The Baseball Project's home run

You can call it a supergroup if you wish: It started recording in 2007 with Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows, The Minus 5, R.E.M.) and Steve Wynn (The Dream Syndicate, Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3), and quickly grew to include drummer Linda Pitmon (The Miracle 3, also married to Wynn) and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck. But it's actually a super fan group. The Baseball Project's mission is to play nothing but jangly, guitar-driven rock songs about baseball, which Thursday it brings to Party in the Park in Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park at Manhattan Square Park. The Baseball Project takes the stage at about 7 p.m., after The Mambo Kings open at 5:30 p.m. and the alt-country rockers Lucero closing at 8:30 p.m.

Buck won't be with the band Thursday -- "Don't take it personally, he's only playing selected gigs," McCaughey says. But Buck's place in the lineup is being taken by former R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills, another baseball fan who signed with the team for its third album.

That's right. The Baseball Project has already released three albums of original baseball songs. And let's get this said right away: These songs are not always sappy, happy celebrations. It may be a cliché to insist that baseball is a metaphor for life in America but, in the hands of The Baseball Project, it pretty much works out that way, for better or for worse.

The history of baseball is loaded with fascinating characters that go far beyond the color-barrier bravery of Jackie Robinson, irascible icon Ted Williams and the ageless Satchel Paige (all of whom appear in the band's first album, The Baseball Project, Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails). But the self-admitted baseball geeks of The Baseball Project also dig for dirt. So Mark McGwire is also here, in a sad reflection on his steroid-fueled pursuit of Roger Maris' single-season home run record. And "The Death of Big Ed Delehanty" is as riveting as any Appalachian murder ballad.

All three albums explore men like Carl Mayes, who hit an opponent in the head with a pitch, killing him, but remained unrepentant for the rest of his life. And Grover Cleveland Alexander. "He was probably an alcoholic," McCaughey says. "He fought in World War I and had seriously damaged nerves from poison gas and exploding shells, his one ear was constantly ringing. So he had demons driving him to drink. He pitched games hung over or drunk, but he managed to save the Cardinals against the Yankees in the World Series in 1926.

"Was he a tragic guy? How tragic is it to win 373 games and get in the Hall of Fame?

By comparison, the catalog of football songs is weak. You've got the former theme song from Monday Night Football by the intellectually challenged Hank Williams, Jr., "Are You Ready For Some Football?" And The Chicago Bears' "Super Bowl Shuffle." Virtually all football songs are predictable celebrations of manliness in tight pants, save for Fountains of Wayne's sublime "All Kinds of Time," the exception that proves the rule

"Baseball is just a better sport," McCaughey says. "It's more intriguing somehow, there's more time to sit and think about things, and enjoy it. It has a longer history than football, it's better documented, every team plays at least 162 games every season."

The pitcher Dock Ellis is another perfect target for The Baseball Project. "He was always his own guy, wearing curlers in his hair out on the field," McCaughey says. "He didn't care what other people thought.

"There's just not that many guys like that anymore."

But since two songs, by Barbara Manning and Todd Snider, have already been written about the no-hitter Ellis threw while he was tripping on acid, The Baseball Project tackles another legendary Ellis game in "The Day Dock Went Hunting Heads," when Ellis decided to hit every Cincinnati Red in the lineup, starting with Pete Rose, then Joe Morgan, then Dan Driessen, then Tony Perez. "Down went Driessen, he took one right in the organ," McCaughey sings. Cue the sopranos, but it sounds worse than it was. It's minor artistic license, McCaughey explains, as organ rhymes with Morgan, and fit the rhyme scheme better than kidney, the spot where Driessen actually was hit. "And the kidney is an organ, so technically it's correct," McCaughey says.

There is a lot of emphasis on the less-heroic guys. Wynn goes off on the self-centered Alex Rodriguez in "13," while in "They Played Baseball" McCaughey offers a lineup of suspect characters like John Rocker and Ty Cobb, whose legacies are equal parts skill and racist comments.

"Sometimes those people are more interesting than goody-two-shoes," McCaughey says. "Most ballplayers have a homogenous, boring image. It's a lot easier and more fun to check out guys who don't fit the mold."