The Pecan Park Eagle

Van Lingle Mungo
 If they ever make his movie, The Pecan Park Eagle recommends
Nicholas Cage
for the title role.

The story of Van Lingle Mungo is a case in which two passions of the same person finally merged and transformed one of the most interesting baseball player names into the title of a song that has been acclaimed as one of the most important jazz numbers of the very late 1960s through the entirety of the 1970s.  The fellow whose creative forces put it all together was Dave Frishberg, a jazz pianist and composer who just happened to also have gone on to become of the early members of SABR because his fascination with the game we don’t even need to name in this part of the universe, but probably will, anyway. Baseball is a love that rests as comfortably on the muse farms and in the hearts of the artfully inclined creative types as it does in the scientific minds of those saber-metric mathematicians who have formulated their “money game” ways into decision-making roles with almost every MLB club these days.

Dave Frishberg
Composer
“Van Lingle Mungo”

Back in 1969, Frishberg apparently was going through one of those little pre-natal labor pains that comes with creative writing. He had a little melody that had been rolling through his head that would then be filled with interesting name that he pulled from the Baseball Encyclopedia. There was one little five-note hole to be filled at the end of the repetitive melody stanza that he needed as memorable punchline. Frishberg found his solution when he ran across the wonderful name of a 1930s Brooklyn Dodger pitcher named Van Lingle Mungo.

In case you might care for the countdown on the syllables of that fabled moniker – that name again was Van-Ling-le-Mun-go! Five! Five syllables! Five Notes! It sounded strange, but fit so well, it earned its way up to song title too. First released as a 1969 single, Frishberg later that same year included “Van Lingle Mungo” as one of the numbers of his new album, “Oklahoma Toad”.

There are forty MLB ballplayers named in “Van Lingle Mungo” – the light piano jazz number that both sounds and plays well as a “for listening and background music only” that was once so popular during the “Lizard Lounge Era” that saw its best days from post-WWII through the 1970s. The song has been incorporated into the National Baseball Library Archives at Cooperstown – and much information is available on the Internet about the history of the song.

Here’s a nice summary on the history of the song that includes the names of ballplayers it included as lyrics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Lingle_Mungo_%28song%29

“Van Lingle Mungo”
The Book
A SABR Production

A book also has been written by 32 SABR members, with Bill Nowlin acting as the primary editor, and it is entitled “Van Lingle Mungo: The Man, The Song, The Players”. It is available in paperback and e-book versions. Also, at this same link, look for the link midway down the page that will transfer you to You-Tube to hear Dave Frishberg performing the song and playing the piano.

http://sabr.org/latest/sabr-digital-library-van-lingle-mungo

Last, but not least, here’s the Baseball Almanac link to Van Lingle Mungo’s MLB career pitching record (1941-43, 1945) with the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants. All but the last three years were spent as either a Brooklyn Robin, during the clubs last season as Robins in 1931. From 1932 to 1941, Mungo played as a Brooklyn Dodger for all of ten years.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=mungova01

Baseball – you are a mighty river that carries all who ride with you to the ocean of everything else that is truly good and important in life. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, it is probably because you are not that deeply involved with the soul of the game, but that’s OK too. Find your own river to the sea. This one just happens to work fine for me.