More of the Baseball and Rock Connection by Steve reynolds

A Home Run for The Baseball Project

What happens when two great songwriters decide to focus their talents upon their favorite sport? You get the highly entertaining debut disc from The Baseball Project, Volume One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails. The album is the brainchild of Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate, Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3) and Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows, Minus 5, and R.E.M) and includes R.E.M’s Peter Buck chipping in on various stringed instruments. Due to the interview Mike and I did with Scott for issue 14, McCaughey hatched the idea for us to write the bio to be sent out with the album to the press. So for the first time ever, here is the complete unedited interview I did with Scott and Steve for the bio.

Zisk: How long have you guys known each other?

SM: Good question. I'm not sure when we first met! Maybe Steve remembers? I can tell you I first saw the Dream Syndicate play in 1983, opening for U2, then saw them in 1984 opening for R.E.M. But I don't think I met Steve until quite a bit later.

SW: I honestly think the first time we met was side-by-side at the urinals at the Offramp in Seattle when I played there in 1992. You didn't try to shake my hand.

Zisk: When did the idea for this project get started?

SM: We've been blathering about it for three or four years I guess. Finally shut up and did it!

SW: And the project finally took flight at the R.E.M. pre-Hall of Fame induction party at del Posto in New York last year. Everyone was happy. The wine was flowing, the food was incredible and spring training had just started. Scott and I talked baseball until most of the party guests had cleared out. And we remembered it the next day. It was meant to be.

Zisk: Had you ever referred to baseball in any of your previous songs?

SM: I tried to write lots of baseball songs before, but none of them quite made it. We refer to the Mariners and Gorman Thomas in the Young Fresh Fellows song "Aurora Bridge," and subtitled our Topsy Turvy album Where is Gorman Thomas? Oh, and Steve had that great song at the end of the film Fever Pitch.

SW: Yeah, I wrote that song "Second Best" when Fever Pitch was meant to be about the futility of being a Red Sox fan. The hook line was "Why do I settle for second best, why is everything a test, just this once can't nice guys finish first and break this curse of always second best." Yeah, and then they won the World Series. Maybe I should take credit. Oh, and I also mentioned Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial in my song "Kerosene Man."

Zisk: Were these songs more difficult to write than regular songs, considering the amount of real players and baseball terms you work into the lyrics? (For example, making all names of the pitchers who threw perfect games flow in “Harvey Haddix.”)

SM: As I recall, the list of pitchers in “Harvey Haddix” was getting perfected and changed right up until Steve cut the vocal track. We actually cut out some of the player listed in a few songs, thanks to Linda [Pitmon, drummer and Steve’s wife] and her keen ear for editing the blowhard songster geeks! It wasn't hard to find the inspiration for the songs, but yes, it was hard to fit in the all the lyrics necessary to tell the stories. It really helped to keep the music fairly simple. Although for Volume 2, we might try to do a prog-rock suite in four movements about Casey Stengel.

SW: The “Harvey Haddix” thing was like lyrical soduku. We had to some how fit in all 17 pitchers. The last piece of the puzzle was a visit to Wikipedia and finding that Catfish Hunter threw his for the A's (we knew that already) and that Len Barker threw his against the Blue Jays. (We didn't know that.) A natural rhyme was born. There are obviously an infinite amount of subjects for a record like this and once Scott and I got rolling the songs just didn't stop. We probably could have made Volume 2 the next week.

Zisk: Did you have to do any research about the players you wrote about? Or did you use your baseball knowledge?

SM: Both. For instance I wrote “Past Time” off the top of my head, then later checked a few things to see if my memory was relatively accurate. I had a line about Walter Johnson that was statistically incorrect, ended up changing it up a bit about Denny McLain. The Willie Mays song was all based on personal experience, but I did look up that Series game in 1973 to make sure he really did make that error that I remembered. I had read Satchel Paige's autobiography, so I used a lot I'd gleaned from that. “Big Ed Delahanty” was adapted from a poem my brother wrote, partly based on a book by Mike Sowell. I did use the book and other sources to help me re-do the lyrics. I think some of the songs on the next album will be completely fictional though. Facts are over-rated.

SW: I mostly focused on my favorite players, oddballs and the emotions and frustrations behind the fabled legends. "Long Before My Time" doesn't mention Sandy Koufax by name but it deals with the universal dilemma of knowing when to quit. I believe that in the song he poses the choice of burning out vs. fading away at the same age that Neil Young posed the same question. And I've always loved the Ted Williams story from Ball Four—he would shout "I'm Ted Fucking Williams and I’m the best hitter in baseball" during batting practice. It was a perfect subject for a rock song if not for the censors.

Zisk: Who is your favorite baseball player ever? Did they make it into any of these songs?

SM: Gotta be Willie Mays. And the proof is in the wax. And I really did have a dream about him, and wrote “Sometimes I Dream of Willie Mays” the next day.

SW: For me it's Sandy Koufax. Such an incredible five year run and then he just walked away. He was in the Hall of Fame at an age where most players are renegotiating their contracts.

Zisk: Did either of you play baseball as a kid?

SM: Four years of Little League, ages 9 - 12. I was mediocre, but got to play a fair amount because I wore "the tools of ignorance." I was an all-star my one year in "the minors" (age 10), then went my entire first year in "the majors" (age 11) without a hit. But we played "unorganized" baseball all summer long at the schoolyard next door. And I played in organized softball leagues in my 20s and 30s. Not anymore though—people get too wound up and pissed off, and anyway I'd hurt myself with my no-regard-for-life-or-limb style of play.

SW: I loved baseball but never played on a team. I was an only child living in a remote part of LA so there weren't many other kids around. My buddy Mark and I would play Over-The-Line all the time since there was just two of us. I got really good at the art of fungo but still can't do much against actual pitching.

Zisk: I guess this one is directed more at Steve—being a California guy, did you get swept up in Fernandomania?

SW: Who couldn't love Fernando? Nobody knew if he was 21 or 40. It was an amazing few months that were cut short by the 1981 strike. I think he should have sued.

SM: Even I couldn't hate Fernando, although he was on hated Dodgers...

Zisk: So the album is titled Volume One—should we expect a Volume Two?

SM: It seems inevitable! After all, we haven't written songs about Ichiro or Bill Veeck yet.

SW: Or Eddie Gaedel!


Eddie Vedder Goes All the Way for His Cubs

Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder is best known as the guy from Seattle who spawned a thousand worthless vocal copycats. But Vedder was actually born in Chicago and has been a Cubs fan for many years. In 2006 he even took to the booth at Wrigley Field to fill the shoes of the late Harry Carey in singing a somewhat alcohol-infected version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

This summer Vedder was approached by Mr. Cub himself, Ernie Banks, to write a song about the team’s playoff push and the 100 years of futility that every Cub fan hoped would end this year. [Ed note--nope.] Vedder took up the challenge and debuted the song, “All the Way,” during his solo shows at Chicago’s Auditorium Theater in early August. A couple of radio stations started playing a bootleg of the song that then spread to bars around Wrigley. And while Pearl Jam’s music might not be up the alley of half of the Zisk editorial team [Ed note—it’s not Steve], Vedder has penned a song that captures what Cubs fans we know are feeling. So here are the lyrics to “All the Way:”

Yeah, don't let anyone say that it's just a game.
For I've seen other teams and it's never the same.
When you're born in Chicago, you're blessed and you're healed,
The first time you walk into Wrigley Field.
Our heroes wear pinstripes and heroes in blue,
Give us the chance to feel like heroes too.
Whether we'll win and if we should lose, we know
Someday we'll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way.

We are one with the Cubs, with the Cubs we're in love.
Yeah, hold our heads high as the underdogs.
We are not fair-weather, but foul-weather fans.
Like brothers in arms, in the streets and the stands.
There's magic in the Ivy and the old scoreboard.
The same one I stared at as a kid keeping score.
In a world full of greed, I could never want more.Someday we'll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way.
Someday we'll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way.

And here's to the men and the legends we've known.
Teaching us faith and giving us hope.
United we stand and united we'll fall
Down to our knees the day we win it all.
Yeah, Ernie Banks said, "Oh, let's play two."
Or did he mean two hundred years?
In this same ballpark, our diamond, our jewel.
The home of our joy and our tears.
Keeping traditions, and wishes made new,
The place where our grandfathers' fathers, they grew.
The spiritual feeling if I ever knew.
And when the day comes for that last winning run,
and I'm crying and covered in beer.
I look to the sky and know I was right today.
Someday we'll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way.
Someday we'll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way.
(Lyrics © 2008 Eddie Vedder/Innocent Bystander ASCAP)

A Golden Voice for the Braves: Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris is best known for her haunting harmony vocals that have enriched albums for over three decades and her collaborations with the late country rock pioneer Gram Parsons, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt on Trio and most recently All the Roadrunning, a tremendous album recorded with former Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler. While Harris was doing a series of interviews promoting her latest solo disc All I Intended to Be we got to briefly chat about her love of baseball and the Atlanta Braves.

Zisk: Do you think John Smoltz will come back next year for the Braves?

EH: Oh man. The guy is so determined to play. And certainly the fact that he can be a closer as well as a starter gives him more of an opportunity to come back.

Zisk: With all the promo duties of a new album and touring, have you gotten to watch any games at all?

EH: I’ve gotten to watch a few games, but not as many as I’d have liked because for some reason they put all the Braves games on a channel I can’t get. And then when I try to get it on my computer they think I can get it so they black it out. (Laughs) But there is XM radio, so I can listen to every single ballgame.

Zisk: I assume you’ll have that on the bus, but you’re probably on stage when the games are being played.

EH: True, but I also subscribe to MLB.TV for my computer so I can watch the games afterwards. Of course when you’ve seen the score by then, so who wants to watch a game unless their team has won? (Laughs)

Zisk: Exactly!

EH: My brother used to do that. He went to Auburn when Alabama would be up on them every year. It was a very painful time to go to Auburn. And even now, for years he would tape the Auburn-Alabama game and find out the score. And he would only watch the game if Auburn won.

SR: So how do you feel about this current Braves team?

EH: I think they’ve got some great young players. I love this guy Yunel Escobar. And Chipper Jones has had a great year. It’s too bad we didn’t have the pitching because we lost Smoltz and then Tom Glavine. Some of the young guys I don’t know because I haven’t seen them enough this season. It’s baseball—you gotta take the knocks. We had some great years. But at a time like this you gotta stick with your team. Fortunately I love baseball enough to where I can really enjoy watching a game and seeing the subtleties of the game. I thank God for baseball. That’s how I chill out. I enjoy it.

Zisk: I obviously knew before coming in that you were a Braves fan, but I didn’t find an explanation why. Is it that Atlanta is the closest city to Nashville that had a major league team?

EH: Well, there you were either a Cubs fan or a Braves fan because it was either TBS or WGN. And I didn’t have enough soul to be a Cubs fan! (Laughs)