Baseball related songs: “Go Cubs Go” by Steve Goodman
In the third episode of Baseball related songs, we pay attention to the victory song of the Chicago Cubs: Go Cubs Go. Every time the Cubs win, they fly the W flag and play this song. The life of the songwriter Steve Goodman, related to this song is rather tragic.
The song was written prior to the 1984 season by Steve Goodman, a Chicago Folk singer. The song was written because WGN Radio’s program director Dan Fabian had been looking for a hipper song to play over broadcasts than “It’s a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame.” Fabian thought Goodman was the right guy for this, even though he had offended Cubs manager Dallas Green the year before as he sang the song the song “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request,” which referred to the team as the doormat of the National League and Wrigley Field as an “ivy-covered burial ground.”
“A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request” is considered autobiographical as Goodman battled leukemia since he was twenty years old. Goodman died in 1984 at the age of 36, six months after writing Go Cubs Go. His ashes were scattered onto Wrigley Field, as can be read in the lyrics of “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request”: Let my ashes blow in a beautiful snow / From the prevailing 30 mile an hour southwest wind / When my last remains go flying over the left-field wall.
Dallas Green’s effort to change the spirit of the team, motivated Fabian to change the theme song. The song was first aired on WGN on Opening Day and played every gameday for the rest of the season and so it became the Cubs’ team song. In the next three years, 60,000 copies of the song were sold and the money the single generated went to charity. Some 1984 Cubs players can be heard performing the refrain.
The irony of the Cubs winning the NL East Division in 1984 was that they clinched the pennant four days after Goodman passed away.
The lyrics of the song go as follows:
Baseball season’s underway
Well you better get ready for a brand new day
Hey Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.
They’re singing …
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go|
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go|
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.
They got the power, they got the speed
To be the best in the National League
Well this is the year and the Cubs are real
So come on down to Wrigley Field.
We’re singing now …
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.
Baseball time is here again
You can catch it all on WGN
So stamp your feet and clap your hands
Chicago Cubs got the greatest fans.
You’re singing now …
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.
After the Cubs won the 2016 World Series, the song number 3 on Billboard‘s Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart which is a chart, published weekly by Billboard magazine, that lists the top singles that have not yet charted on the main Billboard Hot 100.
With the Cubs winning consecutive NL Central Pennants in 2007 and 2008, Go Cubs Go had a resurgence. After one of the team’s annual winter conferences, in which attendees dropped everything they were doing to sing along, the Cubs management decided to incorporate the song into the stadium experience. Broadcasts on WGN-TV and CSN Chicago have begun delaying postgame commentary to enable viewers to hear Goodman’s song and to watch fans at Wrigley listening and singing along.