The Baseball Project "Buckner's Bolero"

As improbable as the first album from The Baseball Project was, a second batch of songs seemed as likely as a game with 2 triple-plays.

But Volume 2 is here, and there are a couple of tracks of special interest to Red Sox fans, including one about Tony Conigliaro.

However, the neat feat of the bunch, is a song about Bill Buckner.

Lazy Sox fans blame the loss of the 1986 World Series on that ball the rolled through Buckner's legs.

But anyone who knows anything about baseball---or life, for that matter---knows it's a game of many, many intersecting decisions and paths. And today's result is not due to the last thing that happened, but due to the hundreds of choices and accidents that lead up to the moment.

Improbably, all of the inopportunities and bad breaks and poor decisions leading up to Buckner's replay-ready moment, are documented in this song.

Really? A song that puts Calvin Schiraldi in context? That takes Jim Rice to task for not legging out an extra base here or there? Or that remembers that former Met Tom Seaver was supposed to pitch Game One of the series for the Sox, but injured his knee?

You'd expect to hear this on some nostaglia Sports Yappers program, but not in a song.

A song that also reminds us of Buckner's many talents and achievements, as a rock solid, tough-as-nails career player.

Good on you, The Baseball Project.

Here's to a "Volume 3", as I'm looking forward to a song about the life lessons that can be gleaned from Grady Little's decision to pitch Pedro in the 8th inning of the 2003 ALCS.


See the video on Youtube.

The Baseball Project “Ted F---ing Williams”

I was watching a bit of the ALCS the other night . . . watching the Yankees pull away from the Angels, when that four letter word passed my lips. And it made me think of this song.

The Baseball Project practically constitutes a genre of its own---a band that writes song only about specific baseball players. Some of the musicians behind the project are probably familiar, including Peter Buck of R.E.M. and Scott McCaughey who plays in R.E.M.’s touring band and leads both The Young Fresh Fellows and The Minus Five.

Steve Wynn, the group leader, is a big baseball fan, and spearheaded the debut album, (which also spawned a follow-up EP), featuring songs about Fernando Valenzuela and the story of Chavez Ravine, Curt Flood and the rise of Free Agency and Mark McGuire’s testimony before Congress on steroid abuse in Major League Baseball.

But as a Red Sox devotee, I loved hearing their take on the oft-repeated legend that Ted Williams used to, while taking batting practice, yell out “I’M TED FUCKING WILLIAMS AND I’M THE GREATEST HITTER IN BASEBALL!!!”

Ted Williams was not the cuddly sort, and the song looks at baseball fandom from the perspective of someone who is perhaps the greatest, but not the most beloved. And he can’t understand why.

Hear a sample and buy the song:


Check out all the lyrics, and a little bit about each song on the album, then buy the album here.

See the band live, and on Letterman, here