SONGS COME AND GO, but a few — for reasons of patriotism, religious credence or evocative melody — may linger on for decades or more. Among those cherished songs that have endured, there is one that depends neither on praise of this nation nor spiritual devotion. It is a simple melody and an endearing, unpretentious message which never soars above nor even departs appreciably from the secular venues of this nation’s ballparks. Its words were written in 1908 by Jack Norworth, a successful vaudevillian, songwriter and producer, and its music was composed by Albert von Tilzer. It is a simple song of four stanzas written by one who had, in truth, never witnessed a baseball game. Its name is “Take Me Out to the Ball Game!”

Picture now the speaker in the 1927 version of the song, a young woman named Nelly Kelly who loved baseball games. Her boyfriend wants them to travel to Coney Island but she implores him, “Take me out to the ball game instead! And do not forget to buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack.” The outcome of the contest is relevant but clearly not decisive since the importance of the game lies in the rooting for the home team rather than in their achieving victory.

The popularity of the song, since its birth near the beginning of the 20th Century, has been surpassed only by the National Anthem and “God Bless America.” It is sung routinely by baseball crowds, in all of the major league ball parks, typically during “the seventh-inning stretch.”

It is a song that summons a consummate nostalgia for a more innocent past; a past that was but no longer is; or, say some cynics, never was. It is a song that brings gentle smiles to its listeners, and perhaps even a tear, for it tells of the halcyon days when a hot-dog, an accompanying cold beer and a bleacher seat collectively cost less than a dollar.

Baseball, a century ago, was truly this nation’s game. Fathers regularly took their sons to games as a way of baptizing them in the arcane religion of the diamond, the intricacies of ground-rule doubles and the realization that no defeat was final since there always was that double-header the next Sunday. The ballparks of America were school rooms where the eager youth of this nation learned that shouting was permissible, that a no-hitter was better than the fantasies of adolescent sex and that the eyesight of those in the distant bleachers exceeded the visual acuity of the home-plate umpires.

America’s morning was inhabited by children who succeeded more in life than did their parents. It was a youthful nation endowed with both a manifest destiny and a national treasure called baseball. Baseball taught children to play by mutually agreed upon rules, to respect fair play and the equality of all humans in the arena of sports. In 1922 Sinclair Lewis declared that baseball was almost as important as the Republican Party in bolstering the moral fiber of this nation.

Baseball brings the inner-city children out into the sunshine, teaches them to exercise more routinely and sometimes value pitching skills more than skin color. But the joys and benefits of routine athletics must be tempered by an increasing number of playing field injuries.

About 38 million American children and adolescents participate in organized sporting activities (as well as 170 million adults). But also about 2.4 million children (ages 5-18) visit American emergency rooms annually because of sports-related injuries. Basketball injuries account for 603,239 visits to ERs, while bicycling brings in about 526,000 such visits. Football injuries cause another 398,369 ER sojourns; and baseball trauma accounts for 271,229 annual visits. Males now account for about 70 percent of all sports-related ER visits, although decades ago they were the victims in virtually all sports injuries.

A sprained ankle, even a non-compounded arm fracture, is part of the adolescent learning curve in encounters with the forces of gravity. But sports trauma also yields about 207,000 instances of serious head injury, 60,000 of these in patients younger than 18 years of age. Concussion, in the past regarded often as a negligible injury, is now being given the prognostic respect that it deserves.

As with all things, baseball has changed. We still sing, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” but as an accompaniment now to a digital recording. Two generations ago, the famed sportswriter Grantland Rice (1880-1954), wrote: “When the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writes — not that you won or lost — but how you played the game.” A generation later, in a nation now more sophisticated and worldly, the legendary baseball manager, Leo Durocher (1906-1991) sometimes called “Leo the Lip,” said: “Show me a good loser in professional sports and I’ll show you an idiot. Show me a good sportsman and I’ll show you a player I’m looking to trade.”

Stanley M. Aronson, M.D., a weekly contributor, is dean of medicine emeritus, Brown University ( smamd@cox.net).