Empty: Empty Baseball Park

Whiskeytown: Empty Baseball Park
[purchase] 

When I suggested the Empty theme, it was prompted by watching sports in empty stadiums, and honestly, I had forgotten about this song. If you have read my posts here and elsewhere, you know that I’m a sports fan, mostly New York teams (Mets, who I have written about often, Giants, Knicks, Red Bulls, Sky Blue), plus Arsenal and Princeton sports, the US Women’s and Men’s National Soccer Team, and the Olympics, World Cup, etc. 

As the pandemic closed things down, sports were an early casualty, so that being stuck at home wasn’t tempered by the chance to watch games on TV. Slowly, though, games started to return, beginning with the German Bundesliga, then other European soccer leagues, all of which were played in empty stadiums. In the USA, because our response to the coronavirus was incompetently handled by our incompetent president, the first games that started were played in “bubbles,” where the players and staff were isolated from society to prevent infection. So, both the NWSL and MLS played, as did the NBA and NHL, at various central locations, with reasonable success. 

But summer means baseball, and for me, I love watching Mets games, even when the team is, as usual, not good, in part because it is a long standing tradition, but also because the Mets announcers, Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling are the best. (And if you don’t believe me, read this, subscription to The Athletic required, and well worth it.)  Baseball ultimately decided to have a truncated season, with some new on and off-field rules, with the games played in the teams’ parks, not a bubble (although they are moving to a bubble for the playoffs). But again, there were no fans allowed, although some teams allowed fans to buy plastic cutouts of themselves, their families, random other people, and even pets, to make it look like people were in the stands. And like most of the other empty stadium sports, fake crowd sounds were pumped into the stadium and/or played on the broadcasts to lend some degree of normality. 

I watched a good part of the Mets’ season, in the empty baseball parks, and despite the talent on the team, and the fact that the number of teams qualifying for the playoffs was increased, the team fell short—which was a disappointment, because most prognosticators had the team at least making the playoffs. But as the cliché goes, that’s why you play the games. 

So, when I started looking for songs for this theme, “Empty Baseball Park” jumped out at me. Whiskeytown was a band founded by Ryan Adams, and was known for excellent songwriting, inconsistent performances and internal turmoil. The band cycled through members, with only Adams and Caitlin Cary as consistent participants. The band released only three full albums, but their influence can be seen by the fact that there are at least two books about the band. 

Adams is one of those scarily talented songwriters and performers who has probably thrown away more great songs than most people write. He’s also known for being personally difficult, having issues with drugs and alcohol, and, most recently, being accused of sexual harassment. I’ve long appreciated Adams’ talent, and appreciated his part in helping Jason Isbell get sober and supporting his career, but it is hard to ignore the harassment issues, which he has denied, but which appear to have derailed his career, at least for now. And Isbell has distanced himself from his former friend. 

But, back to the song. “Empty Baseball Park” was originally recorded as a demo, along with other songs, called the “Baseball Park Sessions.” Many of the demos later appeared on Whiskeytown’s 1997 Strangers’ Almanac album, but not this one. In 1998, the band reissued its debut album, Faithless Street, and included a slew of bonus tracks, including “Empty Baseball Park.” Now, despite my long discussion of playing sports in front of empty seats, that’s not what the song is about. Rather, it is a reminiscence by Adams of growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and his aimless activities, including hanging out in an empty baseball park after the bars closed, with, reportedly, a young woman, and pretending that a game was going on. 

It’s not the best Whiskeytown song, but I’m glad that this theme reintroduced me to it.