The Baseball Project - Biography
The Baseball Project is a folk-rock collective that formed in 2008 as a tribute to America’s favorite pastime. Though the group came together around that time, the love of baseball shared between founding members Scott McCaughey (the leader of The Minus Five and The Young Fresh Fellows, as well as a stage guitarist for R.E.M.) and Steve Wynn (frontman of the Dream Syndicate) stretches back to their respective childhoods, but they’d discussed the possibility of the group in the early 1990s. Rather than focus on the more general aspects that Americanized feel-good songs such as John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” and Terry Cashman’s “Talkin’ Baseball” did, they wanted to write tongue-in-cheek songs about specific characters of the game, the nuances, its roller-coaster tumults and the fans.
After attending R.E.M.’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, McCaughey and Wynn began discussing the project again at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in earnest. They extended an invitation to fellow baseball lover Peter Buck (R.E.M. co-founder and guitarist) to play bass, and enlisted the help of Linda Pitmon (Miracle Three, Golden Smog) on drums. Inspired by baseball songs such as Bob Dylan’s obscure ballad “Catfish” about Catfish Hunter and Steve Goodman’s “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request,” McCaughey and Wynn wrote the songs as narrative/biographical pieces about the characters of a game that’s embedded in the American psyche.
The supergroup’s first album, the Adam Selzer-produced The Baseball Project, Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails (2008 Yep Roc), was recorded at Portland’s Jackpot! Studios. The collection was the first of its kind in detailing the game and its most interesting practitioners. Folk-rock songs about pitcher Satchel Paige (“Satchel Paige Said”), Ted Williams (“Ted Fucking Williams”), Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Harvey Haddix (“Harvey Haddix”) and Willie Mays (“Sometimes I Dream of Willie Mays”) were half satirical by nature, but also homage. Often containing narrative edge and the insightfulness of true aficionados, songs such as “Broken Man”—about Mark McGwire’s height of celebrity in breaking Roger Maris’ single season homerun record and subsequent steroid allegations and decline—search out the dark corners the old ballgame as well. Among the most best tracks on the album is “The Death of Big Ed Delahanty,” which recounts the story of the power-hitting left-fielder’s mysterious plunge into Niagara Falls in 1903. Many of the tracks on Frozen Ropes are biographical, detailing small trivia about a ballplayer’s propensities, such as swinging at bad pitches.
In 2009, The Baseball Project released the Homerun EP (Yep Roc), a five-song follow-up that featured the surf-like instrumental track “Golden Sombrero,” which is the inglorious baseball term for a batter who strikes out four times in a game.
