Baseball

Who needs a transistor radio when we've got everything you'll ever need to accompany the Boys of Summer, as the pop flies with more hits than Barry Bonds and Pete Rose put together? Seems only right to start our playlist the same way a game does — with our national anthem. "The Star-Spangled Banner" is given a tasteful — and, thankfully, instrumental, given how often the vocal is mangled — reading by the Big League Orchestra, originally featured in Ken Burns' Emmy®-winning baseball documentary. Always a seventh-inning-stretch favorite (in fierce competition with grabbing a couple of hot dogs) is the century-old "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," heard here in big-band style from the Andrews Sisters (featuring Dan Dailey). And Steam's 1969 poppy one-hit wonder, "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye," morphs into baseball's ultimate trash-talkin' taunt.

In Next Steps, baseball proves itself to be not just America's favorite sport, but also American music's, sliding between genres like a base runner trying to duck a catcher's tag.

Like baseball teams themselves, baseball songs can be found all over the map. Lifelong Yankees fan Paul Simon takes the sport to a dark place — both figuratively and literally — in "Night Game," an elegy to a fictional pitcher who gets his Big Strikeout at the bottom of the eighth. Alabama's "The Cheap Seats," a small-town, Skoal-dippin', countrified rave up, celebrates the virtues of brews and brats and good times out by the right field wall. And just in case you thought alt-rockers had abandoned the sport for X Games, check out Belle & Sebastian's "Piazza, New York Catcher," a twee stream-of-consciousness set against the spare backdrop of solo acoustic guitar. (How clever are they? The lyric "The statue's crying too and well he may" is a sly reference to the Willie Mays statue that adorns San Francisco's AT&T Park.)

In Deep Cuts, we'll hear some shout-outs to a couple of baseball's most beloved players . . . and one of its biggest tragedies.

Baseball lore isn't just about the game; it's also about the people who play it. And three of its legends join the likes of Joltin' Joe DiMaggio and Catfish Hunter, immortalized forever in song. Joe Pernice & Jose Ayerve go all new wave dance-y — complete with go-go-girl chorus — on Manny Ramirez in "Moonshot Manny" from the Farrelly Brothers' film Fever Pitch, based on Nick Hornby's novel. Jerry Jeff Walker twangs out a career-spanning play-by-play in "Nolan Ryan (He's a Hero to Us All)," reeling off stats on the Hall of Fame strikeout king like a 12-year-old with posters tacked up to his bedroom wall. And "Gratitude (For Curt Flood)" by the Baseball Project rocks a minor-key remembrance for the major-league star who took his beef against baseball's reserve clause all the way to the Supreme Court — and lost. Four years after Flood sacrificed his career, the clause was finally dismantled; every high-bucks big-leaguer — in every sport — is in his debt.

Batter up! It just wouldn't be summer without the perfect soundtrack for America's national pastime, and we've got an All-Star lineup of power hitters that'll get you in the groove for extra innings of listening satisfaction. American League or National, righty or southpaw, Gold Glove or Silver Slugger, we'll deliver your favorite ballpark ballads and home-run hits right over the plate . . . well, over the Net, anyway. From baseball legends like Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle, hard-rockin' superstars like Springsteen and Queen, country cousins like Alabama and Steve Goodman, even comedians like George Carlin and William Hung, we've covered every possible base. So let's hear it for the red, white, and blue — and by that we mean Reds, White Sox, and Blue Jays — as we slide into another record-breaking season with all the sounds you'll ever need to transform your iPod into a pocket-sized field of dreams. Play ball!