Play Ball

FINALLY baseball season is here. Tis only spring training but my day wasn't the total gloom it always is thanks to an ounce of temporary joy from seeing the Chicago Cubs on WGN this afternoon, live from Ho Ho Kam Park in sunny Mesa, Arizona.

There've been some games in the past week on the MLB Network but who has that?! Not me and no games on ESPN yet so this is my first of the year.

I am a dyed in the blue & orange New York Mets fan ... but secretly I dig the Cubbies, too.

So does Eddie Vedder...

in the big hard world

Introspection... but not a thesis, not while buzzed. This song -- Hard Sun by Eddie Vedder -- has got me captivated this morning.

I put the Into The Wild Soundtrack on and when I got to Hard Sun I set the music player to repeat and play just that one song -- over and over and over, for a half hour, for an hour, I just can't get tired of it. At some point I went to Youtube and checked out the video and...... geez, man, the similarities between me and that idiot Chris McCandless, they're there. I guess I always knew this but there's a new component now. We both had a rich east coast upbringing that went buh bye to search for the wild of the west -> eventually Alaska. That's where young McCandless was a schmuck and Alaska was too big for him. It's too big and too wild for many... he went Into The Wild... but was unable to come out of it. "Lonely. Scared." he wrote. I know those feelings but they are not ones you can have in the wilderness.

We both also wanted little to do with Society. Yet I find myself sitting here smack dab in the middle of Society, wanting to very much be a part of American Society even more. But things go good -> things go bad, and what I could say about McCandless -- "What a waste of a life" -- could now be said about me, as well. Another striking similarity. At least I'd be smart enough not to get myself dead with the Parks Highway just a day or two walk to the east.

P.S. Before I ever even knew about the movie being made, I went looking for that bus once. Because of wicked high volume of melting glacial waters, I was unable to make it but I could take you there tomorrow. McCandless wasn't that far away from civilization (a major Alaskan road) and that's he's kind of a joke and why his demise is somewhat laughable to many Alaskans.

PLAY BALLLLLLL!!!!!!

"In our sun-down perambulations of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing "base", a certain game of ball. We wish such sights were more common among us. Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms... The game of ball is glorious!"

-Walt Whitman, 1846

Jerry, Bobby & Vince
"The Star-Spangled Banner"
Candlestick Park, San Francisco
SF Giants Opening Day - April 12, 1993

Today is the greatest day of the year... the Final Four is set.
Wait... that's not it... watching paint dry is more exciting
than college basketball! It's Opening Day, baby!!

Once again this year for Opening Day I have arranged my work schedule to make sure that I had yesterday afternoon off from work (for last night's game) and today, as well.

At 8 a.m. this morning it was time to have some baseball for breakfast -- Toronto Blue Jays at the New York Yankees -- final Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, well, at the one that has had games played on the diamond since Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. (Unfortunately it's rainin' in The Bronx and they're in a Rain Delay but ESPN's got on the Kansas City Royals at the Detroit Tigers... borrr-rinngggg. On ESPN2 the Milwaukee Brewers at Chicago Cubs just came on... but it looks like another Rain Delay. Yup. Sheesh!)

Anyway... games will be on all day long up until about 10 or 11 o'clock tonight. That means all day long (for the most part) I'll have my butt firmly planted in place watching games on this Opening Day 2008. Now where's my peanuts and Cracker Jack?

There may have stupidly been a couple games already played in Japan, but last night in our nation's capital it was the celebratory Opening Night for North America. The former owner of the Texas Rangers threw out the first pitch... and Ryan Zimmerman gave the fans an exciting ending as he hit a game-winning Home Run in the bottom of the 9th for the Washington Nationals in the very first regular season game at the brand new stadium there.

Unfortunately the New York Mets, my one and only favorite team, they won't be on TV today. Hooray, I say sarcastically. Normally they're on ESPN on Opening Day... but after last September's, ummm, most unfortunate collapse, they really do not at all deserve to be on national television today. Let's face it -- they suck. First place all year and then they blew it BIG TIME. Part of me thinks the Mets can just kiss my ass... but I can't turn my back on 'em. I grew up goin' to Shea; the Mets are my team. It's not gonna be easy to regain confidence in them this year. Things could be great all season long but no matter what, there's still September. Ugh.

Yet somehow I'm still excited for the season. All through the winter I complained that we'll have 162 games that are once AGAIN this year filled with talk of steroids and human growth hormone and what deserving players will NOT get elected to the Hall of Fame because of allegations of possibly using banned substances. It's still kind of a bleak time for our national game ... but I'm gonna take what excitement that I do have and watch what games I can. In October, a World Series victory for The Amazin's would make everything a whole lot better. But it's gonna be a long (and hopefully not too agonizing) time between now and the push for the Playoffs. This initial excitement will wear off some, the season will go on... and on and on and on... then come September, oh yeah, gonna get exciting again! Until then, today will be a great day of baseball!

Well — it's our game; that's the chief fact in connection with it; America's game; it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere; it belongs as much to our institutions; fits into them as significantly as our Constitution's laws; is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.

-Walt Whitman

	Baseball A Film By Ken Burns Original Soundtrack Recording 1994
196 kbps Baseball - part 1 Baseball - part 2

	Walt Whitman (Quote) -- Garrison Keilor			Kansas City Call (Quote) -- Ossie Davis
	Take Me Out To The Ballgame -- Jacqueline Schwab			The Star-Spangled Banner -- Jacqueline Schwab
	The Star-Spangled Banner -- Big League Orchestra			The New Black-And-Tan Fantasy -- Duke Ellington
	Hurrah For Our National Game -- Jacqueline Schwab			Jackie Robinson Radio Call (1956 World Series) -- Bob Wolff
	Take Me Out To The Ballgame -- Harvey Hindermyer (1908)			Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball? -- Natalie Cole
	Gee, It's A Wonderful Game -- Dodworth Saxhorn Band, -- vocal: Juliet Lambert			Baseball Boogie -- Mabel Scott
	Sol White (Quote from History Of Colored Baseball, 1907) / Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground -- Ossie Davis / Blind Willie Johnson			Bobby Thompson's Shot Heard 'Round The World -- radio call by Russ Hodges
				Take Me Out To The Ballgame -- King Curtis
	Steal Away -- Bobby Horton			Say Hey (The Willie Mays Song) -- The Treniers
	Babe Ruth Radio Call -- (circa 1927)			Take Me Out To The Ballgame -- George Rabbai
	Clubhouse Stomp -- The New York Hawks			Hank Aaron HR #715 Radio Call / When You And I Were Young, Maggie / New York Times (Quote) -- Milo Hamilton/Jacqueline Schwab/ -- Studs Terkel
	If You Can't Make A Hit At The Ballgame, You Can't Make A Hit With Me -- National Pastime Orchestra
	Pound Cake -- Lester Young with Count Basie -- and His Orchestra			Take Me Out To The Ballgame -- Dr. John
	The Minstrel Boy -- Jacqueline Schwab			Eulogy for Jackie Robinson/ Steal Away -- Jesse Jackson/Jacqueline Schwab
	Joe DiMaggio Radio Call (1937) -- Red Barber			Take Me Out To The Ballgame -- Carly Simon
	Joltin' Joe DiMaggio -- Les Brown and His Orchestra -- featuring Betty Bonney			The Sporting News (Quote) -- Amy Madigan
The Star-Spangled Banner (320 kbps) Bruce Hornsby & Branford Marsalis

Eddie Vedder -- Take Me Out To The Ballgame
(Wrigley Field ... I think 5-14-06)
mp3 download grateful dead jerry garcia vince welnick bob weir ratdog phil lesh brent mydland mickey hart bill kreutzmann pigpen ron mckernan

Let's Go Mets (1986)
Let's Go Mets 12"
Meet The Mets (1963)
Meet The Mets (1999)
unfortunately the quality of these blows and there's no Ralph Kiner.

Top of the scoreboard at Shea Stadium in Flushing, Queens (NYC)
(image opens a little bigger but not much)
Notice the ribbon on the twin towers of the World Trade Center

Music For An Idiot

Chicago Bears won. Good.
New York Mets suck, losing their 8th in a row to Philadelphia.
They don't deserve to play in the post-season. They're still in first place but playing so despicably this late in the year is a total downer. Ahh well.

In between football, football, and more football, and some Yankees-Red Sox, this album I'm about to play for the 4th time today. It's getting attention all over the place. I guess that just goes to show how popular Eddie Vedder's become. I can remember when he was just the lead singer of some kick-ass band named Pearl Jam who had just put out their first album and weren't even widely well known. Also, this book's been immensely popular and now the film's coming soon which is gonna be talked about a lot as well. I've been trying to separate the music from the film's main character, the cult-like hero Christopher McCandless a.k.a. Alexander Supertramp who had many great notions about the disgusting materialism of American society and giving away $24,000 to Oxfam was a beautiful thing to do... but when it came to Alaska he was nothing less than 100% pure idiot moron fool schmuck. He wanted to walk from the middle of the territory a few hundred miles to the Pacific Ocean on the western side of the state. Yeah, HAA!! You'd face 500 bears, 12 serious rivers, 2,000 creeks and streams many strong enough to carry you away, a fleet of mosquitos large enough to haul away Rhode Island, and soft mushy tundra that'll make your journey so slow that you might, might accomplish a mile an hour, maybe two if you're lucky. Add on top of that the immensely cold weather at night and during the day later into the season, and it's essentially an impossible task. But moron McCandless Supertramp had no idea... did he become permanantly brain damaged.... alright, enough, this post was supposed to just be about the music so....

Eddie Vedder

Into The Wild

music for the motion picture

2007

Setting Forth
No Ceiling
Far Behind
Rise
Long Nights
Tuolomne
Hard Sun
The Wolf
End Of The Road
Society
Guaranteed
Guaranteed [lyric-less, hidden track]

At only like 33 minutes for 11 songs, there isn't much music here. Many of the tunes are just short little ditties, sometimes even feeling like a song condensed. But what is here from Vedder is some pretty cool stuff. Largely acoustic, these aren't seriously rockin' Pearl Jam tunes. They are all sung with great passion and the lyrics can attest that this isn't some quicky little soundtrack job. It really makes me wonder how much time Sean Penn, director of Into The Wild, spent with Eddie to be able to really convey what he wanted from these songs. Whether it was days and numerous screenings of the film, or an hour, Vedder seemingly catches the mood of Into The Wild and of the film's main character, Christopher McCandless, perfectly... and the movie's not even out yet but that feeling is easy to have if you know the story of idiot McCandless. Uh oh, here I go again, I didn't wanna venture into writing about him, as this is about these tunes. I will digress and say that Hard Sun has gotta be hands down my favorite tune. This ones runs twice as long as most of what's on this album and has a fuller sound than all the rest. I could easily see PJ jammin' this one off live and if they don't add it to their rotation of songs I'll be surprised. Society is also a pleaser to me personally... "less is more" it goes, which is true. Vedder does a great job of speaking for McCandless -- "Society, you're a crazy breed. I hope you're not lonely without me. Society, crazy indeed. I hope you're not lonely without me." As a songwriter he has achieved near poetry capturing the spirit of Thoreau and Alexander Supertramp wrapped up in one. It'll be interesting to see where all of tunes appear in the movie. Probably the film won't even be able to capture the true McCandless and the songs, in the end, will really be a better companion piece to the book rather than as a soundtrack to the film.

Grab it from: - All Tribes