The Baseball Project, "3rd"

“3RD”

Yep Roc Records

If there is a limit to how many terrific songs it can mine from the national pastime, The Baseball Project hasn’t hit it yet. This band of well-established rockers and diamond fanatics (front men Steve Wynn and Scott McCaughey, Linda Pitmon, and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Mike Mills) continue to hit for a consistently high average. And while this third album is as infectiously tuneful as the first two, it also rocks harder in places.

On “3rd,” The Baseball Project revels in all kinds of stories, from “The Babe” to the tragically flawed Lenny Dykstra (“You gotta fly high to fall this far”) and down to the obscure “Larry Yount,” whose story is the album’s most poignant. The rockers also celebrate scrappy underdogs (“They Are the Oakland A’s”), the joy of reading “Box Scores,” and the further adventures of a Pirate who infamously pitched a no-hitter on LSD (“The Day Dock Went Hunting Heads”).

As steeped as they are in the game’s history, these musicians also excel at baseball as metaphor: “Extra Inning of Love” is a seductive, Philly-style soul ballad that’s all about going well beyond first base.

— Nick Cristiano, The Philadelphia Inquirer