Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1789: One-Dan Band

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

Ben Lindbergh concludes a short series of conversations with baseball content creators who work mainly in a medium other than writing or podcasting by talking to singer-songwriter Dan Bern about his origins as a baseball fan and musician, rooting for different teams at different times, his songwriting process, sneaking into Wrigley Field, composing his first […]

Now every game, oh, roll your way So I get down on my knees and pray That it won't be in series underneath October drums When my book-near moment comes When my book-near moment comes, then my fucking moment comes. Hello and welcome to episode 1789 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangrass, presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. My co-host Meg Rowley of Fangrass is off this week. She'll be back next week. And so in her absence, I've been doing a podcast mini-series of conversations with people who make cool baseball stuff that's different from what Meg and I do. So not primarily

writing or podcasting. A couple episodes ago, I talked to baseball YouTuber Bailey Freeman of Foolish Baseball. Last time, I talked to baseball painter Greg Kreindler. And this episode will conclude the trilogy. Maybe I'll do a sequel trilogy at some point because those always work out well. So we've covered video, we've covered painting. What else is there really? Well, there are many more options actually. But today will be devoted to music. This episode will be a combination conversation and concert.

So let's get to our guest whose name is Dan Byrne. Dan is a singer-songwriter whose music sort of straddles folk and rock. He's released about 20 full-length albums dating back to the mid-'90s. Along with numerous EPs and other projects, he's written music for plays and also for a few films, including Walk Hard. He's also a baseball fan, and he's released a couple of collections of baseball songs, including Doubleheader, a double album, and Rivalry, which came out last year. So lights down, curtains up, please lend your ears to Danivalry, which came out last year. So lights down, curtains up, please lend your ears to Dan Byrne, who joins me now. So the conceit of this series is that I am talking to creators who work mainly in a medium

other than writing or podcasting, but my guest today works in all the media, I think. I'm not sure there is a medium that Dan Byrne hasn't hit on at some point. He is an author, he is a podcaster, but he's also a visual artist and most famously a musician. And he is here today to talk about his music and also about baseball. Dan, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me on. So I know that baseball is really just a small part of your musical output, and it's an important part to me and many other baseball fans and appreciators of your work. But I think I know more about your musical origins than I do about your history as someone who cares about baseball. And I want to talk about both, but maybe we can start with the latter. How did you get into the game?

Let's talk about baseball. Yeah, let's. Well, other than, you know, playing it with my friends and always throwing and hitting and catching and doing all that stuff, I sort of came to the game, like the big game, the Major League game, kind of in a literary way for quite a while. I grew up in a place where there weren't any major league teams for any in the state of Iowa. And, you know, you had to go pretty far. Yeah. These days, you can't even watch major league teams in Iowa often with the blackout policy on MLB TV. Well, at the time, we had radio, of course, the occasional game of the week, once in a great while, there'd be like the team you wanted to see. But anyway, so there were a lot of books. So I read all the books. And

so I had this feeling for the lore of the game, I think before I even started going to a lot of games. So that's a lot to sort of bring with you. I started going to games in Wrigley when I was just out of college and I was living in Chicago. And I moved like eight times in two years and every move, coincidentally or not, got me closer to Wrigley to the point where I could hear Harry out my window. But yeah, I never thought that I was writing a collection of baseball songs. I just, every season there'd be another baseball song or two because I liked it and it spoke to me and the rhythm of the game, as has often been noted, is very conducive to literary daydreaming. So it just kind of came naturally. So you didn't initially have a strong affinity

for a particular team or particular players? You kind of became a Cubs fan eventually? I mean, I did have strong affinity. I had a very strong affinity first for the Giants for a long time. And then when I was in Chicago, that kind of faded out and you couldn't help but be a Cubs fan. And then I went to Los Angeles and the horror of some of my friends eventually swung over to the Dodgers. But much later, I was a Giants fan in LA for a long time,

fighting the winds. And then as soon as I kind of gave up a Giants fan in L.A. for a long time, fighting the wins. And then as soon as I kind of gave up the Giants and latched on with the Dodgers, that's when the Giants started winning. So a little karma there. So you didn't have any trouble switching loyalties? Was there a pull that you found hard to give up? Or was this just, hey, I'm in a new place. It's a new phase of my life.

I'm rooting for a new team i mean when i was when i was in new york for a while you know you can't you get swept up in in those teams whether it's the knicks or the yankees or the mets or you know you just kind of do if you're gonna let yourself i mean there's a school of thought that i mean i think like a red socks fan they don't drift too much. They, you know, they go to wherever and they're still like, they just can't give that up. But I think maybe because I was from a place where people's affiliations were kind of fluid, you know, and like this guy would be the Cardinals and this guy would be the Twins and this guy would be the brewers and then these guys would be the cubs and occasionally there'd be a White Sox. You know, it's like, and then you hear them all on the radio.

So I think I became more a fan of the game itself. I mean, at any one time I'll be rooting hard for someone, but one of the things I'm proud of is a collection of songs and paintings called Rivalry, all about giants and dodgers, which to me, I mean, that's such a great rivalry. I think the rivalry, that rivalry may be better than all the others, just because they moved, you know? I mean, that's an amazing thing. And then you pick up your rivalry 3 000

miles later anyway it sort of came of i guess at some point being a fan of this one and some point being a fan of this one but at the end of the day just kind of psyched about the the rivalry itself yeah well no one would know better than you about that rivalry because you've been on both sides of it unlike a lot of people who've only rooted for one of those two teams in their lives. Now, what about you? What's your dyed-in-the-wool affiliation? Well, I grew up in Manhattan and still live here, and so I was a Yankees fan as a kid, and it was a pretty good time to be a Yankees fan. as a kid, and it was a pretty good time to be a Yankees fan. I was born in late 1986, and so I was kind of coming of age during the dynasty years for the Yankees. So I lived a few subway stops away

from the stadium, and they were the best team in baseball at the time, so it was kind of inevitable that I would gravitate toward them. And years later, I worked for the team briefly and then came to cover baseball professionally. And at that point, you start to pay attention to all the teams. And I think naturally, you kind of gravitate toward other teams and other players. And so I didn't set out to stop being a fan at any point. But at a certain point, I realized that I had lost that affiliation with one team and was more of an appreciator of the game as a whole. And I was always into the history and everything. So it was never really a single team exercise for me.

Right. And what about music? Were you introduced to music or did you introduce yourself to music? Well, I guess both. Well, no, I don't think i introduced any i mean i i had a lot of different music introduced to me by a lot of different people how about that then you go oh i like this or i really like this or you know at some point i guess it becomes part of everything that you do you know if you're listening and making it at the same time

and you're kind of not, you know, and you stay open to it, then it all keeps flowing through in some way. And I know you learned the cello when you were young, right? And then you picked up the guitar a little later. And at what point did you transition from listening to making music? Pretty fast. In fact, I think I was making it before I could play it. And I think I had to learn to play guitar so I could catch up with, you know, because at some point, if you're just singing melodies in your head, you know, and singing them out loud, but you don't have a,

like the cello wasn't a good song instrument if you're making up songs, but the piano would be, or the guitar would be, or the ukulele, I guess. Yeah. So one of the adjectives most often attached to you is prolific. I'm sure you've heard that many times. And I guess it sounds like, you know, sometimes when you hear Paul McCartney talk about writing songs or Stephen King talk about writing stories, they will describe it as these things are in their heads from the first time they can remember and they're forcing their way out. And it's almost like they're the conduits. They have no choice in the matter. Certainly they practiced and they developed their skill, but it seems to have been something sort of inherent with them. And it sounds like it was sort of the same with you, that these things were just playing on a jukebox that only you could hear and you had to let them out. I guess so. It's both things.

I think it's having an affinity for it and then deciding that you're going to put other things aside to go for that. Did you see the Beatles thing? Yes. Have you seen any of it? Get Back. Yes, I enjoyed it. At one point, they were talking about, I think John was talking about finishing songs, like right away. And I think he said, well, I don't do it all the time, but it's probably better.

Right. He advised George that he should finish it right away or he wouldn't do it. Right. So I think I've always thought that was kind of what separated the ones who, well, it's just like, that's what you got to do. Yeah. That's about all you got to do is when you have a song thought, just finish it and move on to the next one.

Yeah. One of the things I found so magical about that documentary, I don't know what you made of it on the whole, but I wrote about this a bit, is just that it seems like such a sudden inspiration. Now, I know that can be deceptive, because in some cases, the songs that they were rehearsing in those sessions, they had been noodling on and tinkering with for months or even years, and they brought them to those sessions and they finished them off. But in some cases, and of course, these are brilliant artists who had practiced incessantly and who had worked together for years at this point, but it looks so easy at times. And you see Paul just sort of jamming and discovering get back on the fly or George will come in and say, oh, here's one I wrote last night, you know, and it's I, me, mine. Or Paul will say, oh, here's one I was messing with this morning, and it's the backseat of my car, and the melody is almost fully formed. And those things, you know, maybe it doesn't always happen moment that could just spring forth like that and bring people joy for 50 plus years is kind of incredible. And it's fun to watch. I don't know that any other type of creation would be as compelling to watch because if you were to watch someone write a novel, it wouldn't be quite as visually interesting and you couldn't hear it happening

the way that you can with music, which is this kind of collaborative exercise. Yeah, but if it was like Hemingway, he'd be naked and he's running around and throwing things and people would be running around. Right. So that might be entertaining too. Yeah. But the idea that you could sit down and you could craft a song that would get stuck in people's heads for decades to come, centuries to come. And it could just happen in a moment, you know, and it might not usually happen that way. But I'm sure you've had moments where these things probably poured out of you. I think the best stuff always happens that way, honestly.

Don't you think? I mean, stuff that you plan and plan and plan and try to control and, you know, say it's going to be like this and, you know, versus the stuff that's just like because you're having fun and you're with your pals, you know. a book or a movie or anything else, but it might then take you weeks or months or years to pound it out. Whereas with a song, at least in theory, you could kind of conceive of it and create it in the same session, which must be magical for those that have that ability. So I wonder what your songwriting process typically is then. Do you hear these things in your head and you have to get them down or do you sit down and say, I gonna write a song now and then you just kind of make it more uh i i guess in a mechanical way almost well six eight weeks ago i opened a a store called song store yeah i saw that and so people can like people say, well, I want a song about this or about this

person. And it's kind of good to have like a little pressure, you know? So then you just, you don't, you don't think about it too much. You find the, you crack the code as it were, you know? Right. Like if you're doing one of the Sunday crosswords, you know, you have to kind of crack the code. Then you go, oh, okay. And then you just have to execute it.

And on our last episode, I was talking to a painter, an artist who works on commission. And, you know, as soon as he finishes something, he has to hand it off to someone else who will display it privately. So do you have any qualms about parting with your songs or have you just written so many that at this point it's okay? Well, not at all. Not at all. To me, it's like if you're writing for a movie and they say, we want a song about this on this theme or about this or this person singing it, it's not yours. That's how with the song store songs, they're not mine. So I'm not attached to them, but they are. Yeah, hopefully.

Right. And was there a first time you can recall that you wrote a baseball song? A baseball song? Well, it would have been one of those early Chicago songs. One time I broke into Wrigley Field. I was playing at an open mic down the street. It was early in the season. There was scaffolding up. So I climbed in. It was like just after midnight. I had the whole place to myself for a couple hours. Wow. And I wrote it up as a song. I'll play the first bit,

all right. One late night in Chicago Chicago I break into Wrigley Field. It's early spring, the season is in, starting for a week. It's a little after midnight, I've been playing down the street. Had an open mic at a little bar just under the L tracks. Just under the L tracks I noticed for a couple days They've been doing some work on the ballpark They got scaffolding up I climb in

So now I'm in, so now I just described the scene I go check out the bat rack and I straighten out my hat Sit down on the bench where Fergie Jenkins sat Walk slowly to the mound where I stretch and then I glide Fire a couple, hide tight and then strike out the side I step to the plate Take a couple of loaves Swing with all my might

Watch it go Over the wall Tonight I got the ballpark That's a chorus Tonight I got the ballpark, it's a chorus. Tonight I got the ballpark, all to myself. That's pretty much it, you know. Yeah, that's one of my favorites.

That's a great one. Yeah. When did you compose that, or when did you sneak into Wrigley? Early 80s. And then that song didn't show up until your double album, right? Doubleheader, which came out in 2012. Yeah, all those baseball songs. They kind of, they were always around. And even like, some of them got onto records.

Like the Vin Scully song was on a record. And the Pete Rose one was on a record. But anyway, that's when we did the Doubleheader record. Yeah, so then we just pulled all these baseball songs together. Yeah. Ballpark can be a pretty magical place when you have it to yourself, which is not an experience that a lot of people have, but having worked a bit in baseball and being there after hours, you know, when it's all dark and sometimes I would see it in winter with snow on the field and it's like this place you're not supposed to see in that context, and it's special.

So I can see why you wanted to sneak in. And are you a music-before-lyrics guy or a lyrics-before-music guy, or both? Always. All possible ways. Ah, I see. So at what point does a song become a baseball song generally? Do you write the music and then you realize Oh, this could be a baseball song Or do you know you want to write something about a certain baseball subject And you just wait for the music to come along?

Well, okay So there's different kinds of baseball songs I would say For one thing One would be like okay let me give you a couple examples so this is a baseball song okay ready this is a year by year home run totals of the great barry bonds this is a year by year home run totals of the great barry In 1986, he hit 16 home runs. Then 25, 24, 19, 33. 25, 34, 46, 37, 33, 42, 40, 37, 34, 49. 73, 46, 45, 45, 5, 26, 28 Okay, so that's a baseball song, in my mind.

Yes. Now there's this song, I played the beginning of it. There's like an oblique reference that I probably was at a ball game when I started writing it, but I wouldn't call it a baseball song, maybe. Oh, let's see. Baseball was starting, no, yeah, baseball was starting, the Warriors were closing in, on the bulls, 72 and 10, Dodgers still hadn't figured out Yossi El Puig

They were batting him second again Protest songs were on everybody's mind Aaron Where've all the protest singers gone

But protest comes from the basement and the streets And I play seven times an hour pop songs I love you more, more than I can say I wanna spend with you all the hours of my days And if our time's cut short for any reason Breathe through the days and the hours of the season I'll be with you even as the sun and the earth and the moon And all of the galaxies slowly turn around.

Right? So there's that song. So like, I mean, you could say that's a basketball song too, or it's just a song with, you know, with stuff in it. Sometimes that's my more favorite kind of quote unquote baseball song where something will just kind of float in and out but i like the other ones too yeah sometimes i think the movies and shows that sort of center on baseball but maybe have a little less game action you know play by play actually appeal to me more and maybe

that applies to baseball songs too where baseball is kind of a character but maybe it's not the entire topic of the song yeah i mean yeah i kind of like both but they're different in some way and it seems like you like exploring the history of the sport in some of your songs right sometimes it's a famous figure sometimes it's a story that appeals to you Is there a certain type of baseball story that you find yourself drawn to? I mean, baseball stories, yeah. The Ring Lardner stories from, you know, the time when Babe Ruth and those guys would travel by train and the reporters would ride the trains with them and they'd all be playing cards together in the, you know, that's how they would travel. And that they had quartets like they didn't, you know, this was before anything, if they wanted some music,

they're going to have to provide it themselves. So each team would like, they would have these singing quartets like barbershop quartets. And sometimes they trade a shortstop just because they needed a second tenor in these stories. You know, stuff like that. You know, I love that stuff. I mean, I like the ball four, you know. I grew up on that.

That kind of was my coming of age. I saw Jim Bouton speak a few years before he died in Burbank one time at the public library. It's like 40 years since Ball Four. And I think some of his teammates came. And I mean, people who love that book, you know, it's their Huckleberry Finn. Honestly, people hold it in that kind of esteem. Yeah. Are you attracted to the tragic figure? You know, you've written a song about Fred Merkel, for instance, which is on Doubleheader as well. Oh, yeah. That's such a dark. All that, you know, there's a lot of, I mean, the Buckner thing, too. Same. Right.

Very much the same thing and that bartman thing which you know the guy wasn't even suited up on the field and he he became this dark kind of figure too yeah and then then there's some more minor ones even like remember oh well you must i was at that knob block game remember oh when he threw the ball into the stands. Or he held the ball. I think he held it and the Indians just scored. Oh, right. Yes, that's another one. Just, you know, little ones.

But yeah, I mean, I love the stories of the game, yeah. And you mentioned the literary nature of the sport and the pauses between plays that allow you time to ruminate. So do you follow other sports and are you ever moved to write songs about them as well? Oh, I do a lot, yeah. I have a whole tennis play and song. It's like a musical really around tennis. And I write a lot of songs. Do you know the Tony Kornheiser show?

I write a lot of songs that they play. So that's kind of all sports and the history and mixing the current with the, yeah. So I have a lot of fun doing that. Yeah. So one of the things I've been asking the people I'm talking to this week is about the tools of their trade. Now we just heard one of them that you had handy. So what do you make music on? What is useful to you, whether it's instruments, whether it's the way that you record or notate your songs, whatever it is that helps you do what you do? Well, I'm pretty lucky because right here at pretty much my fingertips, I have the ability to record my voice real well. I can record beats.

I have a bass, a 12 string, a six string, two electrics, a cello, some percussion stuff. So yeah, I'm just doing this pretty much all the time. How do you know whether to just do the sort of, you know, stripped down singer songwriter, just the guy on his guitar and a harmonica or maybe a more produced track? Just depends on the song or what it's for sometimes. Yeah. What kind of song it is what you know if it's if it's a song for a five month old you know then you might play something that sounds like

sounds sweet like that you're not gonna maybe put a thumping bass on it right you know and you might play some over that you might overdub some little sound like that you know something sweet and then something else maybe it's a maybe it's a theme song for a show then you might start with some some beats and throw a guitar thing down maybe electric and then you throw your vocal down just so you know where you're at and then you play your bass thing and then and then put a you know emphasize some stuff way back in the background just kind of subliminal you know you might you might find a spot for that you might even you might even need a little trumpet. Yeah, boy, I tell you, as someone who's at times just traveled a lot, it's kind of nice to have everything just at hand.

Yeah, I enjoyed the show and tell. It sounds like you have a whole band hiding in there. Do you use pro tools or some similar software to lay it all down or? Uh, something like that. Yeah. It's, uh, yeah, I use logic, pretty basic, but I mean, the real nice thing about it is you can overdub easy. Yeah. You know, like you blow something something just stop and get it yeah it's easy and is the guitar we just heard one that's been with you for a while is that a special guitar or um yeah this is my favorite guitar ever it's a real old beat-up gibson and uh i don't take it on the road because it's just so beat up and it you know you

hit it you throw a capo on it you know one of those things so like if you're you might be a nice tune there but then you throw this thing on and you hit the so anyway how and when did you get it? How and when did I get it? I was a long time back. I was in Los Angeles. I was making my daily bread by teaching tennis. In fact, I think I might be in a very small club. in a very small club. I might be the only member of the tennis coach to a 100 point in one game NBA scorer. Anyway, so I was doing that. And I wrote this poem one time about two, these two guys in LA who build a new freeway, just two guys and so is in some poetry journal and then the folks from fresh air called you know the NPR show yep yeah or is either fresh air morning

edition may his morning edition they said hey we saw you should come to one of the you should come to your local NPR station, which I think was Santa Monica, and read it. And we'll put it on. And we'll give you some dough. So because of the Ballad of Dave and Eddie, I had some dough to buy this guitar. And when I bought it, the guy pulled me aside and he said, I just want you to know that this is the nicest guitar that's ever come through here wow now maybe they said that to everybody but but i it was certainly the nicest one i'd ever played and then like a year later not even somebody dropped it and it was repaired but it never ever

quite got back but it's still it's still a one. It's the sound or the feel that appeals to you most, or both? If I'm going to be entirely honest, the first thing is the smell. Oh, wow. It's just got this deep, rich wood smell. And after that, it's how it feels. And after that, it's how it sounds. Yeah. it's how it feels and after that it's how it sounds yeah that's one of my favorite things as a fan of music is just musicians who have distinctive instruments that go back so far

with them and and often have distinctive sounds so you can tell that oh yeah that's you listen to neil young's new album that just came out and and you hear old black right and neil sort of sounds the same as he always did and old Neil sort of sounds the same as he always did and old black sort of sounds the same as it always did. And that goes back 50 something years. And that's a sound that no one else exactly has, right? And it's sort of a special bond that I wish I had with something that I used to work.

But I don't know, a special keyboard that clacks in a certain way might not quite be as romantic as the beaten up guitar. Did you ever type on an actual typewriter? Not really, not professionally. Just, you know, for fun. My grandma had one and I played around with it, but I've never actually written something on a manual typewriter. It's kind of different.

It is a little different. It is a little different. It's like, I don't know, there's something. It's like parchment. Yeah, I think you should try it. Yeah, when I write my ransom notes, they can trace them back to me because I use the manual typewriter. Oh, that's a good detective then. Yeah. So for me, I'm able to do what I do from home. So the pandemic, in that sense, has not been professionally disruptive for me, I'm able to do what I do from home. So the pandemic in that sense has not been professionally disruptive for me. But for musicians, of course, it's been a big blow, you know, economically and also emotionally, spiritually, right? And you've played, I guess, a handful of shows at various venues over the past year and a

half or so, but not a lot. It's been tough to be out on the road and it looks like it's not going to get a whole lot easier soon. So how has that been for you not to be performing as often as you would during normal times? Well, I was able to work on my two-hand backhand a lot and really finally give it the focus it deserves. Well, that's good. Other than that, doing different things. Doing the streaming show.

You made a podcast, right? 10,000 Crappy Songs, a musical detective story. Yeah, continued that. I got Radio Free Bernstein. I got Song Store. So just, you know, I don't know. I don't even know what to say about it, really. It's like you just adjust. Yeah. Is there a charge that you get from a live audience that you miss?

Yeah. There's also, yeah, sure. There's also just the sort of flow of traveling that I miss too. You know, just the ancillary part of it. That's really the best part of it. At some point, you just got to continue trying to plan to do things that you want to do and do things that you want to do. You know, like right now I got these songs coming in to write. So I'm writing them as they come in. I get an order. I see what they filled out. I write the song. I listen to Kornheiser. It sparks an idea. I write the song. And as soon as I write it, I record it and send it along. And sometimes, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, the pace of your work hasn't really slowed. Maybe the form that it takes or the venue where you're doing it has, but it's not as if you're sitting on your hands or twiddling your thumbs.

I mean, I remember when the bottom line closed in New York. Everybody has a favorite place they got, you know? And that was my favorite place. It was like the perfect melding of everything for me and for a lot of people, I think. And then they closed. NYU wanted them to pay their bills or something. Something crazy. So they were just, they got absorbed. And absorbed and it's like ever since haven't had quite the same experience of playing there you know yeah i mean the winery's cool joe's pub is cool the rockwood is cool there's a lot of cool places probably places i don't even know but like you know do you do you sit there and go oh it's terrible you can't play the bottom line you know, do you sit there and go, oh, it's terrible.

You can't play the bottom line, you know? No, you don't do that. You can't do that. I mean, you can do it for a second, you know, but what are you going to do? Write a song about it. Or just carry on, you know, find the next place. Or write a song about it. Sure.

Yeah. I never got to go to the bottom line, but I guess the special place for me here is somewhere I know you've played in the past, the Bowery Ballroom, which is where I went with my wife on our first date. And then we got engaged there as well. And we've seen a lot of great shows there, although I haven't seen you there, unfortunately, but hopefully in the future I'll have a chance. That's my 1A.

So, yeah, I love that place too. Do you listen to or do you have any favorite other baseball themed music by other artists? I mean, it's a tough thing to pull off and there are many types of baseball songs. Oh, no, there's a lot of great ones. There's a lot of great ones. and there are many types of baseball songs. There's a lot of great ones. I mean, the guy who did the other Merkel song and the Richie Allen song.

You know who I'm talking about? Chuck. Oh, Chuck Brodsky. Yeah, that guy's got a bunch of great baseball songs. Steve Pultz has a bunch of really cool baseball stuff. He does this whole thing where he imitates all the great announcers all in the same song. I mean, you go back to the great Danny Kaye song.

You know what I'm talking about? I say D, D-O-D-G, D-O-D-G-E-R-S, Dodgers, that whole thing. How about you? Well, I think there are a lot of, I don't want to say bad baseball songs, but baseball songs maybe I'm sick of hearing or I've heard a few too many times. So I guess I like the lesser known ones. Or I like when someone whose work I enjoy just sprinkles in a baseball song here or there. Maybe not necessarily a double album of baseball songs. Hey now, hey now.

No, I welcome that too if they're the quality of yours. But, you know, there are people who will maybe just reference baseball in a certain song, like, I don't know, for the turnstiles by Neil Young, for instance, or maybe someone like Dylan will have, you know, Catfish, for instance. So more so than, you know, an entire collection of baseball-themed music, which I think you've done really well. But I don't know how many other collections like that that compare. The Baseball Project, certainly, I've liked a lot of their work

and listened to their first album, especially many times. But some other songs, some of them, you know, you hear Centerfield 50,000 times when you go to a ballgame. And even if you liked it the first time you heard it, maybe the last hundred times you heard it. You know, it's sort of a sentimental thing, I guess, where you associate it with nice experiences and being out in the summer at a ballpark. But the song itself i think that as does great baseball literature i think great baseball songs and music can deepen your relationship and experience with the game so i think that's pretty noble yeah i mean it's the same thing what you're doing. What are you doing other than increasing people's experience of the game?

That's exactly what you're doing. Yeah. I do find the scaffold that supports the sport, sort of all of the things that spring up around it and help make the experience richer. I enjoy that as much as if not more than the actual games themselves at this point. You know, the things that people write about it or sing about it, just the larger footprint it has in the culture, independent of the actual action, is pretty important to me. Do you have a glove? I do. Yeah. I've been toting around a glove for many years that, unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of opportunity to use lately.

Well, I hope you do. Yes, I might need to oil it, I think, when I get to break it out again. But it's been tough, not only in this weather, but also mid-pandemic. A little tougher to get a bunch of friends together and go out and play. Well, maybe we can have a catch sometime. It's still one of my very favorite things to do. Yeah, I agree. I was less into the organized, competitive baseball experience than I was in just going out to the park and playing loosely and informally with some friends.

and playing loosely and informally with some friends, you know, just a few people with a bat and a ball and a couple gloves is really all you need to pass a few fun hours. You're in New York. Do you ever play those like almost like staged old time baseball things? I have not. I've enjoyed watching them from time to time. And, you know, the famous Conan o'brien skit right and we've had a guest on the podcast who does that type of baseball in california but i have not personally

i have not there's a long ago classic conan skit where he just shows up at one of those old-time baseball uh and he you know plays and it's, uh, sort of, you know, lovingly, I guess, uh, poking fun at, at the, at the act of, uh, pretending to be 19th century baseball players basically. But I do enjoy just the, the commitment to the bit, right? You know, the, the rules, the uniforms, they take it very seriously. They do the best they can to reenact at least certain aspects of that experience. It's a recognizable version of baseball, but it's very different in many other ways as well. Yeah, I think it's cool. It's like theater, but they're actually keeping score. Yeah, I guess I do enjoy the Billy Bragg and Wilco, the Joe DiMaggio done it again

song or, or Bell and Sebastian's Piazza New York Catcher or, you know, Pavements, Major Leagues. And again, like these are songs that are baseball songs, but not necessarily in the way that, you know, Go Cubs Go is, is a baseball song or something you would play to psych up a crowd at a ballpark, right? There are different contexts and different purposes that a baseball song serves. Do you have a top five? I should have prepared for this, probably. Do you have a top five? No. No. Okay. Well, I didn't prepare you for that either. I mean. Well, let's see.

Top five. I mean, Centerfield is pretty damn good. See, it's very divisive. You know, there are people who just, it's so overplayed for them. I know, but I think you got to put it on. You're not going to put five songs like that, but I feel like you got to at least consider it. Yeah. It's the most iconic baseball song or among the most iconic.

It's what comes to your mind immediately when you think of baseball songs, whether you want it to or not. I guess if we're talking about, I probably just named a few that I, I guess I would probably put in the top five. It's like, again, it depends how you classify something as a baseball song. You know, I'd probably put four of mine on plus that one. That's defensible. I might too.

I don't want to suck up to you here, but a song you played, a snippet of Ballpark would probably be in there, I think. I think Vin Scully. I would definitely put Vin Scully on there. I think I would put the Barry Bonds song on because the kids could memorize the list. That would give them something to do. Yeah, I'd let you finish the ballot. Some of your songs are kind of, I mean, obviously some of them are political in nature. Some of them are comedic in nature. And this applies to your baseball songs too.

And you have a song like the litany of Barry Pond's Home Run Totals, or you have I Miss the Steroid Era in Rivalry, right? genuine feeling that you, did you write the Berry Ponds song to memorialize those home run totals that are sort of tainted for some people, but were a lot of fun at the time? Well, I just present it. I'm not taking a, the only thing that might slightly tip off anything is that there's this kind of scary minor chord in it that if, if it was just, you know, if it was just that. So there's this kind of dark thing to the song that, kind of dark thing to the song that lets you know that there are some issues. Yeah. And it seems like you have a fondness and a nostalgia for earlier eras of baseball, but not to the exclusion of the present day, right? I mean, in baseball, we all get attached to an era that we grew up watching, right? And the famous figures of that time. And often there's sort of this, you know, rosy glow that gets attached to that in retrospect,

right? And those were the golden days, right? And people will complain about today's game or today's players not living up to the old days in some respects. Of course, in a lot of ways, today is better than the old days, the golden days, right? But you've written songs about all eras of baseball, right? Not just what you grew up watching, but eras that predated your memory as a baseball fan in the present day. So it seems like you're, if not equally inspired by the whole heft of baseball history. There are things in every era that get you going. Can I play a song that sort of speaks to that thing? Yes, please.

You know who Adam Adovino is? Yes. So when he was in, is he with the Red Sox now? Yes, most recently. He was with the Yankees and the Rockies and the Red Sox. And when he was with the Yankees, the Rockies and the Red Sox And when he was with the Yankees Or I guess slightly before He rubbed some people the wrong way, right?

By saying that he could strike out Babe Ruth every time That's right So that was the jumping off point for this song Okay It's called Everything's Better Than What It Was. Adam Adovino, he told the truth. He told the truth about Babe Ruth. If the babe was there here today, he'd be riding the pines.

He couldn't craft the line above the Binghamton Nile. Everything's better than it used to be. We eat better, sleep better, train better, see Tony Fauci knows no science and Madame Curie. Jack Johnson didn't last around with Tyson Fury. Everything's better than it was, you know. Arnold Palmer couldn't hang with brazen dechambeau they talk about shakespeare they call him a bar but he's nothing at all anyway just kind of goes like that yeah that, that's great because that's obviously a baseball song, but it's something that applies to every walk of life, right? I mean, you hear that not just about baseball, but about almost everything, that things are better than, right? Or some people say things are better than they used to be.

Others say that they were better before, but that sentiment kind of applies. And you've played that song before but it's it's unreleased right or in official form which one that one yes that one was just for the tony cornizer show so are you sitting on a stockpile of unreleased baseball songs or yeah basically yeah at some point i think i'm gonna just put well i have sort of merged talked about the 10 000 crappy songs podcast i've kind of merged one season of the story and all the songs in the episodes are the songs that are some of the songs that i wrote for that show and like so the detective has to write these songs so that somebody who's in prison,

who's guarded by somebody who listens to that show, so he has to get the songs on the show so the guy in prison can hear them and know what his instructions are. So that's a way of getting a whole batch of those so you just have to wait until you've amassed enough to put out another double album i guess well i think i limited that i mean it could be it could it could just go on and on and on actually there's yeah there's 60 of them right now i think something. Something like that. But yeah, it might just be 12 for the season.

And to the extent that you can tell, do Dan Byrne fans love your baseball songs as much as or more than other songs? I mean, do they hold Doubleheader in higher regard or is it seen as sort of a side trip, a diversion? Or when you're playing shows i mean do these get requested often it depends on the people i mean some people that's their favorite one right some people that's you know they're one it just all depends you just don't know does it hold a special place in your catalog for you? Oh, they all do, you know. Sure. Right.

Well, yeah. And I want to do more with it. You know, I mentioned my tennis play. I'm working on having a, yeah, I just want to do theatrical stuff with all this material. Because it's sort of, one, I just want to expand that way. And it's exciting to write in that way. Yeah. But they just, they seem to be grouping that way. Yeah.

Well, I don't know how many baseball songs you have in your current repertoire, but you've already treated us to a few here. If there's a song or two that you have to play us out, I would love to hear more. All right. Well, happy to play us out. I would love to hear more. All right. Well, happy to play a couple. It's called This Side of the White Lines. If his knees hadn't got sick He'd have made the big leagues Just like his hero the Mick He wore number seven on his back like the Mick

But his knees got sick so he had to quit he had a run and he had a tie he could hit a ball further than johnny mys he was blind on top but his knees went pop so he had to stop had to give it up Had to stop, had to give it up If you get thrown out of the game And get sent on your way You can come back the very next day After having, having had your say But that's on a field of nine Which is not ruled by time

And it don't work out so fine On this side of the white lines On this side of the white lines guitar solo If his dad hadn't got sick They'd have argued nights over their World Series pick Who's better than the Yanks, who's better than the Mick He was tough as a brick, but he still got sick They were close as a father and son could be

Close as the surgeon is to the knee He waited for his dad to make his climb, but he wasn't gonna get better, not this time. If you get thrown out of the game

and get sand on your way, you can't come back the very next day After having, having had your say But that's on a field of nine Which is my rule by time And it don't work out so fine On this side of the white lines

On this side of the white lines On this side of the white lines He plays softball now when he's got the time When he ain't too beat and the knees feel fine He ain't forgot how to swing that stick And he says to himself, just like a milk The tight-clad never got to face Dizzy Dean Joe Jackson's best was never ever seen He held a private funeral mass All alone in the park by the outfield grass

If you get thrown out of the game and get sand on your head We can come back the very next day after having had a good USA, but that's on a field of nine, which is now ruled by time. I don't work out so fine on this side of the white lines, on this side of the white lines. Thank you. Yeah. Want to hear one more? Yeah. Oh, please. All right.

Let me switch guitars here. All right. That one. That one was about a friend of mine. And this one. I got to know this kid one time in high school, and he was a real good pitcher. And I think he could really bring it he could throw like 83 miles per hour and they told him i guess the scouts told him hey if you just get get it up

to 90 you know so this was uh this kid said write a song about me. Okay. His coach says get it up to 90k in a year or two The scouts and the major leagues are gone looking for you And it's seven miles an hour Seven miles an hour Seven miles an hour From Easy Street 7 miles an hour, 7 miles an hour, 7 miles an hour from Easy Street street

mama says playing ball to answer good yeah yeah the junkyard is littered with the arms of high school pitchers who threw 83 down on the farm it's seven miles an hour seven miles an hour seven miles an hour, seven miles an hour from Easy Street I remember when they came looking at Jenkins I thought for sure he'd get in

Take another hand with his kid He can tap out of the way, hold his chin There is seven miles an hour Seven miles an hour Seven miles an hour From Easy Street Thank you, Dan. That was great.

Yeah. Got a little lost on that bridge, but, you know, it was pretty high, too. Yeah. Well, that was wonderful. This will tide us over until we can see you live or until the next baseball album comes out. Or maybe if all of our listeners go to the Dan Byrne Song Store right now and request baseball songs, I guess that would be one way to get another album of Dan Byrne baseball songs a little sooner. I guess so. Well, this has been a great pleasure.

I will link to all the things that we've discussed today on our show page. You can find Dan on Twitter at DanByrneHQ. You can find his website and the song store and all of his music at danbyrne.com. And thanks so much for talking and playing today. This was great. Thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed it. Maybe we'll talk to you next season. I hope so. Okay. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks to all of our guests,

Billy Freeman, Greg Kreindler, and Dan Byrne. Just joys to talk to and listen to. I kind of blanked on some baseball music that I do enjoy while I was talking to Dan. I know if you go back and listen to episode 1535, one I did with Sam Miller and Andy McCullough, where we talked about baseball songs, I listed some others that I have taken a shine to. We were pretty hard on baseball music in that episode, as I recall. But it hits a bit different when you have a baseball musician on the show to play you some baseball songs. And Dan's are very good. So I'm not sure we've had live music on the podcast previously, other than my wife once playing the Stat Blast song.

So thanks to everyone for making this series so fun. And as promised last time, I will wrap up with a few more messages from readers who wrote in in response to my conversation with Meg last week about learning to love a sport later in life. Quite a few listeners shared with us their stories of learning to love baseball after the typical time or in an atypical way. I read a few of these emails last time and I will read a few more today. So Nathan says, I want to react to your skepticism about becoming a fan of a new sport as an adult because I did just that with baseball. I'm a French person living in France and grew up playing and watching mostly soccer because it's the thing here and I saw my local team, Olympique Lyonnais, win several titles but I got bored of the sport later

and spent several years without watching any sport. Then I got into baseball. It took me time to like it and understand it. I definitely lived it like learning a new language, as Ben said. And after six years, I can assume I'm a fan of the sport, which isn't really popular here. What kept my interest alive is that, like many European kids, I was fed by American culture as a child, especially movies. In those movies, there would often be baseball mentioned or even played by the main characters. I think of Hook, for example. It was something that was part of another reality, but not mine. Baseball was still a myth to me when I seriously dug into it around age 27,

and it was thrilling to discover all the world around it. Stats, history, players, the game itself, and the fact that there's always something new to learn. I felt like a kid again. Thanks to Nathan, who is a Patreon supporter now, so I'm glad he decided to learn to love baseball. All right, this message is from Tom, who describes his reverse journey from cricket.

Perhaps like any good pastime, I got into baseball accidentally as a form of procrastination. I was entering the final stages of my PhD on the work of Don DeLillo and thought I could trick myself into wanting to work on Underworld by watching some of the, what I now realize to be very, condensed highlights packages put together by MLB. Maybe it just happened to be the commentary teams on the games I watched,

or an editorial quirk, but the more I watched, the more being at the warning track or at the wall seemed crucial to narrating the flight of a home run baseball. But this phrase also gave me a way of thinking about how history flows in Underworld, how the collective euphoria commented upon and called by Russ Hodges in the 50s turns into horror and dismay at the ruins of the Bronx in the 90s, ravaged by the logics of capital. The wall over which Bobby Thompson hits his home-run baseball in 1951 folds into another wall in the novel The Wall,

a ruined section of the Bronx where a young street girl, the Angel Esmeralda, is raped and murdered in the novel's 1990 epilogue. I guess in this way, the story of a baseball and the mythologies around the game and its forms help me think through Underworld and its own trajectory, from progress to catastrophe. And for that, I pay daily tribute to the baseball gods. This was around 2019, so it was very easy to identify and follow that Dodgers side. However, supporting the best team with such a flimsy reason to, a novel, didn't quite sit right. My partner, who is American but cares little for baseball, grew up in the New York suburbs, but supporting the Yankees seemed equally unconscionable.

During the pandemic, we started to enjoy birdwatching, or maybe just playing Wingspan, so she decided that we should support a bird-associated team, but unfortunately conspired to pick the most lowly one, the Orioles. Oh well, things will be better for the birds someday. And our last message comes from Ani, another Patreon supporter, who says, Her fandom is complicated. I'm an immigrant from Bangladesh. We came to Boston when I was two. My uncle often had Red Sox games on, but I never went to a game or understood anything about it. We moved to Greater Toronto at age eight, and it wasn't until high school that a rambling geography teacher piqued my interest, mentioning that even a 30% success rate counts as successful for a baseball player. One of my pet peeves, of course. Only applies to batting average,

not on base percentage. Ani continues, my fandom started with reading Moneyball in the Fangraphs glossary and the Red Sox were my team automatically for some reason. I would try to hold a little less judgment about people becoming fans late as looking back, I realized my exposure was very much limited by being a broke immigrant family. We had a high school trip to a Jays game, but it was too expensive and I didn't actually attend my first baseball game until 2016 at Fenway. For the first couple of years, I could only see my team for the handful of Jays-Sox games shown available on TV. I remember being so excited after saving up the money for MLB TV and tried to watch every single game. All that said, I'm no longer a Red Sox fan, so Meg might have a point about lacking an inescapable attachment to suffering.

so Meg might have a point about lacking an inescapable attachment to suffering. I see no appeal in spending time watching a team that isn't trying to win, and this was the case for literally half of the Red Sox teams I was a fan of. Hot take, the Yankees had a more consistently enjoyable 2010s fandom than the Red Sox. When the Sox traded Mookie, I felt like the team had changed, and when I organized a union, I realized I'd changed. Being eternally bound to a corporation running a sports team was no longer something I wanted any part of. I find baseball fans get very upset when I talk about this experience. It's either mandatory that I'm a fan of the team, or I was never actually a true Red

Sox fan. Fandom culture is whack. Well, I'm of the age where a decade is a long time, and the loss of my fandom certainly wasn't without suffering. There was an instinctual attachment to the team that was fundamental to my experience of watching, and somehow I couldn't break it. I posted to the Facebook group asking what to do, and the advice I got actually worked. I joined a couple of fantasy leagues to manufacture a rooting interest, and my relationship to the game has completely changed for the better.

Fandom is suffering, but I think the suffering can be transcendent. So we can end on that hopeful message. I guess Dan Byrne was wrong about no Red Sox fans ever unfriending the team, but Dan himself learned to love some teams later in life. So it can be done, and thanks to everyone who wrote in about this. Happy holidays to everyone who is having holidays right now. If you are celebrating Christmas, we hope you have a happy one, and if not, we hope you have at least a few days off. But thanks to everyone for spending some of this time with us. And we will be back next week with Meg to make more episodes

before the end of the year. In the meantime, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or annual amount to help keep the podcast going and help keep the podcast ad-free while getting themselves access to some perks. Chris Baber, Kevin Nye, Chung Peng Hwang, Jacob Pribno, and Caroline H. Thanks to all of you. Meg and I will have a Patreon-exclusive bonus episode coming next week. And if you are a member of the Patreon Discord group, which you can be as long as you are a Patreon supporter at the $2.50

a month or more level. Some of our supporters are organizing a trivia event for the evening of the 29th of December, and you can register for that through Christmas Eve. Check the show page for details, as well as links to the songs that Dan Byrne performed today, at least the released

ones. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. If you want to give us a gift this holiday season other than Patreon support, please leave us a positive rating or review on iTunes or your podcatcher of choice. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod. You can join the effectively wild

subreddit at r slash effectively wild you can write to me and meg via email at podcast thefangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for his editing and production assistance and we will be back to talk to you next week Make it a sure thing Don't leave, don't leave nothing to chance Make it a sure thing Don't leave, don't leave nothing to change