Lyrics

That’s Why You Play The Game
©2012 Rod MacDonald & Michael Lydon/Blue Flute Music (ASCAP)

Did you hear about the guitarist
Broke his arm in an automobile
They told him he’d never play again,
But he refused to take that deal
He had the doctors fix his elbow
To hold a guitar where his fingers curled
At 94 he was still one of the
Great guitarists in the world

That’s why you play the game
‘Cause you never ever know
What you can do til you do your best
Til you put yourself to the test
Then win or lose, you showed
You stood tall just the same
My little darling, that’s why you play the game

There was a woman who tried to go
To a school that wouldn’t let her in
They told her to just get married
Let men do the important things
But she’d earned her grades and she sued that school And to that school she went
And now that university
Has a woman president

There once was a champion boxer
Who refused to go to war
He said “I got nothing against anybody
I don’t know what they’re fightin’ for”
He stood up for his convictions
They declared him a free man
And that title that they took away
Well, he won it back again

When I was a young man
Someone said I was wasting my time
Trying to sing my songs for you
Livin’ my life in rhyme
Its’ true I don’t ride in limos
Or own a mansion in Malibu
But ladies and gentlemen
I’m singing this song for you

And hey how about that scientist
He was completely paralyzed
He had to speak through a voice encoder
That read the movement of his eyes
He could’ve wasted away in a wheelchair
But he had too much on his mind
He won a Nobel Prize for the books he wrote
One blink at a time

There’s always someone to tell you
You can’t live out your dream
They’ll say you’ll never be good enough
Never make it in that scene
You can work hard and take your chances
Or be finished before you start
And who are you going to believe anyway
Someone else or your own heart?