practically by osmosis via my cousins’ love of baseball, bridged a gap, not just between me and a bunch of tourists on a long bus ride in China, but between my sister and me. In spite of our differences, the song—obscure and ridiculous in many ways—erased my discomfort and was the connection I made with her. To this day, I am not able to sing it through without her.

Danny Kaye singing the song: