To the casual observer, baseball has little to do with rock’n’roll. That observer, then, would have a hard time explaining The Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat with a Baseball Bat.”
The same observer probably has no idea that the New York Yankees routinely play the punk foursome’s “Blitzkrieg Bop” over the Yankee Stadium loudspeaker, hoping to transform their fan-friendly, rousing “Hey, Ho! Let’s Go!” refrain into a Bronx Bomber rally.
Rock’n’Roll High School
Guitarist Johnny Ramone, like the other three members of the influential punk rockers, hailed from Forest Hills, just north of Jackie Robinson Parkway in the New York City borough of Queens.
In fact, in October 2016, New York City and Queens honored the band’s 40th anniversary by naming the corner of 67th Avenue and 110th Street in front of Forest Hills High School (their alma mater), “The Ramones Way.”
Johnny once detailed how his love of baseball all but distracted him from his main job, laying down tracks for the band’s Subterranean Jungle, their seventh album, in 1982: “We did three covers, but I was happy with the guitar sound. I was watching the [Milwaukee] Brewers-[St. Louis] Cardinals World Series when we were recording it.”
To the uninitiated, the Ramones’ way, typically, was two minutes of fast, melodic power-punk. If the Ramones were the 70s punk Beatles (as many musicologists assert), The Clash were the Stones, and The Jam were The Who.
The Ramones (1974-1996) recorded 14 studio albums and seven live albums, most for Sire/Warner Bros. Records, and were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder introduced the Ramones during the 2002 ceremony, appearing in a mohawk and Ramones t-shirt. “They were armed with two-minute songs that they rattled off like machine-gun fire, and it was enough to change the Earth’s revolution,” Vedder intoned before bringing out Johnny, bassist Dee Dee, original drummer Tommy, and replacement drummer Marky. Lead singer, Joey Ramone, had died several months before the induction ceremony.
Animal Boy
John Cummings was born October 8, 1948, on the day Game 3 of the World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Braves was underway, a series eventually won by the Indians, 4-2.
He died, at 55, from prostate cancer on September 15, 2004, on a day his beloved Yankees beat the Kansas City Royals, 3-0, on the strength of two doubles and a homer by Derek Jeter.
Johnny was a devoted fan of the Yankees since the mid-50s, when, at age 7, he saw Mickey Mantle play. That explains his undying love for baseball.
He was there for The Beatles’ concert at the New York Mets’ Shea Stadium, August 15, 1965, two months shy of his 17th birthday.
To witness that transformative pop-cultural event in a venue that normally houses the great American pastime tells us all we need to know about the convergence of Johnny Ramone’s two great loves.
Johnny, from his 2012 autobiography, Commando, zeroes in on that Beatles performance and its ultimate influence on his band: “I’ve always thought you’re better off playing shorter songs. Ramones songs were basically structured the same as regular songs, but played fast, so they became short.
“When I saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium, they played a half-hour show. I figured that if the Beatles played a half-hour at Shea Stadium, the Ramones should only do about fifteen minutes. You get in your best material, and leave them wanting more. I don’t think anyone should play for more than an hour.”
“Disaffected Boomers”
Dr. Donna Gaines offers this quick band bio on how the Ramones congealed: “The original band members grew up as disaffected boomers repulsed by the legacy of peace and love. They were loners, outcasts in their outer-borough middle-class apartment complex.
“Typical neighborhood guys, bassist Dee Dee (Doug Colvin) lived next door to Johnny, who played guitar, and Johnny was in a band with Joey’s brother, guitarist Mickey Leigh. Johnny knew Tommy (Erdelyi) since high school; they had a band called Tangerine Puppets.
“Like Dee Dee and Johnny, Joey (Jeffrey Hyman) was alienated at home, at school, and in the neighborhood. In their early days, Dee Dee and Johnny sat on rooftops killing time, getting wasted, and looking for cheap thrills.”
Brain Drain
Ranked number 28 on the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list in Rolling Stone magazine, John grew up with a father who let him get away with very little.
In Ramones’ tour manager Monte Melnick’s 2003 book, On the Road with The Ramones, John is quoted as saying: “My father would get on these tangents about how he never missed a day’s work. I broke my big toe the day I had to go pitch a Little League game and he’s going, ‘What are you – a baby? What did I do, raise a baby? You go play.’
“‘And even though my toe was broken, I had to go pitch the game anyway. It was terrible. It would always be like that. I’m glad he raised me like that but it would always be, ‘What are you – sick? You’re not sick. What did I raise – a baby? I never missed a day’s work in my life.’ Then I went to military school, and in military school, you couldn’t call in sick.”
Johnny’s father died in 1979 while the band was in LA recording the End of the Century album, their fifth. Legendary record producer Phil Spector was hired to twiddle the knobs on this hoped-for breakthrough LP.
Drummer Marky Ramone offers this account (from his 2015 autobiography, Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life As a Ramone) of how Johnny learned of his dad’s death during recording:
“John’s father had died of a heart attack. It was a complete shock. He was only sixty-two. It was obviously very sad. He had recently retired and moved with John’s mother to Florida. There was such a thing as the American Dream, and there was also the American nightmare. The nightmare was to spend your entire adult life doing hard labor in return for a few golden years and then get shortchanged. I had seen it many times before, and it wasn’t going to be me if I could help it.
“When we saw John in the lounge a minute later, he was pale, numb, and shell-shocked. One bookend to his life was John Wayne, and the other was his father. He idolized his dad. He was always trying to please him, to prove himself. Even in the Ramones. And now he was on his own.
“When John came back, he looked worn-out and not just from jet lag. He had flown a triangle around the country to put things in order, comfort his mother, and be strong for everyone who came to the funeral. He had no time to even begin sorting out what his father’s passing meant to him. But beneath the bags under John’s eyes was a little smile, which he explained to us.”
Beane Around the Block
“You know how I found out that you were a baseball fan, Johnny? I had read somewhere that you knew John Wetteland.” These words came from former Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane, addressing Johnny Ramone in a 2002 interview with ChinMusic!, a defunct Bay Area magazine, reprinted in this 2012 article on AthleticsFarm.com.
Johnny Ramone replied: “I met Wetteland when Peter Gammons [ESPN] came over one day. He wanted to do a piece on baseball and rock & roll. He brought me over to Dodger Stadium and I got to meet Wetteland. And I was always a big fan.”
Beane: “Yeah, I actually played with John in Detroit briefly when he got drafted over there in spring training. And at that point we were exchanging [2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees] Roxy Music CDs.”
Later, in the Beane/Ramone interview, Johnny revealed: “I read baseball books all the time. Baseball’s my life…and watching old movies.”
Beane responded: “I actually just gave Please Kill Me to Scott Hatteberg (a self-taught guitar player), our first baseman.” (Please Kill Me, The Uncensored Oral History of Punk was a book published by Penguin Books in 1997 by Legs McNeil, one of three founders of the seminal, groundbreaking Punk Magazine, 1976-1979).
With the Astros’ recent successes, though, thought by many to be a blueprint similar to Beane’s and the A’s Moneyball tactic of “winning through poverty” (and careful drafting), Johnny Ramone had this to say to Beane, regarding the A’s and their budget “pittance” at the time, in their 2002 chat:
“$40 million…unbelievable! I see teams always getting these over-priced veterans who don’t produce when you can bring up young guys that’ll probably give you the same type of production. And you guys seem to be doing that.”
Doubtless, words that might reflect Johnny’s assessment of the 2017 Houston Astros, were he alive to witness their first World Series championship and their 2019 march to “Take it Back.”
Mondo Bizarro
Had I known Johnny was such a baseball fan when I met him and his bandmates in 1977 (reuniting every time they rolled through Houston), I would have asked him about his knowledge of the Astros, and really, anything diamond-related.
But, as a 22-year-old, I was there not as an interviewer, but simply a fan with radio credentials to visit them backstage. I did manage to get Johnny to reveal his current tour read, a Jack Benny biography, and his secret for his trademark rapid downstroke-only guitar technique: “Practice.”
It wasn’t til the next year, on their 1978 swing through Houston, that I was asked back to their hotel room after the show by Linda Stein, wife of Sire Records president Seymour Stein. She traveled with the band on many occasions, and in a piece of behind-the-scenes trivia unknown by most fans, always had a new audio cassette tape shipped ahead waiting for them at each new city.
I sat on the floor next to Dee Dee, leaning against the dresser, while Linda played the tape, filled with the latest punk rock coming out of England, a scene The Ramones helped spawn on a previous mid-70s UK tour.
Joey stood in the corner listening quietly, while Johnny was taking in the tape’s content with especially studied intent.
Listing To Starboard
The March 18, 2012 issue of New York Magazine published several top 10 lists created by Johnny, a lifelong list-maker. Two of his lists, not surprisingly, were baseball-related:
EIGHTIES BALLPLAYERS
Rickey Henderson
Mike Schmidt
Cal Ripken
Wade Boggs
Ryne Sandberg
Andre Dawson
Robin Yount
Tim Raines
George Brett
Tony Gwynn
NINETIES BALLPLAYERS
Greg Maddux
Roger Clemens
Barry Bonds
Ken Griffey Jr.
Mark McGwire
Jeff Bagwell
Mike Piazza
Craig Biggio
Tom Glavine
Sammy Sosa
Baseball caps off to Johnny for not loading these top 10s with Yankees, as he could have easily done. His 90s list is, of course (now with the benefit of hindsight), packed with players who have come under the shadow of illegal “enhancements.”
An impressive list, nonetheless, populated as it is, with two Astros (Biggio and Bagwell), both Hall of Famers, with one ranking above Piazza, and both ranking higher than Sosa, in Johnny’s eyes. Noticeably absent from either list, though, is Nolan Ryan.
Finally, Johnny Ramone’s All-Time top 10 looked like this:
ALL-TIME TOP TEN
Baseball
Rock and roll
Politics
Elvis
Horror films
Film
Rock films
Science-fiction films
Reference books
Television
Cat-fancier, baseball fanatic, influential guitarist… Johnny Ramone was a rare rock star: A lifelong Republican in a Democrat-laden rock’n’roll firmament. He famously called Ronald Reagan, “The best President in my lifetime,” in an interview.
During his 2002 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction speech, Johnny included this in his acceptance speech: “God bless President (George) Bush, and God bless America.”
Longtime Houston Astros fans remember the countless years when annual triple-digit losses kept Astros caps and t-shirts hidden deep in our closets.
Now, Astro-bling of all types can be seen by just walking around Texas! The Astros' goal for 2020? To re-visit the magic of '17 and find a finger for championship ring #2!
As the Houston Astros Correspondent for TRS, it's been a blast meeting new fans and new friends, all of whom know where to turn for Astro news, prospect profiles, historical perspective, and a few surprises!
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