Former 15 Minutes/Dream Syndicate main man Steve Wynn has an album of baseball songs — recorded with Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey amongst others — hence the following interview culled from KEXP.org (link courtesy Repoz).

A baseball record! Why?

I™ve wanted to do this record for years. I™m a big baseball fan ” and former sportswriter ” and always thought the game and the colorful characters throughout history would make an interesting platform for spinning yarns and making statements and metaphors for bigger things in life ” assuming, of course, that there are bigger things. I kept putting off the project until I got into a long conversation with Scott McCaughey at the party before R.E.M.™s induction to the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame. Turns out he was as big a baseball geek as me, and we immediately decided to do the record as soon as possible.

Are these original songs, or collected nuggets from over the years? I have to confess, until I heard the Bob Dylan Radio Hour baseball segment, the only recorded baseball songs I had heard were the Barbara Manning LP and the Pernice Brothers™ song œMoonshot Manny.

We wrote 16 brand new original songs and could have easily kept going. In fact, we were going to seek songs from other rock baseball fans ” Barbara, Joe Pernice, Ira Kaplan ” but ended up getting into a hot streak of Ichiro proportions. I think we™re already planning the second and third volumes.

Wynn, McCaughey, Buck, Pitmon¦ how did the mix of Yankees, Mariners, Braves and Twins fans go?

No rhubarbs, no bruhahas, no¦well, you get the picture.