'Tessie' Up! Can the Dropkick Murphys' Red Sox anthem break the curse? Can "Tessie'' do what "Cowboy Up'' didn't? The Dropkick Murphys - and the...

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'Tessie' Up! Can the Dropkick Murphys' Red Sox anthem break the curse?

Can "Tessie'' do what "Cowboy Up'' didn't?

The Dropkick Murphys - and the Red Sox - are hoping that this year they've found the right song to help carry Boston's beloved baseball team to a World Series victory.

Last year the country music import "Cowboy Up'' became Red Sox nation's theme song, but only took the team as far as an ulcer-inducing loss to the Yankees in the seventh game of the ALCS.

Boston punk/rockers the Dropkick Murphys expect better results from their update of "Tessie,'' a fan favorite from that ancient era when the Red Sox were frequent World Series winners.

This much is certain: The 2004 Sox got hot the day the Dropkick Murphys first played "Tessie'' live at Fenway.

"They had us play the national anthem and 'Tessie' at a game in late July,'' bassist Ken Casey says during a rehearsal break in the band's South Boston studio. "That turned the season around.''

"Not us. That game.'' Casey and his bandmates laugh. "The Sox were playing the Yankees and losing pretty bad. Then they had the bench-clearing brawl and (Bill) Mueller hit the walk-off home run. Regardless whether 'Tessie' had anything to do with it, the theory behind it is that the song brings the team good luck.''

The tale of "Tessie'' goes back to 1903, when Boston won the first World Series. The Royal Rooters, a group of rabid Southie fans led by John F. Kennedy's grandfather "Honey Fitz'' Fitzgerald, sang the Broadway show tune ad nauseum to antagonize the opposing Pittsburgh team. The Rooters continued to use "Tessie'' as an inspirational weapon until 1918 when the Red Sox won their fifth and final championship.

At spring training this year, Red Sox public relations chief Charles Steinberg wondered aloud why no one had ever revived the song. Herald sportswriter Jeff Horrigan told him, "I have just the guys to do it.''

"I e-mailed Ken Casey who was in Europe with the Dropkicks with the idea,'' Horrigan says. "Right away he typed back, 'We're in.' Then I sent him an MP3 of the original recording of `Tessie' and he e-mailed back, 'We're out'.''

"It sounded like a 300-pound elderly woman sitting in her apartment in Beacon Hill singing some silly song about her parrot,'' Casey recalls. "We just looked at each other and said, 'What the hell does this have to do with baseball?' I was a fan to the point that I was willing to damage the band's career and do it whether the song was good or not, but the rest of the guys were not so positive.''

Casey urged Horrigan to write a new version of "Tessie.''

"One night I listened to the song over and over,'' Horrigan says, "and then I rewrote it to tell the story of the Royal Rooters. I only kept one line from the original, `Tessie, you are the only, only, only,' and at Ken's suggestion, we also included one of the original verses.''

The new "Tessie'' describes the rabid Royal Rooters cheering for the stars of 1903 - pitchers Cy Young and Bill Dinneen and the Stahl brothers, Jake and Chick - and their custom of marching to and from the team's Huntington Avenue Grounds ballfield to Michael ``Nuff Said'' McGreevy's bar at the intersection of Tremont and Ruggles.

"McGreevy's place was called Third Base,'' Horrigan says, "because it was the last stop before home. It was probably the first baseball bar in the country.''

The Dropkicks not only recorded "Tessie'' for the Red Sox, but with them. To the band's delight, Johnny Damon, Bronson Arroyo and Lenny Dinardo, as well as Steinberg, showed up at the studio to sing backing vocals. The "Tessie'' CD includes three other songs as well as a computer-playable version of the "Tessie'' video featuring Colleen Reilly - the winsome Fenway Park between-innings base sweeper - in the title role. All proceeds from the sale of the CD go to the Red Sox Foundation charity.

"Tessie'' does not yet rival "Sweet Caroline'' as a Fenway fan favorite, but it's played when Trot Nixon steps to the plate and, following "Dirty Water,'' after every Red Sox victory.

"People are responding more and more to it,'' Casey says. "Hopefully by the playoffs the fans will know the words. I really think this is gonna be the year for the Sox.''

But - perish the thought - what if it isn't? Will the Dropkicks drop "Tessie'' from their playbook if the Sox stumble yet again?

"The story is that the Royal Rooters would sing it over and over again the whole game to annoy the other team,'' Casey says. ``So if the Sox don't win it, the reason will be that the crowd didn't know the lyrics. We're not giving up. We'll just have to wait till next year for the fans to learn it.''

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Dropkick Murphys Mend Sox. Boston punkers remake "Tessie" to end hometown baseball team's drought. No Boston baseball team has won the World Series...

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Dropkick Murphys Mend Sox. Boston punkers remake "Tessie" to end hometown baseball team's drought.

No Boston baseball team has won the World Series since 1918, when Babe Ruth helped the Red Sox capture the title. But local punk rock heroes Dropkick Murphys may have found a way to end the curse with a song. The band has remade the old Broadway waltz "Tesse" for an upcoming EP, hoping the track's legacy will spur on the Sox to their first championship win in over eighty-five years.

Can a song really help? Turns out, "Tessie" is a real baseball legend. A rabid group of Irish-American baseball fans from South Boston known as the Royal Rooters started singing the old Broadway hit back in 1903 to rile opposing teams. It worked. During the inaugural World Series that year, the Red Sox (then known as the Pilgrims) were down four games to one in a best-of-nine series with Pittsburgh. The team had hired a band to inspire the players, but had run out of money to pay them. Desperate for anything that would help the team, the Rooters began to sing an a capella version of the Broadway song "Tessie" in the stands. Other fans joined in, and a performance of the song became a regular addition to all of the remaining games -- which were all won by Boston. They won the Series, and, until the Rooters disbanded and stopped singing the song in 1918, the Sox and their cross-town counterparts the Boston Braves would capture the pennant five more times.

"The vice-president of the Red Sox, Charles Steinberg -- he's a real baseball historian -- was excited about the prospects of the song," says Dropkick Murphys guitarist-singer Ken Casey. "He was like 'Maybe that would be a good thing to try.' And some people pointed out that, with our history of remaking traditional Irish songs, we might be a good band to take a stab at it."

Instead of a straightforward remake, the band radically altered the lyrics to reflect the story of how "Tessie" inspired the Boston teams to victory. Several Red Sox players, including star centerfielder Johnny Damon, added backup vocals. "You know, the original was some old lady on a piano singing about her parrot," says Casey, laughing. "I'm actually not sure how that translates to baseball."

The band will perform the track, along with the National Anthem, during Saturday's game with the Yankees at Fenway. An EP of the song, featuring an alternate version of the track and a remake of an old Boston Bruins theme song from the Seventies, will be released on August 1st. The EP will also feature a video that the band recently shot at Fenway Park.

"I'm a big Boston sports fan, and there's no question that the Red Sox are the number one team in town," Casey says. "We're just suckers for heartache, I guess. We know when we win it's going to be the biggest party in the world."

After "Tessie"'s release, the band will play the tenth annual Warped Tour show in Boston on August 20th, and then tour Europe and Japan in the fall. According to Casey, the Murphys' next release will actually be two CDs, both tentatively scheduled to come out next March. One will be an acoustic album of old and new tracks, and the other will be a singles collection.

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