Sayin' It Ain't So

Google "sweet caroline fenway" and as of this posting the top hit will be a site called redsoxconnection.com which will offer up a hot steaming pile of bull dung about Neil Diamond's song. They will claim that, "despite rumors, it has nothing to do with President John F. Kennedy's daughter." Newsflash! The rumors are true! http://tinyurl.com/28gq6y

But sometimes the facts don't add up to the truth. The facts are that the history of "Sweet Caroline" getting played at Fenway coincides with the tenure of Amy Tobey. http://tinyurl.com/2ysvja Note that she credits her impulse of playing it at Fenway to having noticed that '' 'Sweet Caroline' was used at other sporting events."

The NPR Morning Edition (09/30/05) segment by Susan Orlean also credits Tobey but says nothing about other sporting events, just that she simply liked the song. Someone should ask Amy Tobey if she had seen the Ted Demme film, "Beautiful Girls" (1996) (written by Needham, MA native and Boston University alumnus Scott Rosenberg) and if she can recall with specificity the other sporting events at which she knew the song to be played. Even if she can, and her recollections are correct, there is no doubt in my mind that "Sweet Caroline" figuring prominently in the film, juxtaposed with its setting in a small town in Massachusetts, must have had something to do with the conception of playing it at Fenway; cosmically if not consciously.