NYC/DC: It may've started in Chicago when he sang "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" at Chicago's legendary Wrigley Field during the 7th inning stretch, but Kenny Chesney's baseball passion is hitting a new intensity. After playing to nearly 43,000 fans at the Atlanta Braves' Turner Field, Chesney headed to New York City for Major League Baseball's annual All Star Game.

"I always say me and my guys are a lot like a baseball team: 6 months on, 6 months off," Chesney says. "Because it's a long season... and you start gearing up for it a long time before. It's funny, too, we've made a lot of friends at a lot of teams over the years - because I think they can sense that about us. We've got lots of players who come out to our shows when they're not on the road, some even come up and sing with us. It's pretty amazing."

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game - held at the soon-to-be-no-longer Yankee Stadium - honors the best of the current players, but the high energy performer and soul searching songwriter recognizes that everything comes from the roots. Whether it's baseball or music, so that was why in between stadium shows, Chesney took time to fly to Washington, DC to sing "The National Anthem" at the White House for the Baseball Hall of Fame T-Ball Game.

"Those guys made the sport what it is," Chesney says of the athletes being celebrated. "They have a lot of heart... and discipline... and hard work. A lot of what we do is based on that, and it's an honor to be asked to do something like this for them."

Chesney will also play an acoustic-based 20-minute set as part of the dinner. Because for the men who've long been considered "the boys of summer," what artist would be more fitting than the man who has become the nation's touchstone for making the season official?

Having hit the halfway point on this year's Corona Extra sponsored Poets & Pirates Tour playing to 50,422 at Nashville's LP Field, it has been a whirl of football stadiums, amphitheatres and even the occasional festival. With his two week #1 "Better As A Memory" - the third multiple week #1 from his platinum Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates - becoming his 15th chart-topper and giving him the longest string of Top 10 country singles this century, it's nice to see the man so wholly consumed by music take a break. Given his childhood aspirations to be "a ball player when I grow up," what could be better than following a trip to Major League Baseball's All-Star Game than heading being a part of something so special to the Baseball Hall of Fame?

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