It’s that dreaded time of the summer; the All-Star game is over, and major league baseball is taking a break from their schedule until tomorrow. As if it wasn’t already bad enough that there aren’t a full slate of games on at the beginning of the week, there is nothing now.
A lost art in the information age today is looking at the box scores from games the night before. With the internet, it’s easy to pull up a box score for any team, at any time you like. However, the days of grabbing the morning paper and flipping through the box scores with a cup of coffee and breakfast are long gone.
The below song, aptly titled, “Box Scores,” captures the thoughts and feelings we have when we take a look at how our favorite team from the night before. The song is written by Don Rosler and Jay Ward, performed and produced by Jay Ward (from Rosler’s upcoming baseball CD, Catch, a slice of life and narrative about the game we all love).
I wanted to bring this song forward for the entire MMO community to listen and share. I had the opportunity to chat with both Don and Jay about the song and their background. Don is a big Mets fan, while Jay roots for the Yanks. Who knew Mets and Yankees fans could get along? You can listen to the song below, followed by their thoughts, along with links to their personal websites. They do some great work.
You can listen to the song below, and get a free download, as well. All you need to hand out is an email address and zip code. Enjoy!
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Don Rosler:
At first, I wasn’t quite sure why the topic of the daily ritual of reading newspaper box scores might be song worthy. It’s not written about any players or game dramatics, and it’s not any kind of rally cry or sing-a-long. It wasn’t until after Jay and I finished the song, that I realized fans could find such dramatics around the subject. For example, sportswriter Earl Wilson’s great words: “My idea of courage is the guy who has $500,000 tied up in the stock market and turns to the box scores first!”
Then ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian wrote in his bittersweet article, Sad End to a Man’s Quest for Knowledge: “The box scores start every day for me because there’s always a chance you’ll see a pitching or batting line that you’ve never seen before, and might never see again….” Kurkjian also, up until 2010 wrote he would “… clip every box score of every baseball game from the nearest newspaper and tape each one into a spiral notebook, a daily task that I’ve estimated, at roughly 15 minutes per day, has cost me 40 days of my truly pathetic life.”
To learn more about Don, his music, and his upcoming baseball-themed album, please visit his website: https://donrosler.com.
Jay Ward:
The idea of doing a song about box scores was all Don, as well as the lyrics. My contribution to the story line was the dog and coffee intro, and the occasional yet magnificent suggestion about this or that word. We had done an earlier demo of the tune, and the decision was made to do a new version incorporating Don’s suggestion that the chorus “open up” more than it had. Good call, DBoy.
I grew up in a Yankee household and have never wavered, but my real connection to baseball was Little League through Pony League. Summer meant playing baseball and I loved it. The well used bat, the grass stained ball, the sun beating down on a dusty infield. I was a Tiger, a Giant, a White Sox and a something else (maybe an Oriole?) before I was done, and it left me with a deep love of the game.
To learn more about Jay and his music, please visit his website: https://dogbrainmusic.com.
(Artwork courtesy of Judy Palmero)
