What the fuck, Nationals?

Do me a favor before you read this: click your right mouse button on the link at the end of this paragraph; open that link in a new window; listen to the ensuing song.

And now join me in saying: what the fuck, Nationals?

This, according to the Nationals’ website, is the team’s new theme song. It was apparently debuted during the April 7-13 homestand, and was such an obvious fucking embarrassment that no one in the club or the media wanted to talk about it until April 23. It was written by Charlie Brotman, the Senators’ former announcer, who I’m sure is a very nice man.

(Come on, kids. He’s 79. You can’t expect me to talk shit about him)

Let’s talk about the lyrics first:

We’re nuts
About the Nats!
We’re nuts about the Nats!
We’re crazy ‘bout the Nationals,
And nuts about the Nats!

Ok, firstable, what does “nuts” mean in this context? It’s a (perhaps somewhat dated*) slang term for “crazy”—in this case, used to convey enthusiasm rather than insanity. And “Nats,” obviously, is an abbreviation for Nationals. So the first verse is really: We’re crazy about the Nationals!/ We’re crazy about the Nationals!/ We’re crazy ‘bout the Nationals/ And crazy about the Nationals!



Which just makes us sound. . .crazy. In this case, used to convey insanity rather than enthusiasm.

Moving on:

We love
To see them play
All baseball fans will say
We’re crazy ‘bout the Nationals
And nuts about the Nats!

I’m fine with the part about loving to see them play, but the part about “all baseball fans will say” is clearly fallacious. I’ll see the Nats play in Phoenix at the end of the month, and I certainly don’t expect “all” the baseball fans there to say “hey, I’m crazy ‘bout the Nationals. . .and nuts about the Nats!” For one thing, just because one is a baseball fan does not necessarily make one a Nationals fan.

For another, we desert dwellers are a simple, laconic people**. We don’t waste words if we don’t have to, and we try to avoid repeating ourselves.

But I digress:

Nation’s Capitol, home of the Nats
The game’s a ball, and it’s driving us bats!

I suppose the bat/ball thing is kind of cute, but seriously, Charlie Brotman? Driving us bats? What is the deal with the incessant insanity references? Your advanced age will only buy you so much tolerance, my friend.

So let’s go, red, white and blue
We’ll go nuts for every curly W! (modulation)
W!

Sigh.

Come on
And sing it loud
Come on and sing it proud!
We’re crazy ‘bout the Nationals
And nuts about the Nats!

I will not. I will not sing it loud or proud, Charlie Brotman. In fact, if they play this song at games, I will start using that as an opportunity to track down the nearest beer man. And I will roam through the stands screaming “BEER MAN! BEEEEEEEERRRRR MAAAAAAAAN!!!!” while everyone else is standing around bopping their heads aimlessly and looking embarrassed while they vaguely mumble the lyrics.

As with so many bad songs, though, the lyrics are only half the problem. Let’s talk about the tune.

Let’s see. . . let’s see. . . .how to accurately describe the melody without using “gay” as a derogatory term. . .

Oh, I know: this song sounds like something that would’ve been the opening number to one of the “musicals” we did in Junior High. And I say “musicals” in scare quotes because they weren’t plays with a plot that incidentally had music, but kind of extended medleys, broken up into acts by decade (‘60’s! ‘70’s! ‘80s!) or theme (Ragtime! Swing! Hollywood Musicals!). They always began with a rousing number that set up the “premise***” linking the sometimes disparate songs together. Like this one, from Nickelodeon:

Play that Nickelodeon
That magical music machine!
We love to hear those songs again
Like Raggedy Rags or Bouncy Beguines!
Take us, Nickelodeon, way back where music began
And put a nickel in
That old Nickelodeon, nothing is better than
Hearing a song again on
That Nickelodeon!

(And then in each of the acts, someone would reminisce about their glory days, put a nickel in the giant cardboard Nickelodeon, and we’d sing 5 songs from that era, complete with choralography. There are videotapes of this somewhere—fortunately, not on YouTube. Yet. I live in fear of their surfacing****)

Anyway. This song reminds me very much of one of those opening numbers—the canned music (the musicals came with accompaniment tapes), the enthusiastic, declarative lyrics, even the timing of the modulation (“W!”). If you listen hard enough, I think you can even hear the jazz hands.

Which is really just a politic way of saying: this song is gay. And not in the cool way, like my landlord and about 80% of my friends and everyone at my gym, but in the lame derogatory way, like bad junior high musicals and A-Rod.

And yes, I know it’s a baseball theme song, and such songs are by nature kind of lame. No one got a Grammy for “Meet the Mets,” but that at least has the excuse of being an established tradition. And if you want to go with more recent crappy theme songs—yes, “The Diamondbacks Swing” bites in a number of serious and significant ways, but: 1) you have to admit, the “I back, you back, we back the D-backs” bit is kind of clever, and 2) at least it doesn’t sound like the fucking opening number to an extraordinarily lame junior high “musical.”

In short: badly done, Charlie Brotman. And what the fuck, Nationals?

*79, people!
**Alright, I’m clearly not, but that’s probably why they kicked me out. That and my pinko commie voting record.
***See previous explanation vis. “musicals.”

****Lest you were in danger of forgetting, I was really, really, extremely fucking cool in Junior High.