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09/03/2008 11:31 AM ET
Thorogood still has 'The Hard Stuff'
Rocker tours new album, recalls ball days
By Doug Miller / MLB.com
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George Thorogood prepares to throw out the first pitch at a 2007 Tampa Bay Rays game. (Chris O'Meara/ AP)
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He's bad to the bone and he was born to be bad, but when it comes to playing baseball, blues-rock legend George Thorogood, is, well, not so bad at all.
"Maybe I was a half-step above mediocre," Thorogood says with a laugh. "Just enough to stay in the lineup."
Thorogood was quite a bit better than that, actually.
The hard-working, blue-collar singer and guitarist, who still fronts the Destroyers, a.k.a. "The World's Greatest Bar Band," played semi-professional baseball with his drummer, Jeff Simon, in the late 1970s after a record label dispute inspired them to take the summer off.
For two seasons in the sun, Thorogood flaunted his skills on the diamond as a utility infielder with some serious fundamentals despite a profound lack of power.
"I couldn't hit the ball over the fence," he says. "That was the one thing I couldn't do. I legged them out pretty good, and not once in my career did I fail to move a runner over with a sacrifice bunt. Not once. So I could at least do that.
"But Jeff, my drummer, was a star. He could pulverize a baseball. His personality and style wasn't as obvious as mine, but he was the real star and player. It was kind of like Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin. That was how Jeff and I did things."
Thirty years later, Thorogood and the Destroyers are still doing their thing all over America. They recently completed a huge summer tour alongside blues great Buddy Guy, and the band -- which also includes bassist Billy Blaugh, guitarist Jim Suhler and saxophonist Buddy Leach - released their latest album, The Hard Stuff, in 2006.
All the while, their fearless leader continues to have the blues -- and baseball -- on his mind.
"Every year, I don't do any work during the World Series," Thorogood says. "Once we got rolling and made a little dough and could pick our spots here and there, we take off during the World Series. It's only a week."
Fittingly, it was during the 1960 World Series that Thorogood fell in love with the Grand Old Game.
"I was on a school bus," Thorogood recalls. "I knew baseball but shied away a little bit from playing it because I didn't think I'd do well. Anyway, I'm getting off the bus and as I'm getting off the bus, the driver has the seventh game of the World Series on the radio. As I'm walking out the door, literally, at that moment, was Ralph Terry's pitch and Bill Mazeroski's (Series-winning) homer.
"I'd never seen a game and never heard a game, and the only play of the entire Series I heard was that homer. And that was it. The next week, I was playing baseball and hooked for life. And then later on, I actually met Bill Mazeroski. I told him, 'You're the one who ruined my youth.'"
These days, Thorogood does as much as he can to still enjoy the game.
He plays in celebrity softball events, he's played concerts at Dodger Stadium and a host of Minor League parks, and he's jammed on stage with ESPN baseball guru Peter Gammons.
He's also entertained Major League players Jonathan Broxton and Brad Penny plus former stars Bill "Spaceman" Lee, Bernie Carbo, Jesse Orosco and Ron Darling backstage at Destroyers gigs.
But by far, the greatest baseball memory Thorogood has is the first time he took his 9-year-old daughter to a game.
"I planned it so her first big-league game ever would be at Wrigley Field," says Thorogood, a Mets fan since 1968. "The Cubs were playing during the week in the daytime, which is rare enough these days. I told her, 'It's where Babe Ruth called the shot, baby.'
"So during the game, the Cubs flash her name up on the scoreboard ... twice. In the seventh inning I sang 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame' and the cubs won the game. It was like it was scripted for us. Just a great day.
"She'll remember it forever. The gods of baseball were smiling on my family that day. It's my proudest achievement in baseball."
Among other achievements are the fact that Dodgers closer Takashi Saito uses "Bad to the Bone" as his intro music, which has caused one of Thorogood's heroes, broadcaster Vin Scully, to say Thorogood's name on the air repeatedly.
"You can't get any more inside baseball than that, can you?" Thorogood says. "I mean, Vin Scully's an American institution. That's as close as I'll get to baseball immortality, I'm afraid."
And will the man known as Lonesome George be performing a stirring version of the National Anthem at a big-league stadium any time soon?
"I can't sing that song," he says. "Nobody can.
"I embarrass myself enough singing my own songs."
Doug Miller is a Senior Writer for MLB.com/Entertainment. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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