Why Do St Louis Blue Fans Sing a John Denver Song

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert and, of course, John Denver, really tapped into something special when they created "Take Me, Home Country Roads."

Denver was the son of an Air Force pilot stationed in Roswell, New Mexico, while Danoff and Nivert were Georgetown students, so none of them really knew very much about the state about which the song was written – West Virginia – but they came up with something so good that it has become popular everywhere, including St. Louis, Missouri.

St. Louis?

That's right, the state anthem for West Virginia has turned into the unlikely team anthem for the St. Louis Blues as they continue their march toward this year's Stanley Cup.

And get this: the guy responsible for the song taking off like wildfire in The Gateway City is none other than a Pitt guy!

His name is Jason Pippi, University of Pittsburgh class of 2008 and St. Louis Blues game operations director. He was also in the Panther marching band and, cover your nose, he was a Panther mascot! Not only was he the mascot, but he was THE mascot during the 13-9 disaster in 2007 that cost West Virginia its best chance at a football national championship!

"Best day of my mascot life," Pippi said.

So, how/why did a Pitt Panther decide to introduce the best song ever created to Blues hockey games?

Well, because the song he tried first– Neil Diamond's 'Sweet Caroline' – sucks and nobody wants to sing it now after the Panthers hijacked it and made it their own.

It has since regained a little bit of its popularity after Mountaineer fans added their own little twist to it, but that's a story for another time.

"(Sweet Caroline is) a Pitt classic, but it didn't stick anywhere nearly as much as Country Roads," Pippi explained.

"It was a bit of a mistake how it happened. It came up in the office, 'So, what about Country Roads, everyone loves that one' and I said, 'I'll tell you what, I hate it!' But everyone knows the words to it," he said.

The first time they played "Take Me Home, Country Roads" at the beginning of the third period during a blowout win against Nashville on a nondescript Saturday afternoon in early February, the fans loved it.

Pippi actually mistimed the chorus of the song and as play resumed he had to turn the music off. It didn't matter: the fans continued singing until its completion.

He tried it again at the beginning of the third period for the Blues' next home game and the fans picked right up and continued to sing it until the end.

"I remember standing there saying, 'What is happening in this place?'" Pippi laughed. "It's one of those fan-driven, organic things. I've been with a few teams that would love to get their crowd to do things like this and the fact that our fans are so into the game and so into the team, they want to be a part of this."

So much so that Pippi is becoming a sort of a minor celebrity in St. Louis now for introducing the song to the Blues fans. The local NBC affiliate recently profiled Pippi and he's also been fielding talk radio interview requests.

"I was on the radio (Monday) and they were like, 'Was there not a song about St. Louis or a Nelly song because he's from St. Louis?' I said, 'Yeah, there are plenty of those songs' but sometimes things stick. Everyone knows John Denver. Everyone knows Country Roads, and it's kind of become our seventh-inning stretch, 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame' in a way.

"It's become a big tradition for us, and it's taken off. And now, here we are looking down the barrel of the Stanley Cup."

And when Pippi puts on "Take Me Home, Country Roads" before the beginning of the third period of tonight's Western Conference finals against San Jose, he will grit his teeth and bear it when the Enterprise Center is transformed into the WVU Coliseum or Milan Puskar Stadium after another Mountaineer victory, be it against Pitt or anybody else.

"I've been to many a WVU game," he said. "It's so ironic because I kind of have to cover my ears every time it starts playing, but it's so much fun and the fans here are so into it. We time it now so the chorus purposely hits whenever play starts again because obviously we can't play music during play, and the fans keep singing.

"They sing the entire rest of the song and at the end they cheer."

Just like we do! "Happy accidents," is what the late Bob Ross used to call them.

Well, Pippi's happy accident has just transformed about 1.8 million West Virginians into instant St. Louis Blues fans, at least until next hockey season!

And now, onto WVU sports notes …

West Virginia will be making its fourth foreign tour under veteran coach Mike Carey this summer, spending 11 days in Greece and Italy. The Mountaineers traveled to Australia in 2007, to Italy and France in 2011 and to England and Spain in 2015.

On two occasions, Carey used those trips to help his teams to NCAA Tournament second round appearances in 2007-08 and 2011-12. Most recently, the women in 2015-16 advanced to the WNIT Finals where they lost 62-60 to UCLA at the Charleston Civic Center.

The team will have two weeks of practice before departing on Saturday, Aug. 3. The Mountaineers are slated to conclude their trip on Wednesday, Aug. 14.

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How about what former Mountaineer running back Wendell Smallwood has been doing for his native Wilmington, Delaware?

In conjunction with his annual football camp, the Philadelphia Eagles running back recently presented a check for $15,000 to Wilmington Parks and Recreation to help construct a scoreboard at the newly renovated Eden park football field complex.

Wendell frequently returns to Wilmington for community-related functions since he was taken in the fifth round of the 2016 NFL Draft by the Eagles.

Smallwood has rushed for 850 yards and accounted for seven touchdowns in three seasons for Philadelphia after rushing for 2,462 yards and scoring 12 touchdowns in 38 career games for West Virginia from 2013-15.

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West Virginia University's live streaming service through SIDEARM Sports continues to be popular with Mountaineer sports fans.

According to Grant Dovey, athletics' digital media director, there were 493,092 unique page views for the 89 varsity sports events streamed through WVUsports.com this year.  That's an increase of nearly 57 percent from the total number of unique page views for the 87 events produced in 2018.

This year the average number of unique page views per event was 5,540 through the website, which also includes AppleTV and Roku watchers.

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And finally, some of the college football magazines are beginning to show up on grocery store shelves. This year's Athlon regional cover features offensive tackle Colton McKivitz while the regional Street & Smith's has Penn State's Micah Parsons on its cover.

Athlon has WVU pegged for a seventh place finish in the Big 12 while Street & Smith has the Mountaineers eighth.

Interestingly, Athlon lists two WVU games to watch this year in the Big 12 – a Sept. 7 meeting at Missouri and a Sept. 21 game at Kansas.

Enjoy the rest of your week, and Let's Go Blues!

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Source: https://wvusports.com/news/2019/5/21/football-campus-connection-take-me-home-country-roads-in-st-louis.aspx