On Saturday evening, the Baseball Project once again enraptured a Pittsburgh-area audience with a wildly entertaining concert. They were the headline act on their “Doubleheader Tour 2025” with the Minus 5 at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale, Pennsylvania.
Concert Review: The Baseball Project Wows ‘Em in Millvale
The Baseball Project is a “supergroup” comprised of members of the Dream Syndicate, R.E.M., The Miracle 3, Filthy Friends, and the Minus 5 (more on them in due time). They are Peter Buck on six- and 12-string guitars, bassist Mike Mills, guitarists Scott McCaughey and Steve Wynn, and drummer Linda Pitmon. All but Buck sing. Wynn and Pitmon are husband and wife.
Mr. Smalls is a converted church that houses three venues: the theatre for big concerts, the upstairs Fun House, which functions as a small club, and a café for acoustic shows and “open mic” nights. Millvale is a small, unassuming borough across the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh. Among the tiny houses is a mini pop culture center. Besides Mr. Smalls, one finds the Attic Record Store and the Poetry Lounge, an up-and-coming bar with nightly band shows, DJs, and poetry readings.
The Baseball Project gears its nightly sets to include songs of geographical interest. Two such selections played at Mr. Smalls illustrate that, as well as how their topics range from the famous to the obscure.
Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey. (Photo Credit: Joe Landolina)
“Harvey Haddix” concerns the greatest game ever pitched. On May 26, 1959, Haddix of the Pirates had pitched nine perfect innings in Milwaukee against the Braves. But the Pirates hadn’t scored, and Haddix went out and pitched another perfect inning. Then another. Then another. Finally, he lost the game in the 13th inning. Milwaukee’s Felix Mantilla led off and reached on an error. Following a sacrifice bunt, the left-handed Haddix intentionally walked the next batter, Henry Aaron. Joe Adcock followed by knocking Haddix’s pitch over the fence in right-center. However, Adcock passed Aaron on the base path and was called out. The hit was ruled a double, but in any event, Haddix lost the game, 1-0. “Joe hit a high slider,” a despondent Haddix told Jack Hernon of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“Harvey Haddix” gives a shoutout to every pitcher who ever pitched a perfect game, with each chorus concluding with the refrain, “Why don’t we add old Harvey to that list?” Each time another perfect game is tossed, the song is rewritten. “Paul Skenes will be on the list soon as well,” said Wynn, introducing the song.
At the other end of the spectrum is “The Day Dock Went Hunting Heads.” It was an ordinary Wednesday night game at Three Rivers between the Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds on May 1, 1974. Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis felt that the Reds disrespected the Pirates for too long. In his own way, he was going to do something about it. Ellis began the game by throwing at Pete Rose’s head before hitting him in the ribs. Next, he hit Joe Morgan in the kidney. The next batter, Dan Driessen, took one in the back. Tony Pérez eluded four attempts to hit him, including one thrown behind him, and walked to force in a run. After two pitches missed Johnny Bench, “manager Danny Murtaugh came out to the mound, stared at Ellis in silent surmise, and beckoned for a new pitcher,” wrote author Roger Angell in Five Seasons. Describing the incident in song, McCaughey sang, “Down went Rose, down went Morgan, down went Driessen. . .”
Unlike any other sport, baseball is a team game with elements of individualism. Within a game, there are many individual confrontations: pitcher vs. batter, fielder vs. runner. The players’ heads aren’t covered with helmets and face masks. We feel as if we know them. Unlike, say, basketball, where a team can keep feeding the ball to its big scorer, in baseball, Mario Mendoza gets the same turn at bat as Willie Stargell. Thus, we know the obscure players as well as we know the great ones.
Perhaps that’s why baseball, more than any other sport, lends itself to great writing by authors and poets. Baseball books by Roger Kahn and Ring Lardner qualify as great literature. One can even say that about a column by Red Smith. Somehow, however, such splendid prose generally hasn’t carried over to music. Most baseball songs are forgettable novelty songs. There are exceptions, of course: Sonny Rollins’ “Newk’s Fadeaway,” although that’s an instrumental, Ry Cooder’s “3rd Base, Dodger Stadium,” and Billy Bragg and Wilco’s “Joe DiMaggio Done It Again,” from posthumously discovered lyrics by Woody Guthrie.
Enter the Baseball Project. Their songs rock and are musically interesting, without detracting from the stories they tell. Indeed, one doesn’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy their music, and many in the crowd at Mr. Smalls weren’t. Live, their sound is even heavier than it is on their recordings, as if one is at a Dream Syndicate concert. Each of the three guitarists performed searing solos at different moments in the show. I was standing in the third row at the lip of the stage. My ears were ringing after their one-hour-and-fifteen-minute set. My wife moved to the rear, where there were a few metal chairs, and reported at the end of the evening that it was loud back there, too.
Linda Pitmon bathed in blue light. (Photo Credit: Joe Landolina)
Of the songs that didn’t deal with the Pirates, there were many highlights from the Baseball Project. “Disco Demolition,” punctuated with Pitmon’s “disco whistle” blows, told of Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park on July 12, 1979. Between games of a doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers, a crate of disco records was blown up on the field. After the explosion, anti-disco rock and roll fans stormed the field and rioted. The damage caused by the explosion and the rioters was so severe that the White Sox had to forfeit the second game.
There was the poignant set opener, “1976,” Wynn’s lament about discovering Mark Fidrych had passed away. Mills didn’t contribute as many songs as Wynn and McCaughey, but his were highlights: “Stuff,” about cheating pitchers, and “To the Veterans Committee,” in which he passionately advocates for the induction of Dale Murphy into the Hall of Fame. He almost had me convinced. For his 18-year career, Murphy hit .265/.346/.469, 398 HR, and 1,266 RBI. Baseball Reference computes a 162-game average of 30 HR and 94 RBI. Not bad. From 1982-85, he was arguably the best player in baseball, when he hit .293/.383/.533, 145 HR, and 441 RBI while winning two National League Most Valuable Player Awards and four Gold Glove Awards for his work in center field. But for me, there are too many mediocre seasons. From 1988-93, he hit .234/.307/.396, 88 HR, and 339 RBI. I’d be a tough voter. Sorry, Mike.
Steve Wynn and Mike Mills belt out some backing vocals. (Photo Credit: Joe Landolina)
McCaughey introduced “From Nails to Thumbtacks,” about the rise and fall of Lenny Dykstra, to a chorus of boos. (OK, so it was only me booing. I was booing the subject, reportedly a despicable human being, not the song.) “Ted Fucking Williams” was undoubtedly derived from Jim Bouton’s description of Williams’ pregame batting practice psyche-up routine in Ball Four. It was part of a rousing encore. According to setlist.fm, it’s the Baseball Project’s most-played song.
Odes to more recent players like Shohei Ohtani (“New Oh in Town”) and Ichiro Suzuki (“Ichiro Goes to the Moon”), the latter also part of the encore, were paeans to their talent rather than stories. As McCaughey explained to Mike Palm of TribLive in a telephone interview promoting the show, “[I]t’s not as much fun to write about current players because they’re kind of boring compared to the old timers. . . There’s just not going to be a bunch of guys who go out barnstorming in the offseason and are hanging out in bars and just getting in trouble and stuff like that.” Makes sense. It’s why we need the Baseball Project to keep those old stories alive.
The opener, the Minus 5, delivered 45 minutes of turbocharged psyche-and-roll. McCaughey, Buck, and Pitmon are members. Wynn is a former member. Conveniently, the same five individuals who comprised the Baseball Project took the stage as the Minus 5, with Buck on keyboards and McCaughey handling all the lead vocals. I wondered whether they’d take an intermission. Would they end the Minus 5 set and say, “OK, now we’re the Baseball Project?” There was a short intermission, during which Buck’s keyboard was taken offstage and all except Wynn changed their clothes. The Minus 5’s set deserves more space than one paragraph, but alas, this is a baseball website. Most of the set included songs from their new album, Oar On, Penelope! Wynn, in an unusual secondary role for him, provided some scorching lead guitar. The set included a spirited cover of the Modern Lovers’ “She Cracked,” faithful to the original.
Main Photo Credit: Bob Kupbens-Imagn Images
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