Pitchfork: The Baseball Project: Volume One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails

Baseball is unquestionably the hipster sport de rigueur, its clean mathematical order and heavy reliance on neatly sortable statistics engenders the type of nerdy admirers who probably share psychological profiles with record obsessives. The game boasts more esoteric lore than the combined histories of the Residents and Jandek, and has given us more colorful characters than Elephant 6. It sometimes requires (and rewards) the same amount of faith and patience as a Stars of the Lid record.

One other thing-- baseball and indie rock are both places where guys can still get paid for doing “kid” stuff into middle age. As with Julio Franco or Jamie Moyer, so it goes for Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Steve Wynn (the Dream Syndicate), and Scott McCaughey (the Young Fresh Fellows, Minus 5), the alt-rock vets and principals behind the Baseball Project, a diamond-themed endeavor responsible for the wonderfully lively and humane Volume One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails. Poring through hardball’s rich history with the exhaustiveness of true geeks but the wit and empathy of born songwriters, Wynn and McCaughey repeatedly manage to draw effortless metaphorical lines between baseball and life.