This is the story of a baseball fan, one who never believed the game should be treated passively. So once a week, as he would sit in front of his television to watch the one baseball broadcast that would make it to his Bay Area home, he would deliver a running commentary.

In later years, as he grew older, as life’s more serious lessons would occasionally try to strip the joy from his world, there was still the television, there were still baseball games, there was still the old ballplayer living in his heart that refused to move along and keep quiet.

So he would find himself yelling at the screen a lot because that’s what baseball fans do. Because why watch at all if you aren’t going to scream in delight at a home run, or shriek in agony when the second baseman boots a double-play grounder? That would really drive him nuts: errors, base-running blunders, mental mistakes.

“PUT ME IN, COACH!” John Fogerty would yell.

He yelled that a lot through the years.

And then, one day, said, “Hmmm …”

Here is a guarantee for you: The next time you go to a baseball game, you will hear “Centerfield.” Citi Field, Yogi Berra Stadium in Little Falls, N.J., any American Legion game or high school game were they to have a public address system and access to music. There is no greater lock in life. You will hear it. At least once.

You might not get the whole tune, but you’ll probably at least get the infectious guitar lick that opens the song. And short of that, you’re certain to get the catchy hand-clap intro that leads into that riff.

“I would take my kids to their Little League games,” Fogerty says, laughing, “and sure enough, somewhere, on one of the other fields if not that one, you’d hear it. That was always pretty funny.”

The most famous baseball song of all, of course, is “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” written in 1908 by the Tin Pan Alley songwriting duo of Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer. That is the gold standard, and long ago retired the trophy as the most iconic song identified with any one sport.

Then, in March 1985, just in time for spring training (“… we’re born again, there’s new grass on the field …”), a song started appearing on the radio that was a little unusual because … well, you just don’t hear a lot of songs, especially rock-and-roll songs, about sports, especially baseball. It spent time on the charts. It peaked at No. 44. And then was gone.

And yet never really left.

Fogerty already was well on the way to a successful comeback to the music business after taking more than a decade off following the breakup of his seminal band, Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Centerfield” was actually an album title before it was a song, but Fogerty always knew he wanted to write a baseball song and there was always one image that intrigued him.

“The center field at Yankee Stadium is the center of the universe to me,” says Fogerty, who adopted the Giants when they moved to his hometown in 1958 but who had already been imbibed by his father in the lore of the Yankees and their rich tradition of Bay Area heroes — Tony Lazzeri, Frank Crosetti, Joe DiMaggio.

“We had great minor league teams — the San Francisco Seals, the Oakland Oaks — and then the Giants came and Say-Hey Willie Mays, and my goodness. But the Yankees were always the higher plane for me. In my lore of lores, I tended to note that the big bopper on every team tended to be the center fielder. If you were a center fielder at Yankee Stadium … oh my gosh.”

So Fogerty knew he wanted to write a song about baseball someday. He already had the comeback album titled. And somewhere in memory was the baseball fan yelling at the TV (“… put me in, coach! I’m ready to play today!”) …

Then, one day in the summer of 1984, he was sitting in his small office studio, fiddling with his guitar, and what he heard come out of his speaker was the spark of a moment that allows artists to do what they do, and be what they are …

And he said, “Hmmm. I’d better get this on tape.”

That’s the other crazy thing about this story, of course. By the time he clicked on the recorder at his home office, John Fogerty already had assembled a personal songbook that ranks among the most remarkable in the history of music, let alone rock-and-roll.

CCR sold 26 million records. Its music is as much a soundtrack to its times, the ’60s, as the Beatles, Rolling Stones or Doors. From John Fogerty’s fertile imagination came the hooks of “Proud Mary,” which has been covered by more than 100 different artists. You can’t listen to “Fortunate Son” without hearing the rage of the era. “Bad Moon Rising,” “Down on the Corner,” “Who’ll Stop the Rain” …

“Music is a miracle,” says the man who has crafted many, many miracles.

And yet Fogerty knows “Centerfield” is what an awful lot of people will remember him for 10, 50, 100 years from now. For one thing, it is one of the few songs that never, ever grows tiresome, irksome, annoying, no matter how often you hear it. It’s that riff. It’s the melody. It’s a happy song. Fogerty sounds as if he’s smiling as he sings it.

“I was happy!” he says.

But he also was engaged in an interesting debate with an inner voice the whole time he was recording the song, sort of a devil in his left ear demanding to be heard.

“John!” it said. “Rock and roll does not go for songs about sports!”

“It tried to sow some seeds of doubt in me, there’s no question about that,” Fogerty recalls. “Like, ‘John, this is so corny, you’ll get laughed out of town.’ Rock and roll is a rebellious thing that can be so hard on anything that’s soft and sappy.”

He found himself answering: “I don’t care! I’m doing this song because I love it!”

So he pushed on. He already had the riff. He already had an ultra-catchy melody. And the words started coming to him in a wonderful rush, too.

He wanted to make sure there were some time-honored baseball clichés scattered in there (“Hold the phone!” “Touch ’em all!”) and needed to name-check a few idols (“… so Say Hey Willie, tell the Cobb, and Joe DiMaggio …”) and subtly reference another (while the “brown-eyed handsome man” rounding third and heading for home is probably the song’s narrator, Fogerty also intended that as a nod to Jackie Robinson).

Next thing you know, you have a full song.

And the next thing you know, you can’t go anywhere without hearing it.

“I was at a yogurt shop the other day, and when I walked in ‘Centerfield’ was playing on the sound system,” he says. “And I look over and all these little kids were bouncing along to the song, singing along. It was precious.”

The song, as you can imagine, is played an awful lot at the Hall of Fame, where, on its 25th anniversary in 2010, it was recognized on induction weekend; Fogerty donated a baseball-shaped guitar to the Hall’s archives.

On April 6, BMG will reissue several of Fogerty’s albums, notably “Centerfield.” Not that you’ve ever been all that far away from it.

“I’m very proud of the song,” says Fogerty, who will play extended runs at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas in May and October, and will tour the U.S. with ZZ Top starting May 25. “I got to tell my own little
fairy tale.”

And every time we walk into a ballpark, any ballpark, just about every ballpark, we get to hear it. Music really is a miracle. And baseball’s not far behind.