"Who's going to want to hear a song about baseball?"

Singer-songwriter Chuck Brodsky is playing two gigs this week — the first at Coalesce Bookstore in Morro Bay on Friday, and another on Saturday night at Castoro Cellars on Highway 46 West. It’s his first visit to SLO County.

Brodsky’s tunes have been covered by Kathy Mattea, David Wilcox, Sara Hickman, Chuck Pyle and others. Brodsky released his critically acclaimed debut album, “A Fingerpainter's Murals,” in 1995.

“Chuck Brodsky is the grandson of Dylan and the son of John Prine,” writes Moshe Benarroch in a review for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange. “He is a storyteller, but if you are looking for a sensitive confessional singer-songwriter you better look elsewhere. Nowhere on his CDs will you find anything personal in his songs.

“You will find stories of all kinds of people though, stories of Jews on Christmas, stories of baseball and stories of basketball.”

‘Radio’ finds a fan
I became a fan when I stumbled across a a CD titled "Radio." (That song would be used in the 2003 movie of the same name starring Ed Harris and Cuba Gooding Jr.) The disc also had a Christmas tune and a baseball tune on the CD — two genres of music I collect.



During the summer of 2003, I was working on a story about baseball music.

A new compilation had been released just in time for the baseball playoffs. Brodsky had a track on “Diamond Cuts: Top of the Sixth.” I later learned he had an entire CD devoted to baseball, which prompted Tim Wiles, director of research at the Baseball Hall of Fame, to describe him as “baseball’s troubadour poet laureate.”

Like Norman Rockwell
“Chuck’s an amazing guy,” Wiles told me in a phone interview that summer.

"He's very talented. Whenever I talk about Chuck to people I say, 'Don’t forget to check out Chuck’s nonbaseball music because much of it is tremendous.' He’s a gifted melodist and lyricist and performer, singer.”

Wiles compared the Asheville, N.C., singer to American illustrator Norman Rockwell, who did several well-received baseball-themed works over the years.

"I think that is an apt comparison because I can’t think of another artist — besides those two — who ranges very broadly across subject matter in their medium but returns that often to the same theme," Wiles said.

A 'Giant' fan
Another fan is Tim Flannery, who was a player, coach and broadcaster for the San Diego Padres for nearly a quarter century.

Flannery is currently the third-base coach for the San Francisco Giants. He's also a singer-songwriter, who has released eight CDs and performed with Jimmy Buffett, Willie Nelson, Jackson Browne and Brodsky.

“Chuck is an icon on all the folk circuits, some of the great folk festivals around the country and even parts of the world,” Flannery said in a phone interview from his home in Encinitas. “He actually goes and sings baseball songs. He’s an historian of the game and studies it.”

Brodsky told me he never intended to become the guy known for baseball music. It just ended up that way.

Batter up
"The first song was 'Lefty.' I wrote that somewhere around 1990 or 1991," Brodsky told me in a 2003 interview. "I was a little shy about playing it for anybody. It's about sports. I thought that's probably trite to most people. Who's going to want to hear a song about baseball?"

He added: "I played it at the Kernville folk festival around a campfire for a friend of mine. I was just amazed that a serious songwriter — a very accomplished songwriter — was really taken by the song. I started to play it more often and got kind of the same reaction from everybody, so it just became part of my repertoire."

Then he got another idea for a song. And another. And another.

"People started to refer to me as a guy who writes baseball songs when I only had two," he said. "I thought this was kind of fun. What if I had three or four? And I think by the time I did have three or four it became clear that, hey, I could really do this (produce a CD of original baseball tunes), and this is something that hasn’t been done by anybody."

The quest became more fun. He contacted the Hall of Fame for help researching the stories that inspired his songs.

The result was 2002's "The Baseball Ballads," a self-produced 10-track disc. Tunes range from the true story of the player shot in the film “The Natural,” to a salute to Max Patkin, baseball’s clown prince (who had a cameo in the film “Bull Durham”).

There are also songs about Fred Merkle, whose bonehead move made “"to Merkle" a verb; Moe Berg, the Ivy League catcher with 15 pro years who was an OSS spy during World War II; and Dock Ellis' no-hitter against the Padres while high on LSD during the 1970 season.

The Ellis tune is Flannery's favorite.

"That's a true story," he said. "I know people who were there that day. (Chuck) got it right on. Dock Ellis thought it was an off day."

Baseball is a big part of Brodsky’s life and his music, but the bulk of the more than 70 songs on seven CDs are less about sports and more about odd and interesting characters. Some just happen to wear ball caps and have their names sewn on the backs of their shirts.

Odd characters
Baseball as a subject is a challenge for a songwriter, Brodsky said.

“For one thing, it’s very colorful as subject matter,” he said. “There’s been some great characters in the game. And I’m interested in characters and portraying them.

"Another reason," Brodsky said, "is that it’s about as pure a form of Americana as there is. I wasn’t even thinking in those terms when I first started to write these songs, but it is, I’ve come to realize.

He added, "It seemed like a way I might be able to reach my dad. Like any other father-son relationship we had a period of time when things got a little strained. My dad’s always been really into baseball. It seemed like a way to bridge the gap a little bit and it turned out to be the case.”

So over the years Brodsky's fans have come to expect a baseball tune or two during the 120 to 130 gigs he plays each year.

“What I’ve learned ... is a lot of people tend to look at these more as story songs first about interesting characters that happen to be from the world of baseball,” he said. “When I think about it in those terms I really do agree because I write a lot of story songs in that vain.

“My baseball songs really aren’t that different from the other true, story songs I’ve written. They take the same kind of research, the same process for writing the song. They’re very similar.”

— Jay Thompson

• • •

If you go ...
Singer-songwriter Chuck Brodsky will perform at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 25, at Coalesce Bookstore, 845 Main St. in Morro Bay, and at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 26, at Castoro Cellars, 1315 N. Bethel Road west of Paso Robles.
Tickets for each show are $15.
For details visit www.slofolks.org.

Check out two songs by baseball troubadour Chuck Brodsky.

Here's "Lefty":



Here's "Radio," from the 2003 film of the same name: