So It Goes

Mantle This! Mantle That! It Makes Me Sick!

The second set featured some new Baseball Project songs, including a pair about the polar opposites of the post-season, Reggie Jackson and Bill Buckner. “The Straw That Stirs The Drink” was sung from Jackson’s typically, ahem, self-assured point of view (“There were stars/And then there’s what I am”) with a call-and-response chorus. Meanwhile “Buckner’s Bolero” was a brilliantly detailed seven minute examination of baseball’s most famous fielding error. It sympathetically examined the other factors behind Boston’s ‘86 World Series collapse (“If one play killed the Sox/Could you please tell me which?”) and noted the otherwise overlooked aspects of Buckner’s double decade career.

“It’s sort of Homeric, isn’t it?” McCaughey asked. Yeah, it is. It’s also the kind of thing I needed to hear as a traumatized seven year old who’d just watched the fuckin’ thing on TV.

Because I had endless early morning hours sitting in the airport, I finally finished my insanely in-depth review of the Baseball Project’s Cat’s Cradle gig. You know, just in time to see them again tonight at Austin’s Continental Club.

You can check out the whole shebang here.