Yep Roc Records
2008
Volume 1: Frozen Ropes And Dying Quails
About This Album
The Baseball Project actually began back in 1992 when musicians Scott McCaughey and Steve Wynn met and discovered they shared a passionate interest in baseball and its fascinating history of quirky, eccentric personalities with amazing stories that could make you laugh or cry, and sometimes both at once. The plan to make an album of original modern rock songs about all of this sat on the back burner, though, until 2007, when the pair sat down in earnest to write and record the project. Drafting in drummer Linda Pitmon and longtime friend and guitarist Peter Buck from (R.E.M.), McCaughey and Wynn recorded The Baseball Project, Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails at Jackpot! Studios with engineer and producer Adam Selzer, and the result is an often tongue-in-cheek set of frequently brilliant narrative songs about baseball legends Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams, Satchel Paige, and others. This isn't a set based on nostalgia, exactly, but is instead a full-blown piece of jangly modern folk-pop, and each song plays like it's an individual piece cut from the same quilt. The songs are witty, varied, and full of more authentic baseball detail than a month of Sunday sports sections, and McCaughey and Wynn are also keenly aware of the broader sociological impact baseball has on the American psyche.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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