Less popular now than football or amateur pornography, baseball endures as America’s national pastime in part because of its history, a misty past littered with outsize characters every inch the measure of John Henry or Stagger Lee. Steve Wynn (The Dream Syndicate) and Scott McCaughey (Minus 5) created The Baseball Project expressly to explore that mythology, spending two weeks banging out this disc’s 13 indie-pop numbers. The results are mixed; most of the tunes are tossed off a little too casually to command the general listener’s attention, though lyrics referencing Luis Aparicio and Harvey Haddix will make ball fans grin. The standout is “Ted Fucking Williams,” a character study that perfectly captures both the surly Red Sox legend’s contempt for the skills of peers like Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, and his yearning to be as loved as they were. 

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