In the Mix

"A-Rod, Zito, Posada, Tejada, Johan, Manny, Maddox, Mussina," Steve Wynn calls out on "Gratitude (For Curt Flood)," a song about the guy pictured above. "You call that gratitude?"

For the uninitiated, Flood is the late St. Lous Cardinals centerfielder who changed sports history and ultimately helped make a lot of guys - like the multi-millioniare ballplayers Wynn names in song - really rich, by challenging baseball's reserve clause after the 1969 season. (His motivation? He didn't want to be traded to the Phillies.) And Wynn is the former leader of L.A. Paisley Undergound standouts the Dream Syndicate, who's been carrying on a semi-popular career as a superb rock songwriter for over two decades.

Like Flood - and unlike his namesake casino owner - Wynn has never been renumerated to a degree commensurate with his talents, but that doesn't stop him from producing excellent work at regular clip. He's got a hand in two new albums. One is his own new Crossing Dragon Bridge, which was recorded in Slovenia with Chris Eckman of The Walkabouts, and marries Wynn's typical forceful, intelligent writing with lush, at times delicate backdrops.

And the other is The Basball Project: Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails, which comes out July 8 on Yep Roc. It's a collaboration with Scott McCaughey (of the minus 5, Young Fresh Fellows and R.E.M.'s road band) and includes assistance from R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and Linda Pitmon of Wynn's Miracle 3 (pictured above). It's a garage rock hoot, full-up with four-baggers like "Broken Man" (a McCaughey-sung tale of a steroid-ruined sultan of swat) and "The Death of Big Ed Delahanty," about the hard-drinking dead-ball era 19th century Phillies first baseman with a lifetime .346 batting average who died when he was swept over Niagra Falls in 1903.

Wynn is upstairs at the World Cafe Live on Saturday night. The video for Crossing Dragon Bridge's "Manhattan Fault Line" is here.