But he also had this passion for sports in general and baseball in particular. Music and baseball seemed to be an odd couple. The two roads didn't intersect much, and when they did you were left with some crap song like, "Take Me Out To The Ballgame."

"Actually, there's a bunch of us," he said. "When this [Baseball Project] record came out, I realized how many of us were out there. The indie rock scene and baseball especially seem to go together. I was trying to think why that is. I guess because it's more of the cerebral sport, the geek sport. Baseball fans are like record collectors. They know every batting average for the Detroit Tigers in 1971, just like they know all of the B-sides. In this band, Scott trumps me."

It followed that Wynn and McCaughey melded their baseball geekiness and musical skills last year, and collaborated on The Baseball Project's debut album, Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails. (For the uninitiated, those are old-school baseball terms. A frozen rope is a line drive; a dying quail is a bloop fly ball that falls in front of the outfielder. But it sounds a lot more creative than calling an album Line Drives and Fly Balls.)

The CD was such a hit that Wynn, McCaughey, Buck and Pitmon performed one of its top tracks, "Past Time," on the David Letterman show. When I talked to Steve last year for an AJC story about the project, he cracked: "It's pretty funny. I've been making records for 25 years. But it took me going back to sports writing to get on the Letterman show."

Which, of course, puts him ahead of me.

Prior to this, the closest he had come to marrying his loves for music and baseball was singing the national anthem before a Minnesota Twins game in 1992. "A tough song," he said. "Plus, there I was on the pitcher's mound, and I'm staring straight at Cal Ripken. He was in front of me and Kirby Puckett was behind me."

Still a fan.

The Baseball Project is a compilation of baseball songs, but well north of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame," and, yes, even, "Centerfield." They are songs that tell rich stories, about historical figures like Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood. Wynn even sings one song, "Fernando Valenzuela," in Spanish, juxtaposing the hero worship in L.A. of the former Dodgers pitcher with the forced move of thousands of Hispanics in Chavez Ravine two decades earlier to make room for Dodger Stadium.

Before I talked to him again recently, I realized I had never asked him what finally led him away from sports writing and into music.

"Punk rock came along at the right time and swept me off my feet," he said. "I was always playing guitar and I was still a huge music fan and writing record reviews. In the mid-70s things exploded. But I knew even if I went to the Forum to see a band like Yes or Zeppelin or Queen or Springsteen, I could appreciate them but I knew I could never be them one day. But when punk came around, I was excited. It was easy to imagine myself being like them."

The Velvet Underground and The Modern Lovers were major influences. He connected with the generally "unknown and obscure bands" – The Stooges, Gun Club, The Only Ones, who seem to have a long shelf life. "We're like a secret society of people," he joked.

He liked the big punk bands at the time, The Ramones and The Sex Pistols. But he felt a particular connection with Talking Heads.

"They were the group I related to more than anybody else," he said. "They were a little nerdy, cerebral. They wrote smart songs. They sort of demystified the whole thing. The Ramones and The Sex Pistols were different from you. Talking Heads looked like they could be the guy you run into at the coffee shop."

Final Wynn story: For two months in 1984, The Dream Syndicate traveled with and opened for R.E.M. One day, Wynn said. "Peter [Buck] gets a call from the Athens club, the Uptown, asking if we'd play a bunch of covers there. I think we played 'Ghostbusters' three times, which tells you where we were at."

Wynn's pay for this? Drinks, plus a $25 voucher for a used clothing store up the street.

"So I got a jacket," Wynn said. "I wore that jacket on the David Letterman show. It was a little nod to Peter. I have to say that I'm somewhat proud it still fits after 28 years of road food."

Same guy.

Jeff Schultz is a sports columnist and blogger for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ajc.com.