No. 627 – Bring It on Home

Performer: Led Zeppelin

Songwriters: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Willie Dixon

Original Release: Led Zeppelin II

Year: 1969

Definitive Version: None, although they did a blistering version at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in 1995.

The version that Led Zeppelin did at the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, which I taped when it aired on MTV, was what got me into this song. So when Debbie I saw Page & Plant in Cleveland in 1995, and they roared straight from the opening number, The Wanton Song, to this one, I was loving it.

Like I said, any argument that this wasn’t really Led Zeppelin we were seeing was quickly cut away by a hail of electric guitar. And when Page went to the theremin in the interlude between this song and Ramble On, Gund Arena blew up. Call it what you want, sure, and, yes, there was no John Paul Jones, but no one in that building was buying into the pretense that they weren’t in fact seeing anything other than the genuine article.

The funny thing was, in all honesty, that show was only the second most exciting thing I saw that night in Cleveland. No. 1 was Jacobs Field, located next door to the Gund (neither of which are what they’re called any more, of course).

The disaster of the canceled World Series in 1994 had morphed into the unthinkable: The Powers That Be were going to try to play the 1995 season with minor-league players and call it Major League Baseball.

I wasn’t having any of it. Like the early part of the Page & Plant show, nothing could persuade me that this was the genuine article, regardless of what the fronts of the uniforms said. Hundreds of ballplayers were going to get their names in the Baseball Encyclopedia ONLY because they decided to scab during a strike and not because they earned it with their efforts.

This was an abomination. But with each passing day in March as the scabs played exhibition games, it also was appearing to be more inevitable.

That isn’t to say there weren’t all sorts of problems. The Baltimore Orioles announced that they weren’t going to field scabs, and Ontario ruled that scabs couldn’t play games in its province, so the Blue Jays would have to play all “home” games in their spring training ballpark. Frankly, it was going to be a train wreck.

But then, on the eve of Opening Day, the travesty was avoided when the striking players won an injunction against the owners due to their perpetual legal hubris—the law doesn’t apply to us. The injunction, granted by now Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (who should have been chosen just for that particular ruling) caused the players to end the strike.

At that point, the owners could have locked out the players and gone ahead with the scabs, but cooler heads finally prevailed. Most of the scabs were fired—no one shed a tear for their fate—and the real players were allowed, if not welcomed, back. The season would start a few weeks late, but it would start with real players, thank goodness.

This all happened March 31. On March 28, the players voted overwhelmingly to end the strike if the judge granted the injunction, which it appeared she was going to do. It wasn’t over yet, but I had a real sense that baseball was coming back soon.

So, when Debbie and I arrived that night to see Page & Plant, we stopped to look, and I felt euphoric. The park looked beautiful: The grass was perfectly green, the bunting in preparation for the faux opening day that now would be used for a real Opening Day added just the right trim of color. At that moment, I pledged undying love to baseball.

The strike? Unlike millions of other fans, I realized that it was all business, nothing personal. All was forgiven, as far as I was concerned. Baseball was back.