It was sweet Caroline, but it's all over now.

Now that the hullabaloo and celebratory cheers for the 2013 WORLD CHAMPION BOSTON RED SOX have faded with the fall and we are entering the death throes of a lost season, it's time to prepare for the future. That includes the departure of the familiar (A fond farewell, Jon Lester), the overly familiar (you too, Steven Drew), welcoming new favorites (can we all say Cespedes?) and, in one long delayed instance, deleting certain sounds that have long since overstayed their welcome. 

The sound I speak of is Neil Diamond's song, "Sweet Caroline". For reasons I have never been able to fathom, somehow, someway, somewhere along the line, this gooey piece of treacle became kind of an unofficial anthem of the Bosox, played as a sing-along in the middle of the eighth inning of every home game since, I dunno, 1997 or so. The playing of the song is so indiscriminate that it is cranked out whether the Sawx are up or down, the nadir of which came during a recent 14-1 thrashing at the bats of division rivals, Toronto Blue Jays. I have no idea how or why this happened, but if you care, the "behind the scenes" story is here. 

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013, the song was played in many sporting venues around the country, including Yankee Stadium. It was done as a heartfelt tribute to the city and residents of Boston and accepted as such by all, including this typist. 

But we have all moved along and now it's time to address the underlying issue of the song itself, the singer who wrote it and the point of playing it at all in what John Updike christened our "lyric little bandbox of a ballpark."

First, the singer.  Some have called him the Jewish Elvis. Oy Vey! The next Eddie Fisher is more like it. If his plane had gone down around the time of oh, let's say, Cracklin' Rosie, he might have been remembered as the Jewish Buddy Holly. But it didn't and he isn't. 

Instead, he kept plodding on, the final bloated vestige of a once vibrant, now decayed Brill Building songwriting scene; a second tier "artiste" and increasingly hoarse voiced dork who shot his wad years ago and whose barren future stretched long before him, littered with such glittering couplets as as "I am, I said to no one there/and no one heard at all/not even the chair".

His overweening artistic ambitions sent him lumbering along from the ersatz gospel of Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show to the ludicrously titled Jazz Singer, an insult in Xeroxed black face to musicians of every color and persuasion not to mention anyone with pretensions of being a genuine thespian, (I'm talking to you, Sir Olivier) in a performance that the late, great film critic, Roger Ebert, described as "offensively narcissistic". Ebert continued by describing Diamond as "giving off creepy vibes" and that, "while (his) fans apparently think Neil Diamond's songs celebrate worthy human qualities. I think they describe conditions suitable for treatment". Who says you can't separate the art from the artist?

And now, the song. It's a carefully crafted entertainment vehicle specifically designed to hook a million or two members of the listening public into buying it but let's face it: as music, it's not only bad art but it trips over the fault line and slips into the abyss of schlock. 

That's fine. Many popular songs, including A-Tisket A-Tasket and Mary Had a Little Lamb, which Ella Fitzgerald (most certainly, not her choice) and Paul McCartney (most assuredly, his) foisted upon an adoring public, don't amount to more than that. Our collective love for kitsch is tried and true.

But this song has now become an Anthem for a Nation. Since that is the case, we, as a people, are duty bound to ask, much as we do with the equally dreadful, "The Star Spangled Banner", how we have come to this pretty insipid pass?

A casual perusal of the lyrics discloses that it has nothing at all to do with baseball. Nor does it have anything to do with heroism. It was inspired by a photograph of a then 11 year old Caroline Kennedy seen by the then 30 year old songwriter. Giving the auteur absolutely no credit for artistic license, the object of his muse either raises the willies in the dark corners of the mind or a giggle reflex in those snarky folks looking for an easy laugh.  

The singer's delivery is flat, hammy, overblown and lugubrious. The sentiment is a treacly, cloying, insipid slice of warmed over Velveeta reminiscent of a post-pubescent wet dream all wrapped around a melody so mind numbingly bland as to render it a foregone conclusion that the object of his affection surely delivered a ringing smack to the chops the instant this clod dared to imagine his clammy self touching her "warm".  

The one inspired lyrical refrain, "SO GOOD! SO GOOD!" was inserted not by the composer but by the Fenway Faithful long before we realized that it was going to be foisted on us for eons by the vested interests, which includes everyone standing to make a dime of the spectacle - those being the keepers of the Sox coffers or Neil's publishing company.

During the post Boston strong tributes, Diamond appeared at Fenway, Yankee Stadium and the World Series to sing and conduct his composition. In each instance, he was unannounced because he was uninvited. While he may have been motivated by sincere altruism, it is equally likely that it was a last desperate attempt by a fading and fallen "star" to avoid being relegated to singing for his supper as a Holiday Inn lounge act. 

As the Sox turn the page on this lost season and the pink hats with their ceaseless need to be titillated move on to the next bandwagon, it's time to turn to the next tune in line, for while we love our Dirty Water,  and tolerate the faux-tough guy ruminations of the Dropkick Murphys, as reigning and defending (well, we are and we were) WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS, in a museum of a ball park in a city rooted in and cherishing its' past, what song is more apropos for a signature song  - to be played if, when, and only when we are winning than Catch Us If You Can. 

As for Neil, well, since I still have to listen to him warble his magnum opus, so do you.