Harvey Haddix

You'll have to forgive that last entry. I try not to be so maudlin most of the time, but I'll stop short of a full apology because it was sincere on what was a pretty important night. Back to music!

mp3: The Baseball Project - Harvey Haddix

I wanted really badly to fall in love with the first album from The Baseball Project. A group of veteran rockers telling the second-tier legends of guys like Ed Delahanty and Curt Flood had the potential to rise above the standard past-worship seemingly inherent in most baseball literature (speaking of maudlin). The music turned out to be pretty generic jangly guitar stuff. But the songwriting was a peg or two above average, and occasionally quite poignant. One such instance is their take on Harvey Haddix, who threw a perfect game for 12 innings in 1959 only to end up the losing pitcher in the 13th. A recap of the game itself is followed by a rumination on how "the search for perfection is a funny thing," making Ol' Harvey's story all the more tragic for its universality.