World’s Worst Songs: “The Last Game of the Season”

(Getty Images/Jim Rogash)

Everybody who loves music also hates music — certain specific examples of it, anyhow. This feature is about those songs: the World’s Worst Songs.

Here at World’s Worst World Headquarters, we believe that really bad songs sometimes serve a useful purpose. Take “The Last Game of the Season” by David Geddes, which illustrates vividly one vast difference between our post-modern society and that of the mid-1970s.

“The Last Game of the Season” is also known as “The Blind Man in the Bleachers,” and it’s the story of a scrub high-school football player who substitutes for an injured teammate and becomes a hero with a spectacular second-half performance. When asked to explain why he played so well, he explains that during halftime, he found out that his blind father had died, and so, “It’s the first time my dad has seen me play.”

This sort of thing makes a modern listener seize up with nausea, but in 1975, it was done absolutely straight, without the postmodern ironic distance we might assume when telling a similar story today. The point of the record was to describe the love and pride in a father/son relationship and to observe that it would not only survive death but thrive because of it, and assuming that the audience would accept and believe it. That’s not to suggest nobody thought it was crap back in 1975 — only that there were many, many people who did not, far more than there probably would be today.

A version by Kenny Starr was a monster hit on the country charts in the United States and Canada, bigger than Geddes’ version was on the pop charts, but the best way to experience it is in its original form. If you’re ready, we now present “The Last Game of the Season” by David Geddes, cultural relic of the gentler 1970s.

If you think we blew it — if there’s a case to be made for why this song is better than we think it is — click “Add a Comment” and tell why, then listen to and debate more of the World’s Worst Songs.