Eddie Layton, who died Sunday at his home in Forest Hills, provided organ music at Yankee Stadium, where he marked his retirement at the conclusion of the 2003 season after 37 years on the job. Employed for many years at Madison Square Garden as well, Layton was the answer to the following trivia stumper: Name the only person to have played for the Rangers, the Knicks, and the Yankees. He was thought to be 79, but he kept his age a secret, telling interviewers only that he was “approaching middle age.”

Although he was originally hired only to play between innings, Layton was known to produce a trill after a high-and-tight pitch and to play “Yankee Doodle Dandy” after a particularly difficult fielding play. He claimed to have invented several organ themes, including the flourish that ends with the crowd yelling “Charge!”

Such crowd-pleasing antics might seem a bit odd coming from a man who claimed he never saw a ball game or a hockey game before sitting down at the stadium organ.

“I thought the sacrifice fly had something to do with killing an insect,” he told Newsday when he retired.

Layton was a native of Philadelphia. He studied piano as a child but never laid hands on an organ until he served in the Navy during the Korean War, at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station. After being discharged, Layton began playing the organ at seaside nightclubs in Asbury Park, N.J. He was soon hired at the Mermaid Lounge at the Park Sheraton Hotel in Midtown, where he met Jackie Gleason and Guy Lombardo, who took him out for spins in his speedboat. Walter Winchell labeled Layton “organ chanting.”

Starting in the early 1960s, Layton provided the dramatic tremolo for CBS soap operas, including “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing,” “Secret Storm,” and “Love of Life.”

When CBS, which then owned the Yankees, decided to install an organ at Yankee Stadium in 1967, it seemed fitting to hire an organist who was already on the payroll.

In a story he retold many times, Layton claimed that he initially turned down the job offer because he didn’t drive and didn’t want to take the subway. When the Yankees offered him a limo, “Within one second I said, ‘You got it,’ ” he told Newsday. He compared his wages to those of a well-paid plumber.

He claimed not to have missed a single home game for the next 37 years.

Layton made a splashy impression at Yankee Stadium in his first week on the job by playing “Ally Cat” when a stray cat wandered onto the field, temporarily halting play. His experience of illustrating emotions musically on the soaps led him to add music to the game itself. “I can actually score a laundry list if I had to,” Layton once told an NPR interviewer.

He was soon hired by the Knicks and the Rangers, and he also worked at various times for the Islanders and the Apples, a short-lived professional tennis team.

In between sports gigs, Layton toured widely as a demonstration organist for Hammond Organs, and occasionally played the Mighty Wurlitzer at Radio City Music Hall. He released 23 albums, including “Ya Gotta Have Heart,” his 1997 collection of ballpark favorites.

In his spare time, Layton liked to chug around New York in the Impulse, the 26-foot miniature tugboat he had custom-built. Below decks was a small organ.

As tradition demanded, Layton played “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at the seventh-inning stretch, and his taste in general ran to the American Songbook. He once claimed to have 2,000 tunes memorized, and he could play the national anthem in exactly 59 seconds – to satisfy television scheduling requirements.

Despite his dislike of rock music, Layton gloried in the 50,000-watt stadium sound system. “They can hear me on the George Washington Bridge,” he liked to boast.

Layton never married.