I used
to play baseball,
I used to want to play
People all said I had to be a
winner someday
We played on the sand lots
and the gravel schoolyards
I once had a tryout
with the same bluey car
The Cardinals said, young 'un,
we sure like your arm
We believe you can make it,
we'll send you down to the farm
You need a little seasonin' play,
a little double -A
We'll give you a chance
to show
how much you wanna play
And that was my favorite spring,
I could do anything
For six feet tall and lean,
I was just seventeen
My fastball was nothing but smoke,
my curveball snapped and broke
My change had made them look bad,
they couldn't hit a thing I had
I was pitching down in Houston,
I was do ing really well
I was in the rotation,
I was givin' them hell
I threw a two -hitter,
you oughta heard people shout
The very next morning,
Korean War broke out
On the spur of the moment,
I didn't have any plan
I went and joined the Air Force,
I wound up in Japan
I pitched for the squadron,
then we toured all the camps
We didn't have any problems,
we were all Far East champs
An d that was my favorite strength,
I could do anything
For six feet tall and lean,
I was just seventeen
My fastball wasn't nothing but smoke,
my curveball snapped and broke
My change that made them look bad,
they couldn't hit a thing I had
I was throwing on no hitter
the day MacArthur got fired
The book going down like ten pins
really had him wired
The bottom of the seventh
throwing easy as can be
Something snapped in my shoulder
and that was all she wrote for me
So I fetched up a service
and I moved back down here
Married a fine woman
and I found a new career
We had us a young son
and we watched Jimmy grow
And the first time he asked
I taught him everything I know
And this is my favorite strength
He can do anything
For six feet tall and lean
He's just seventeen
His fastball gives him the shakes
His curveball snaps and breaks
His change, it makes him look bad
People say he takes after his dad
Thank you
Thanks very much
I didn't write any campaign songs
back in 88
Nobody switched me on enough
to cause me to do that
And besides, I had already my generic campaign song,
which I wrote years ago, to be able to sing in
any kind of election campaign,
state, local, federal, it didn't matter.
And it was designed for that, frankly,
because I reached a point back there
about 10 years or so ago
when I got a little fed up with writing
songs
for my kind of presidential candidates
who were invariably out
of money
and out of the race by the Iowa caucus,
leaving me stranded with
a song
and no one for whom to sing it.
And I just, I don't know, I just thought to myself,
I got to get a little less specific
with these things.
General principles,
I said, that's what I'll do.
I will write an all -encompassing,
all -embracing political song
which I can always do.
And the way I'll do that, I said,
it's going to take some broad strokes.
I'll have to plumb down there
to the depth of bedrock
of American political thought
and get down there to the very heart and soul,
the root and branch
of American political philosophy,
where I found absolutely
nothing.
Came back up,
wrote a superficial whiz,
which has been working just fine
for about, as I say, about 10 years.
Now, of course, I do always hesitate to sing the song in California,
where I know that politics
had generally conducted
on a much loftier moral plane
than most others.
Tom Paxton 
