Karen Carpenter and the Detroit Tigers

You know how one song can often get stuck in your head for it seems like days on end? For me lately that song has been Close to You, sung by Karen Carpenter. It really is a nice little soft rock song, and I genuinely like it. Usually. But not after hearing it over and over in my mind during my waking hours of the last several days. Even at that, I used to hate it even more.

While it's almost certainly only my childhood psychology of the time at work, back when most major league baseball games were on the radio rather than television it seemed as though every time my beloved Detroit Tigers were in a rain delay the first song the emergency deejay played was Close to You. I came to despise that song, because when I heard it meant that I was trying to listen to baseball and the game was under a weather suspension.

It's nothing against Karen Carpenter, who had a lovely voice. It's surely one of those things which just stick in your mind for whatever odd reason. Karen Carpenter singing meant the Tigers weren't playing. I realize that that isn't even her fault. She had no control over what some radio station in Detroit played when it couldn't air sports.

Still, even right now, even about 46 years later, even three months before the next baseball season, I'm mad hearing the song solely in my own mind because it's means no Tiger baseball. I suppose that's little more than self imposed Pavlovianism. But man, I can't wait til the tarp's off the field.