Jim Croce - “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim”
from You Don’t Mess Around with Jim
I love this song, but I fail to understand why certain television networks continue to use it as a “clever” way to refer to a baseball player named Jim. NESN used this song over a Jim Rice montage in 2007 or 2008, and I found it — and NESN’s poor choices in music generally (Chicago’s “Old Days” for Bobby Doerr?) — rather hilarious.
The song is about a pool hustler named Jim Walker in New York City. A guy he wronged once, Willie McCoy, nicknamed Slim, shows up one day from Alabama to exact revenge. They meet in the pool room one day and Slim gets his revenge by killing Jim (or at least severely maiming him — Croce never specifies what Jim’s exact fate is), leading Jim’s entourage to become Slim’s entourage.
The reason they use it is because of the chorus, which is brilliant:
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape
You don’t spit into the wind
You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger
And you don’t mess around with Jim
But they fail to remember that Jim dies in the third verse. It’s a story, people. There’s already an ending. Stop trying to ruin it.
