This might be the worst thing I’ve ever read on The Athletic.

— Phil S., subscriber to The Athletic.

Is this whole list a troll?

— Andrew W., subscriber.

If there’s such a thing as a body of work that makes up The Athletic, this article is the rear end!

— Bill P., subscriber.

One day this past April, my colleague Rustin Dodd sent me a text.

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“Do you want to do something fun and stupid?” he asked.

“Always,” I responded.

When sheltering in place, the list of activities that check both boxes is limited. Rustin had an idea for a story. The Strokes had just put out a new album. One of the songs was called “Ode To The Mets.” Using that as a peg, Rustin thought we could assemble a list of good songs about baseball. 

These were not ideal times for sportswriters. There were no games. There was nothing to write. His idea was far better than anything I had up my sleeve. We decided to give it a shot.

Almost immediately, we bumped into an issue. Music is difficult to evaluate through an objective lens. Tastes vary, and we were wading into decades of songs. How do you compare a Pavement song with a Paul Simon song with a ditty from the 1940s?

“I’m just not sure how to decide how to rank everything,” I said.

“Gut instinct,” Rustin said.

So that’s what we went with. For the top spot, we chose “Cubs in Five,” a song by The Mountain Goats from 1995. We filled out the other spots with some obscure choices and some old reliables. Six days after that first text, we published our list: “The 30 greatest baseball songs of all time.” We thought people would like it.

Not quite.

The story drew nearly 600 comments. The overwhelming majority were negative. Readers threatened to cancel their subscriptions. We were derided as hipsters and snobs, contrarian partisans of New York and Chicago (I am from Philadelphia; Rustin is from Kansas). According to one of our internal metrics, this list is one of the most despised pieces of content in the publication’s history.

There was one overarching criticism. It appeared in the first comment and in dozens of others. Readers found many reasons to hate our list. None brought them together like their affinity for a song we snubbed: “Centerfield,” by John Fogerty.

One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain.

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— Bob Marley, “Trenchtown Rock.”

I harbor two regrets about our list.

Regret No. 1: We put “Go! Cubs! Go!” by Steve Goodman at No. 10. We should have swapped that one out for “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request.” It is a blast to hear Wrigley Field holler their adopted theme after victories, but the latter song far better encapsulates the pre-2016 experience of fandom on the North Side. We should have put that song somewhere in the top five. So, belatedly, allow me to say: Our bad.

Regret No. 2: We should have explained why we left off “Centerfield.” A common complaint from readers was that they raced to the end of the story — as many us do when consuming lists online — so they could see the song at No. 1. Many reported shock at not seeing Fogerty in the top spot. So they combed backward through the piece, searching for “Centerfield.” And we never mentioned it once.

In retrospect, in our introduction, we should have included a paragraph on Fogerty’s 1985 single. It is hard to describe why you like or dislike a song — at least, it is for me. Music conjures memories. So I would note that I covered the Kansas City Royals in 2014 and 2015, and Rustin covered the Royals from 2016 to 2019. Before every spring training game at Surprise Stadium, they play the same song. You can guess what it is.

I gotta say the omission of “Centerfield” is some graduate-level trolling.

— Ben Gibbard, lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie, on Instagram.

Bad faith defines so much of this era. So our piece would have benefited from being a little more transparent because a lot of readers assumed we wrote it specifically so we could leave “Centerfield” off. I wish we were that clever. You have to admit: That would be a pretty good bit.

Except that wasn’t what we were doing. Seriously. When culling together songs, we agreed to leave off “Centerfield.” And that was it. We just moved on and came up with some other songs we liked. There wasn’t any significant discussion. Neither of us really liked it. But neither of us recognized the cultural imprint made by the song, either. Baseball fans love “Centerfield.” They really do.

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It should be noted that Fogerty is — and this is my opinion, which is not an objective measure — one of the best songwriters ever. Creedence Clearwater Revival still rips 50 years later. Fogerty wrote “Centerfield,” though, after a lengthy hiatus. It opens with tinny handclaps. The music sounds oddly compressed. The lyrics are a little hokey. And every time I hear that song, I imagine myself sitting in the press box at Surprise Stadium, wondering how the hell I’m going to write two or three or more stories for the next day’s Kansas City Star.

These are not, of course, the memories conjured up when most baseball fans hear “Centerfield.” They think about the game they fell in love with the sport they still miss. They remember trips to the ballpark that doubled as vacations. They are transported by those hand claps. Maybe we should have spent a little more time taking that into consideration.

So one afternoon this week, I queued up Fogerty’s recent “Tiny Desk” concert for NPR. Fogerty played some songs at home. His children accompanied him on guitar. He led off with “Centerfield.”

I gave it a listen. I’ll be honest. It’s not that bad. Fogerty has incredible pipes. There was something charming about the neck of his guitar having been fashioned into a baseball bat. The lyrics still felt cheesy. But so what? You can see why people like “Centerfield.”

Is it one of the 30 best songs ever written about baseball? In retrospect, probably.

(Photo of John Fogerty performing Centerfield at the 2010 Hall of Fame induction ceremony: George Napolitano / Getty Images)