"The Great Talk" by Flat Mary Road

Perhaps the best way to describe The Great Talk may be as a throwback to a time when the term ‘indie rock’ had more of a unique sound associated with it; think of the jangly rock that was popular with college radio crowd during the early to mid 90’s. Categorizing any band as indie-rock is a little bit more problematic than it used to be, but if the shoe still fits, wear it.  You’ll know what I mean if you listen to the stand out tracks from the album. "Shameless",  “Easily Read”, and “Mama Said”: the band sounds garagey, yet the songs are dynamic and filled with catchy hooks. 

 Led by Steve Teare, 28, the West Philly band has produced a very straight-forward rock album. However, Teare’s warbling vocals play a huge roll in keeping the band from ever sounding derivative. On some tracks, Teare’s leads are forceful and urgent, and at other times are understated or earnest. The same sentiment can be applied to Teare’s lyrics, which range from sarcastic to surreal, and are as interesting and memorable as his voice. 

 There’s a level of angst present on this record that was not found on the band’s previous recordings. So it is not terribly surprising that hear that after five years, Teare resigned from his job. He was an art teacher in the Philadelphia public school system. Teare tells me he didn’t leave because of the kids (which he loves and still teaches part-time,) but because of the quagmire of problems that the district is famous for. For example, he was frequently laid off, only to be hired back a short time later with the added responsibility of 250 students. Feeling a little like Josef K., Teare tired of being subject of the whims of a system that no one seems to control or even understand. The need for transparency, honesty, and self-determinism come from Teare’s personal experience and is evident on most of the songs on this album.

 Like Flat Mary Road’s first album, The Great Talk does have an overall quirky folk feel, but the band doesn’t shy away from other influences. The violin on the title track and “Grey Susan” give the band a certain southern-flare, while the guitars on “Jason” and “To Join a Cult” evoke some of the stoner-rock sound found on the early Built to Spill or Modest Mouse records. But above all else, The Great Talk is a straight-forward rock album, where the band is pioneering their own sound. It is increasingly rare to hear a new album that isn’t attached to at least two sub-genres, or emerged from some sort of scene; but that is exactly what Flat Mary Road’s new LP is, and it is its greatest strength. 
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For fans of: Drive-By Truckers, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the “Pete & Pete” theme song, bar bands 

Bring the DH to the National League

In spite of not being renowned as particularly proactive commissioner, no other in MLB’s history has overseen as many changes to the game as Allan “Bud” Selig has. While Selig has garnered the reputation as someone who has altered the league to serve his own interests, the quantity of changes can be attributed to the fact that his twenty-two year tenure as commissioner is the second longest ever. During his tenure, Selig welcomed four new franchises to the league, realigned the divisions, expanded the playoffs twice, implemented instant replay reviews, instituted interleague play, and put in place a PED drug testing system which may be the strictest of all the American pro leagues.

Selig’s timing has never been great; the drug policy that was enacted in 2005 would have certainly been useful in 1993. And the same sentiment can be applied to the recent addition of instant replay reviews, another alteration that had a nearly universal advocacy well before the change was  adopted. But for better or worse, its difficult to deny Selig’s business aptitude, as many of the changes he implemented can be directly linked to an increase in revenue for the league, teams, and players alike.  Upon his departure, Selig will leave the MLB in the best financial state the league has ever been in.

But enough about Selig, he is retiring and someone new will soon be in charge and the game will continue to change. Over the next couple of weeks / months, I’ll be writing about some of the ways that I’d like to see the league evolve under the new commissioner, whomever that may be. Today, I'll be writing about why the National League should adopt the Designated Hitter rule.

Bartolo Colon’s at-bats have certainly been one of the highlights of the 2014 season for me, albeit for all of the wrong reasons. He assumes a position in the box that is more of an awkward hunch than a hitter’s stance. His swings and misses have been so wild, he should think of investing in a chin strap. Having hardly any experience putting a ball in play, when Colon finally accomplished that feat, he carried the bat with him on his futile run to first base.

While Colon is a particularly bad hitter (0 walks and 73 strikeouts over 131 career plate appearances,) his inaptitude probably draws more attention because he is so overweight. As of June 19th, the Mets are posting a .135 OBP, a number that would be much lower if Jacob deGrom hadn’t gone 5-for-12 upon his call up. Unfortunately, the problem is not exclusive to the Mets. The Dodgers of 2013 and the Nationals of 2012 are the only two NL teams whose pitchers were able to post an OBP of at least .200 during those seasons, while the MLB’s three-season average for pitchers is .147. Since an OBP of .147 is essentially an automatic out,  watching a pitcher’s at-bat is probably the most irritating part of a the game for me.

There are outliers of course, but you’d have to go back several decades to find an era of baseball when pitchers could be considered respectable hitters. Larger rotations and less innings-pitched have resulted in less at-bats for pitchers, diminishing their skills at the plate. Additionally, since 1973’s inauguration of the DH rule in the American League, even the minor leagues affiliates of National Leagues began to adopt the rule too. This has created a situation where pitchers who may have been skilled batters in high school or college, will have zero chance to develop those skills against a higher level of competition. And the skills that they did have, are likely diminish from an absence of practice.

The minor leagues adaptation of the DH rule is an easy one to understand, as it affords franchises an opportunity to develop more hitters than they otherwise would have been able to. I believe that the NL adaption of the DH rule would have the same effect in the big leagues, providing an additional position to develop young players who would otherwise be benched, creating new value for the franchise.

If that is not incentive enough for the NL to adopt the DH rule, interleague play should be. Teams from the AL has won more interleague games than the NL for ten years running, and are 14-of-18 overall. There’s a difference between having a couple pinch hitters on your bench versus having a designated one, and teams from the AL have been able to exploit that inequality of rosters year after year. The fact that interleague play is now spread throughout the entire season, is another disadvantage to teams in the National League. When interleague play was limited to a few weeks per season, teams had a greater opportunity to juggle their roster for a stretch run where it’d make sense to carry an additional hitter. I may be speculating, but I’d imagine that NL teams are now less likely to tweak their rosters in preperation for interleague series because they are now one-and-done.

This type of scheduling surely creates headaches for AL teams as well. Pitchers on those teams are now expected to take batting practice throughout the year, which may be fun for the players, but probably frustrating for coaches. And as pitchers already tend to be the most injury-prone guys on the team, I’m sure it’s no fun from a general manager’s perspective either, watching a million dollar investment put their bodies in harm’s way for the sake of a mostly fruitless exercise.

As it stands now, the player’s union is in favor of bring the DH rule to the National League, as it means more employed players. Owners are against it, because it would mean an increase in payroll. However, teams are constantly becoming smarter, and I believe that it is a matter of time before they realize that adopting the rule in their league will serve to not only their best interests, but also to the best interests of the game as a whole. Purists will be upset, as they were when the DH was brought to the American League. But ultimately, bringing  designated hitters to the NL will make for a more competitive game, add value to franchises, and protect the health or pitchers, which is why it is a change to the game that I’d lobby for if I was the next commissioner of baseball.

* SPECIAL NOTE: On June 18th 2014, Bartolo Colon collected his first hit of the season. a stand up double.

Next time, I’ll write about closing the Adderall loophole, MLB’s favorite PED.

Philadelphia Beer: A Heady History of Brewing in the Cradle of Liberty by Rich Wagner

The first half of this book covers the nearly 250 years of Philadelphia brewing before prohibition. Suitably, Wagner examines the history of Philly brewing by placing it in the context of neighborhoods, and also by establishing a timeline of the particular styles that gained prominence era to era. It was interesting to read about Philadelphia’s pioneering of Lager beer, and how its popularity helped to establish the city as a nationally leading beer producer. This section of the book was comprehensive, but also somewhat dry. At times, I felt as though I was reading a long wikipedia page on the subject.

The book picks up in its second half, as Wagner goes on to describe how the Volstead Act utterly destroyed one of Philadelphia’s largest industries. The vast majority of breweries closed at the introduction of the act, but some remained opened manufacturing near beer and selling it as a breakfast food (so punk rock.) Prohibition was of course repealed, but at that point the economy was suffering through the Great Depression, and most of Philadelphia’s breweries would never reopen.  There were over a dozen large scale breweries in the city before prohibition. By 1950, there were only four, and by 1970 there were two. Schmidt’s was the last brewery operating in the city when it shut down in 1989 and began its transformation from an abandoned industrial complex to a bro stomping ground. The final chapter dealt with Philly’s more recent history, from the small brewpubs that popped up during the 90’s to the large scale breweries of Yards and PBC that we enjoy today.

This book was a short, and I finished reading it rather quickly. The beginning of it was a bit boring, but only because so much of Philadelphia’s early brewing history has been lost to time. As the book continued, the author was able to interject an increasing amount of detail, making the book worthwhile for those with an interest in the subject. At the very least, it will give you some new things to ponder while walking around Brewerytown, or while catching a band at Ortleib’s. This book is available at Amazon

SPECIAL NOTE: I mostly was drawn to reading this book because I happen to be organizing a craft beer festival in historic Brewerytown. Info here: Brew Fair

To Every Thing a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia 1909 - 1976 by Bruce Kuklick

To Every Thing a Season is a great book because it is as much about the A’s and Phillies teams of the Shibe Park era as it is about the neighborhood the ballpark transformed, and ultimately mirrored. Bruce Kuklick is a long time professor of history at the University of Penn, and has written several books on the philosophical and intellectual history in the United States. Books of this type are sometimes prone to an overly sentimental perspective, but Kuklick is successful at avoiding this pitfall, and instead takes a deep look at exactly what causes that type of mass nostalgia in addition to his historical recount.

The story itself is rather compelling. In the 70+ years from the park’s founding to its demolition, the neighborhood transformed from a collection of small farming villages, to a densely populated inner city on a steady decline. The park itself was considered a great technological achievement when it was built, but by 1971 it was heavily regarded as pro baseball’s worst stadium and famously likened to chicken shit by Richie Ashburn. Kuklick covers it all with great detail; closely examining the many local factors and national trends that shaped the area during that time, but also giving equal time to highlight the baseball personalities that made the area famous.

The location of Shibe Park was selected for its proximity to local trolley and regional rail lines. But by the 1940’s, it was a lack of automobile parking that had both the A’s and the Phillies pining for a new home. The section of the book that dealt with the respective team’s efforts to relocate and the city planning that eventually lead to the regrettable Veteran’s Stadium was particularly interesting. It’s a shame that most of the follies associated with that era of publicly funded stadiums still exist today, as politicians continue to falsely believe that a new stadium will benefit the city, when it usually only benefits the owners of the team that resides there. I would have love to have Kuklick’s thoughts on what lead up to the building Citizen’s Bank Park, but this book was published in 1994, at a time when public opinion of Veteran's Stadium had only begun to sour.

The closing of To Every Thing a Season was especially strong. It reminded of some of Milan Kundera’s writings as Kuklick uses Shibe Park to reflect on the nature of collective memories, which run both true and false. The author quotes local papers from the time of Shibe’s closing, and some remembered the neighborhood, stadium, and its teams as they were. But many were already looking back with rose tinted glasses, finally praising the very stadium they’d been lobbying against for the past 25 years.

This book is rich in detail, and the writing has a great flow to make for an enjoyable read. While much of its focus is on baseball, I’d recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in 20th century Philadelphia. Unfortunately, this book is not available in the Kindle store, so you’ll have to lug around a hard copy if you want to read it. Available on Amazon

This Fall, coming to a Brewerytown near you!

Wig Out At Jagbags

Malkmus is now six LPs deep into his solo career, which makes for one more album than he produced with Pavement. His self-titled solo debut from 2001 sounded a lot Terror Twilight Part II, but on his second album, Pig Lib, Malkmus took a significant departure from his former band’s sound by making a psychedelic blues album.  Three albums later, we finally see Malkmus come full circle with Wig Out at Jagbags, which sounds more like a Pavement record than anything else he’s done as a solo artist.

I suppose that the same thing was probably said about Mirror Traffic when it came out, which is a far more pop-oriented album than the preceding Real Emotional Trash. The difference on Wig Out is Malkmus’ vocals and lyrics. Quirky wordplay coupled with a So-Cal slacker delivery has always been his signature, but on this album it takes center stage in a way that Malkmus has only teased with since Pig Lib.

That being said, it is also no coincidence that most of the songs have more stripped down arrangements than Malkmus has been doing on his past couple of records. This gives the album a loose and live sounding feel. “The Janitor Revealed”, “Shibboleth”, “J Smoov”, and “Scattegories” all sound like they could have maybe come off Brighten the Corners or Wowee Zowee. The rest of the album doesn’t sound as much like Pavement as those tracks do, but it has a similar fun energy and that carries it throughout.

AllMusic gave this album 4.5 stars, the same rating it gave for Malkmus’ previous two albums. Personally, I like Wig Out much more than those albums, and I think that most Pavement-first fans will agree. That being said, Wig Out is far from a rehash. It sounds fresh and is full of surprises. My favorite track: “Lariat” was the first single and is pretty much the epitome of everything there is to like about Stephen Malkmus.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks are playing in Philadelphia on 3/1 at the TLA. That date is also my birthday, so feel free to meet me there and buy me a drink. 

My Hall of Fame Ballot

I don’t have a Hall of Fame ballot, but if I did, I’d vote for these 10 players:

1. Craig Biggio: Should’ve been elected last year, but only received 68 of the 75 percent necessary. I guess the knock on him is that he never cracked the top 3 in MVP voting.  Perhaps he wasn’t ever the best player in the league at one time, but his standing on other leader boards speak from themselves. He won 4 Gold Gloves between 2B and CF, as well as a Silver Slugger award as a catcher, a position he only moved from in an effort to stay healthy.

2. Mike Piazza: Belle & Sebastian’s favorite player, and probably the best offensive catcher ever. He also owns a Honda dealership in Langhorne, which more people would probably buy from if he was the guy who took you out on the test drives. His memoir and recent media rounds were more than a little Kenny Poweresque, so maybe it’s better for him for stay out of the public eye, at least until his elected into the HOF in a couple of years.

3. Greg Maddux: The BBWAA members who did not vote for Maddux should sell their vote to Deadspin.

4. Barry Bonds: Barry Bonds did steroids and had a good time doing so. That doesn’t change the fact that he was one the most gifted players ever. His numbers are exaggerated by his use of PEDs, but if we are able to accept that the whole league’s numbers were exaggerated by the Steroid Era, then Bonds’ 7 MVP awards are a more relative measure of his greatness.

But stacking him against the greatest of all time is fun too… If he wasn’t prematurely rejected from the game after the 2007 season, he’d certainly top Babe Ruth as all-time leader in career WAR.

5. Roger Clemens:  Pretty much anything negative people to say about Bonds, they’ll say about Clemens too. But as Bonds is the greatest offensive talent of many generations, Clemens is a pitcher of equal greatness. Clemens won as many Cy Young awards as Bonds won MVPs, both should be in the Hall of Fame.

6. Rafael Palmeiro: Congress was once the paradigm of truth and integrity in this country, until Palmeiro lied to it and ruined baseball forever… A lot of voters think this way, and that is why he’ll probably fall off the ballot this year. I on the other hand, think that he had a no doubt HOF career and would vote for him if I had the chance.

7. Frank Thomas: Statistically very similar to Jeff Bagwell, who I originally had listed here. Both players deserve to be in the HOF, but I’d vote for Thomas first giving him additional points for playing in the more competitive AL of the era.

8. Mike Mussina: Never won a Cy Young, but had an incredibly long stretch of years where him came close, while playing in the toughest division of the era.

9. Curt Schilling: Feels like Schilling in the main reason that the Phillies were able to win any games from 1994-2000. Like Mussina, he never won a Cy Young (finished 2^nd three times,) but had a incredibly long peak. He of course is most memorable for his post seasons, where he may be considered as the best playoff starting pitcher ever

10. Tom Glavine: Because winning 300 games still has to count for something, right?

My friend Marc C wrote an excellent and extensive breakdown of the 2014 HOF ballot which I highly recommend checking out here: Baseball Bullsh

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Thanks again for reading. I’m hoping to write a little bit about some books I’ve recently read sometime soon, so please check back for that. Bye, thanks for stopping by.