OK, BLUE JAYS

MEET THE SINGER BEHIND TORONTO’S ICONIC SONG OF THE SEVENTH-INNING STRETCH

Keith Hampshire is accustomed to bei ng approached by strangers looking to talk to him about his music career. These encounters tend to follow a similar arc. The strangers will tell Hampshire how much they loved “that song” he used to sing, and then ask him what the name of it was again.

Hampshire, ever polite, and flattered to be recognized, will mention that he had a few successes and that perhaps the stranger is referring to his version of The First Cut is the Deepest — No. 1 on the Canadian charts in 1973 — or Bigtime Operator, which hit No. 5, or maybe Daytime Night- time, which did the same.

If the stranger still appears puzzled, Hampshire will throw out one final tune: “I’ ll say to them, ‘ Are you thinking of OK, Blue Jays?’ And the person will nod their heads and say, ‘ Yes, that’s it! I love that song!’”

Every Toronto Blue Jays fan loves that song.

Indeed, players come and go. Managers get fired. Baseball eras end and begin anew.

But OK, Blue Jays, played at home games during the seventh-inning stretch for as long as any Toronto supporter can remember, remains. It is an artifact, linking the team’s past to its present, while tying the 70- year- old Hampshire to the franchise forevermore, whether he wants to be — and he does — or not.

Hampshire answered the phone at his home in Lefroy, Ont., on Thursday about an hour before Toronto’s 101 massacre of the Rangers in Texas. He was wearing his Russell Martin jersey. “You got to support the Canadians.”

Hampshire was born in England, but grew up in Calgary. He loves baseball because it is an “ethereal game.” He played catcher in Little League. He also sang in a church choir and left Alberta for the U.K. in his early 20s to work as a disc jockey aboard a “pirate radio” ship in the North Sea. Beaming the music of the British Invasion to the British kids who were starved to hear it, and whose only access to rock ‘n’ roll beyond buying records was a 45-minute weekly rock segment on BBC.

Back in Canada, Hampshire had his hits, hosted a music show on CBC and was a finalist for best male vocalist at the Junos.

Thereafter, he started doing voice work for radio and television commercials.

“I sang a lot of beer jingles,” he says.

“But I was doing other t hi ngs l i ke, ‘ We a s ked women to give up t heir regular soap and take the Dove seven- day test. Dove is one- quarter moisturizing cream — it’ ll give you softer and smoother skin in seven days.’”

Then his agent called. An advertising firm and Toronto jingle- house had written a song about the Blue Jays. They were having auditions.

“I heard the track and thought, ‘ It kind of sounds like a Randy ( Short People) Newman song,” he says. “So I kind of copied his singing style, somewhat — a little plagiarism doesn’t hurt.”

OK, Blue Jays was released in 1983 and sold at Exhibition Stadium, the Jays’ first home. Hampshire was paid $ 2,500 up front, plus an additional $ 2,500 after record sales soared. OK, Blue Jays was certified gold in 1986. Hampshire phoned the record company, asking for a gold record. They delivered one to his house, charging him $81.

OK, Blue Jays is Hamp- shire’s only gold record. It hangs on a bathroom wall in his house, right above the toilet.

“It’s the only place my wife would let me put it,” he says, laughing.

The singer spends half the year in Florida, and is a fixture at spring training games in Dunedin. He has never been asked to perform the song in Toronto — or been acknowledged for it by the team, or even received complimentary tickets. But he did belt out OK, Blue Jays once, at spring training.

The version f ans hear in Toronto today runs 58 seconds. The original tune is closer to two-and-a-half minutes in length.

Hampshire’s most cherished part is a “bridge” between the third and fourth verse.

And then he sings it, in a voice reminiscent of Randy Newman, in a voice every Jays fan knows well.

“It’s a beautiful evening, fans. At the ballpark, when the game starts. Warm summer breezes, sun’s going down. And it’s all dark, at the ballpark.

“But that’s OK — it’s a night game.”

National Post joconnor@ nationalpost. com Twitter. com/oconnorwrites