Bill O’Boyle: We really did follow the bouncing ball

Sep. 25—For anyone that grew up in the 1960s, the TV show "Sing Along With Mitch" was an absolute must-watch for several years.

"Follow the bouncing ball," the host, Mitch Miller, would say.

And I'll bet anyone who recalls that show will swear that they did follow the bouncing ball as the lyrics flashed on the screen and they all sang along — with Mitch and his army of singers.

But wait for it.

Mitch Miller, who died in 2010 at age 99, once said the following in an interview on NPR:

"Never was a bouncing ball. Everyone says there's a bouncing ball. We just had the lyrics and, as I told you, had the two cameras and the stuff in black."

Wait. What?

NPR: Why do you think that everybody thinks that there was a bouncing ball?

Miller: Because there was in the theater. There was a — when the organ would teach you a new song in theater, the organ would play and there was a bouncing ball. And then there was a cartoon — Looney Tunes and all that, they had a bouncing ball. So people, you know, drew that from their memory.

NPR: How did it get to be that we thought there was a bouncing ball if there wasn't one?

Great question.

So how did we all get this same illusion that we watched a TV show and sang along as we read the lyrics on the screen and, yes, we followed the bouncing ball?

Who's on first?

I Don't Know?

Third base!

As vivid as my memories are of those days, I will always contend that Mitch Miller told us to follow the bouncing ball because, in fact, there was a bouncing ball to follow. Right there on our TV screens.

Lyrics — check.

Music — check.

Singing — check.

Mitch Miller saying, "Follow the bouncing ball." — check.

We read the lyrics, we heard the music, we sang along and — we followed the frigging bouncing ball! — Check.

It's times like these that I really want to be able to fire up the Way Back Machine and head back to our living room and turn on the TV for Sing Along With Mitch.

Since I really don't have an actual Way Back Machine — full disclosure — I did the next best thing — I Googled it.

And I found several TV video clips of Mitch Miller urging us to sing along, but I did not see one bouncing ball.

How can this be?

I remember watching the show. I remember Mitch telling us to sing along and to follow the bouncing ball. Yet, alas, there is no bouncing ball to follow.

Is this possible?

If this is true, what other memories of my growing up are fabricated? The possibilities are endless.

And this scares the heck out of me.

We grew up with this iconic show with really neat things like a goat-teed man leading a choral group in singing classic songs that our parents grew up to and hearing that same man urging us to sing along and follow the bouncing ball.

Yet, we are now told that this bouncing ball never was? How can this be?

And why, after decades have passed, would anyone conspire to eliminate the bouncing ball that we all followed? And to take this conspiracy so far that they created a video of an interview that shows Mitch Miller saying that his show never had a bouncing ball?

This needs to be investigated much further — far beyond a Google search that may or may not reveal all the Mitch Miller TV clips — and excluding those with a clearly seen bouncing ball.

I know I saw it. Sure did. My mom and dad saw the bouncing ball too.

So did our neighbors. Yessireee. We saw the bouncing ball. We saw it every week. Mitch Miller told us to follow it. Why would he tell us to follow the bouncing ball if there was no bouncing ball to follow?

Mitch would never do that. He would never take part in such a cover-up.

I'm not going to let this rest. I will delve much further into the Case of the Missing Bouncing Ball.

I will find the answer, I promise.

Reach Bill O'Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle.