Bring on baseball, and with it the perfect summer soundtrack

Baseball season is almost here again, and even for someone who still cheers rabidly for the perpetually suffering (and almost all deserved, unfortunately) Baltimore Orioles, it's the best reason all year of every single year to celebrate.

And what could make the 2010 baseball season even better than it's sure to be? How about a month-by-month soundtrack updating the state of the season from some of alt-rock's (or whatever the hell you want to call it) best singer/songwriters.

In 2007, appropriately enough at a communal stadium urinal, fuzz guitar man extraordinaire Steve Wynn (if I had to pick just one, probably my favorite rocker around) and Young Fresh Fellows/Minus 5 vet Scott McCaughey met, and from that soon was born, thankfully, the Baseball Project.

So, what in the world is that? Well, it's just two really talented dudes, along with longtime Wynn drummer Linda Pitmon, getting together to write and perform really fun, totally fuzzed out odes to the world's greatest sport (with all apologies to the runner-up, soccer.) In July of 2008 they put out their first album, "Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Qualls," which I just bought this morning (after the head's up from mi hermano, who luckily has an actual good team, the Twinnies, to cheer for along with the O's.) It's just full of all kinds of fun songs about baseball, including odes to Curt Flood,Satchel Paige, Sandy Koufax and others, including a great Spanish ditty about Fernando, and even tracks called "Ted F***ing Williams" and "The Yankee Flipper."

If you've never heard of Steve Wynn, I really probably can't do justice to how great he is in writing, so why not listen to a bit of the Baseball Project yourself? The group has just released the first of its monthly ditties for this season, appropriately enough titled "All Future and No Past." In the perfect spirit of eternal hope that greets each new season, it's a tribute to the league's most long-suffering teams, so the Pirates, Royals and, of course, Orioles all get prominent play. I'm not sure they're right that "The Orioles' recent woes are deceiving," but it's a new season, and that means that for one day at least, the Orioles will be in first place in the American League East by sheer force of alphabetical order.

Click the widget below to listen to "All Future and No Past," and keep a look out on ESPN's The Life for the tracks to come once a month throughout this season (and yes, I can almost guarantee I'll post them all here, too.) Enjoy, have a great rest of the weekend, and unless you somehow cheer for the Red Sox or Yankees, keep hope alive!