The Baseball Project: Home Run

Here's the lineup: Scott McCaughey of the The Minus 5, Steve Wynn of The Dream Syndicate and other bands, drummer Linda Pitmon, and Peter Buck from R.E.M. The strategy: make a rock album of songs about baseball (The Baseball Project's Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails). McCaughey and Wynn split songwriting and lead vocal duties, and between them, they cover highlights of baseball history from 1903 ("The Death of Big Ed Delahanty") all the way to the recent steroid controversy ("Broken Man").

The songs express their love of the game and their frustrations with it, often with a sense of humor. Many of them focus on specific players, and the singers often speak with the players' voices. Others tell narratives in the tradition of folk songs, and some like McCaughey's "Sometimes I Dream Of Willie Mays" offer a more personal expression. None of them revel in hero worship but instead reveal the humanity of the players and, by association, the game.

Things start out with McCaughey's "Past Time," a questioning love letter to the game. Big, bright pop-rock guitars, a catchy chorus, and some carefully placed whoo-hoos surround name checks of moments in baseball history, both important ("When Campy Campaneris played all nine positions in a game") and maybe a little silly ("The sideburns of Pepitone and Oscar Gamble's Afro"). The heart of the song, though, is question in the chorus: "So long ago, so long, Pastime, are you past your prime?"

Wynn follows "Past Time" with a couple angry songs. In the Mike Love on juice "Ted Fucking Williams," he takes on Williams' persona, demanding to know why the fans like inferior players like Mays and Mantle better than they like him. After all, he's "Ted Fucking Williams!" and "People say it's hard to like a man who doesn't fail and show he's human. But failure's not a sign of grace. It only means you don't know what you're doing." In "Gratitude (for Curt Flood)," sinister guitars and keyboards, heavy drums, and spooky backup vocals help Curt Flood speak from the grave. As Wynn writes in the liner notes, Flood "bemoans the lack of attention paid to his legal battle against the reserve clause, a legal challenge that led directly to the advent of free agency as well as the end of Flood's career. He's not amused." He wants a little gratitude from the money-making free agents of today for paving "the way with blood."

In "Broken Man," McCaughey takes an empathetic look at the fall of Mark McGwire. It's a peppy number that asks everyone involved in the steroid issue to admit their fault and move on -- the players, the management, the fans. The folk-rock "Satchel Paige Said" looks at Paige's life and some of his advice like "don't look back" with both an admiring and wary eye. While Paige didn't seem to look back at the racism that prevented him from reaching his full glory, didn't cause a fuss, the song ends with a wistful "We don't look back," implying that we don't look back at the likes of the great pitcher.

Wynn sings the Latin-influenced "Fernando" in Spanish, Fernando Valenzuela considering "the citywide love that he felt in 1981." In "Long Before My Time" (probably my second favorite song after "Past Time,") a propulsive beat and a bright guitar hook soar with the sound of summer as Sandy Koufax tries to decide whether to retire or not at the age of 30.

"Jackie's Lament" finds Jackie Robinson considering what he'd say about his treatment in his early days in the major leagues if he could. The song feels upbeat and sad at the same time, a mix of pride, frustration, and melancholy with a bit of a Beach Boys bridge. In the beautiful "Sometimes I Dream of Willie Mays," McCaughey looks back on going to a Giants-Dodgers game with his dad and seeing Mays and Koufax face off. Eight years later, he sees Mays again, playing for the Mets against the A's, and a ball goes through Mays' legs, "something I never wanted to see." Finally, McCaughey looks back to 1954, when he was born and "a mile away in the Polo Grounds [Mays] pulls it in and spins himself around."

"The Death of Big Ed Delahanty" does just what the title says, tells the story of Big Ed Delahanty. Folk-style lyrics and garage/R&B stomp mix together with McCaughey's near-spoken lyrics (adapted from a poem by his brother). Apparently, booze and Niagara Falls don't play well together. In the folk anthem "Harvey Haddix," Wynn takes up the cause of Haddix, a Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher, who threw a perfect game for 12 innings, only to lose it and credit for the perfect game in the 13th. Through the choruses, Wynn manages to list the 17 players who are credited with perfect games and asks, "Why don't we add old Harvey to that list?"

McCaughey once again combines the personal and a player in "The Yankee Flipper," this time Black Jack McDowell: "He's a friend of the Smithereens, an old pal of Eddie Vedder. For a good few years there weren't any pitchers better. He loved R.E.M. and he played a Rickenbacker guitar, but for a night on the town with Mike Mills you get hit pretty hard." After a bad game, McDowell flipped off 50,000 Yankee fans, earning the titular nickname. McCaughey thinks a night McDowell drank with him, Mills, and Dennis Diken might have had something to do with that performance. After all, "Jack loved the Replacements, and we drank enough we became them."

Appropriately enough, the album ends with "The Closer." Wynn puts on another angry character, an unnamed relief pitcher. This guy's all attitude, and so is the music -- slow, heavy, footsteps of doom kind of stuff with feedback squawls and and harmonies. Wynn almost growls the vocals and sums things up: "If you want to hate my guts, that's all right by me. If you think you've got my number, that's all right by me. But you're gonna have to stand in against me, and then we'll see."

I have to say, I haven't paid attention to baseball in quite a long time, and when I did, a lot of it had to do with my brother and some of my friends, but I don't think that matters -- good music is good music. Still, it's easy to get caught up in the romance of baseball from it's old-timey roots to its strategy and mix of individual and team skills, and having a band play songs about baseball, well, that kind of makes perfect sense. Bands have their own romance, and like neighborhood games in the street, they can start up out of nowhere and fill a summer. You just need a little bit of equipment and some desire. And thanks to The Baseball Project, eh, I might watch a game every now and then.