My Father’s House—Bruce Springsteen

#365Songs: July 6

I have always enjoyed listening to baseball on the radio, because the experience is essentially akin to being in a room with a lot of weird old uncles.

They talk, and they tell stories, and they cite obscure facts as conversational weapons to prove each other wrong about the relative merits and faults of people with nicknames like Old Pete, Sparky, Cool Papa, Lefty, and The Lip.

Great baseball announcers are great people, because they feel so much like real people. Flawed, mildly deranged, overly obsessed with certain things and clueless about others, fundamentally charming most of the time, prone to talking a bit too much, and beloved.

So, I like listening to baseball on the radio.

Baseball players are kind of a hoot as well. Twitchy, superstitious, and hopelessly ritual-obsessed. Constantly chewing, spitting, and quivering with nervous energy, they wear this hat or that one, use this glove or that one, lace this direction or that way, shave or don’t shave, tuck their shirts or untuck them, tap the bat once, twice, or three times, and so forth and so on.

Among the many delightfully weird things about baseball players are their walk-up songs. Whether it’s Mike Piazza heading into the batter’s box to the wah-wah driven space…