Existing comment:
Trixie, Jack, and Nora
Historians have pointed to Trixie Friganza as the real-life inspiration for Katie Casey of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," who is depicted in the usually unsung verses as an independent, well-informed fan leading "the gang" in cheers. The song's lyricist, Jack Norwith, left his wife for Friganza, a popular vaudevillian and women's suffrage activist, but then abruptly married another star performer, Nora Bayes. Perhaps without irony, the next season the couple wrote "Let's Get the Umpire's Goat" (1909). |