Neil Diamond didn’t have baseball or soccer on his mind when he sat down to write what would turn out to be the song he is most associated with – at least with sports fans.
Who did Neil Diamond write Sweet Caroline about?
The Brooklyn-born singer-songwriter originally penned the tune in the late 60s for his wife Marcia, but felt that the name just didn’t fit well with the melody. Diamond found inspiration in a magazine photograph he stumbled across of US President John F. Kennedy, first lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis and their daughter Caroline. “It was a picture of a little girl dressed to the nines in her riding gear, standing next to her pony,” he recalled in 2007. “It was such an innocent, wonderful image—I knew there was a song in there.”
‘Sweet Caroline (Good times never seemed so good)’ was released in 1969, and while it charted (reaching number 4 on the Billboard 100), it wasn’t the most successful hit of his career.
Yet half a century after it was first played on radio stations (it was a top 10 hit in English-speaking countries: UK, Canada, Australia…), Sweet Caroline has been revived as a sing-a-long anthem at various sporting events.
It’s easy to see why – Sweet Caroline is a very catchy, has feelgood lyrics and builds up to an anthemic chorus.
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Boston Red Sox’s new anthem
Diamond’s song was resurrected as an unofficial anthem in Major League Baseball in 1997 thanks to Boston Red Sox employee Amy Tobey. Amy was in charge of selecting the music to be played over the PA system at Fenway Park during regular season games. On one occasion, she played Sweet Caroline as a sort of personal tribute to a friend who had recently given birth to a baby daughter who she named Caroline.
It went down well and over the next few years, Neil Diamond’s song would echo around Fenway on special occasions at the ballpark.
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Sweet Caroline really took off when Dr. Charles Steinberg joined the Red Sox as Vice President of Public Affairs in 2002.
Steinberg takes up the story: “The Red Sox would play it once in a while. They would play it from time to time. It wasn’t an anthem. In 2002, they were still doing that. I could hear that the fans were singing responsively. So I said to Danny Kischel, who was working the control room at the time, I said, ‘Are you going to play “Sweet Caroline” today?’ He said, ‘Oh no, we can’t play it. It’s not a “Sweet Caroline” day.’ I said, ‘What’s a “Sweet Caroline” day?’ He said, ‘We only play “Sweet Caroline” when the team is ahead and the crowd is festive and the atmosphere is already very upbeat.’
“I said, ‘I think the song may have transformative powers and it may be able to lift the melancholy crowd and lift the spirits to being positive.’ We were talking about change in an organization that didn’t have any change. I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Sometimes they were playing at the end of seven. Sometimes they were playing at the end of eight. Sometimes they were playing at the middle of the eighth. I wanted it to be the middle of the eighth, because you want your more festive songs to occur when the home team is coming up to bat. So we started playing it each day in 2002.”
Sweet Caroline lyrics
Where it began
I can’t begin to know when
But then I know it’s growin’ strong
Was in the spring
And spring became the summer
Who’d have believed you’d come along?
Hands, touchin’ hands
Reachin’ out, touchin’ me, touchin’ you
Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I’ve been inclined
To believe they never would
But now I
Look at the night
And it don’t seem so lonely
We fill it up with only two
And when I hurt
Hurtin’ runs off my shoulders
How can I hurt when holdin’ you?
One, touchin’ one
Reachin’ out, touchin’ me, touchin’ you
Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I’ve been inclined
To believe they never would
Oh no, no
Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good
Sweet Caroline
I believe they never could
Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good.
Sweet Caroline, a sporting anthem in Europe
Sweet Caroline has also been adopted over on the other side of the Atlantic. It rang out at Wembley after Arsenal beat Manchester City in the 2017 FA Cup semi-final and Gunners fans regularly belt it out at the Emirates ever since.
Other Premier League clubs have adopted Sweet Caroline as well – Aston Villa and Sunderland. And Bayern Munich and both of England’s national soccer teams – the men’s and women’s, but particularly the Lionesses.
After the Euro 2020 Round of 16 win over Germany, both sets of fans roared in unison, complete with an adapted terrace-friendly hook: “Sweet Caroline, ba ba baa!“.
We’ve even heard it at cricket, rugby league and boxing events in the UK. No one was more surprised that the songwriter himself, who told the Telegraph he is “thrilled” that the song he wrote in a Memphis hotel over 50 years ago has been given a new lease of life.
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