Pick up Thrill Seekers, the latest LP from Brooklyn indie rock band Petit League, and you might guess this is a band for baseball fans. Besides the charming French name “Little League,” the record’s cover features a silhouette of a crowd of people competing on top of an M subway train passing over a public stadium in New York. Flip the record over and check the tracklist and you’ll find the fourth cut, “Metz,” sung by lead singer and songwriter Lorenzo Cook.When the Mets don’t win and it hurts like sin / With tanned skin, try again / I’m devastated.. ”
The band, which Cooke formed nearly 10 years ago while attending Syracuse University, initially chose the name “Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez,” but it sounded too similar to another group in the area and didn’t fit into Cooke’s vision. It turned out that it was not a perfect fit. band. Cooke, who had played more subdued indie pop in the past, drew inspiration from garage rock and punk artists such as Ty Segal, The Strokes, and FIDLAR. Playing in a group of guys who wore cut-off short pants and long sleeve T-shirts, he wanted a name that reflected both the group’s retro Americana look and sound.
“I liked the idea of a band of Sandlot kids,” Cook said. “We always wore tattered T-shirts and cut-off jean shorts and no socks. You know, we were watching.”
Thus Petit League was born, complete with not only a name but a set of baseball cards for each member of the group.
“I was into design, but I kept going back to vintage baseball stuff, like old logos and baseball cards,” Cook said. “I was really interested in the look of it, and even before I saw the name, I was like, ‘I want to do something with this card.'” So I made baseball cards for everyone, and I thought, “Oh, we should do this as a band.”
Although he was concerned about bands being categorized too quickly, he also recognized the importance of branding. This is something every professional sports team knows all too well.
“The first shirt we made was the Grim Reaper on an old Topps card from 1975,” Cook recalls. “People really loved it. This was the intersection of music and sports that people were starting to gravitate toward at the time. Taking little elements of New York baseball and having that kind of weird, underground element. “I think it’s very easy to incorporate what’s going on here – things like the punk scene – and all of a sudden you have this iconography of coolness that people want to put on their bags.” A beautiful design will be created.”
The most popular of those bags may be the band’s recent design, a mashup of Matisse’s classic “La Danse” and a baseball jersey.
“I went to the beach one day and picked it up,” Cook said. “I saw people’s eyes fall on the logo and the dancing skeletons on the baseball uniforms. It’s a Matisse painting, so they recognized it and looked down and saw the name. They probably don’t know the band. But then I got home and said, “What was that bag?” So I looked up the name and said, “Oh, this is a band.” ”
But Mr. Cook’s involvement with baseball goes beyond box scores, fantasy drafts, and an obsessively organized collection of baseball cards. Rather, it explores his very identity as an American who grew up overseas.
Mr. Cook was born in Rome to American parents (his mother is from Ohio, his father from Massachusetts) and spent most of his youth there after his family emigrated to work for NATO at the beginning of the Iraq War. I lived in Brussels, Belgium. How does someone who grew up in Europe and attends an international school relate to their American heritage? American sports, especially baseball, provided that connection.
“The whole thing about baseball started with a Little League team there,” Cook said. “The number of Americans living in Brussels is much smaller now than there was then, but there is a little league in full swing for kids from the United States, so I was integrated into it from an early age. It wasn’t just baseball, they were as well.” There were things like soccer and basketball leagues, but the baseball league was cool. Because you’ll get an authentic team hat. [uniforms]. It will be much cooler than something like a crappy, cheap basketball jersey with no logo. ”
Perhaps shockingly, Cook grew up playing against future major leaguer Ryan Barr in ballparks in Europe.
“He was playing in the same league, even though he was pitching. [incredibly] “When we were kids, I was on a team with him, even though I was a pretty good pitcher,” Cook said with a laugh. And he was, like, ridiculous. ”
Besides playing games on the field with fellow expatriates, his love for American sports stems from glimpses on the internet, video games like the NBA2K series, and summers when baseball ruled everything. It came from going back to America every year.
Returning to New England, where his father, an avid Red Sox fan, was from and where his mother’s family now resides, he was completely indoctrinated into Red Sox Nation for several weeks each year. Every night, you could hear the crackle on the radio and the sounds of the game on the television — and then came the magical 2004 season, when the Red Sox finally broke the Bambino curse.
“I remember waking up that morning in 2004 when they won.” [the World Series]” Cook said.[My dad] I was very happy. I was really young so I don’t have any background on all of that, but I knew he was excited, so I was excited too. I think that’s why I really connected with it. Then my older cousins, my mom’s family, would play the game every night and we would all do it. When I got the Red Sox hat, suddenly a strange connection was created between my father’s family and my mother’s family. Like Red Sox fans and now Guardians fans, I felt like that was my identity.
Playing in a rock band may not seem as far removed from American sports as it is growing up across the Atlantic, but that wasn’t necessarily true. In recent years, musicians have revealed their love for the sport; Metro Boomin’s love for the Cardinals PUP’s Steve Sladkowski rocking Blue Jays and Raptors gear on stage, Drake welcoming every successful team under the sun — the art kids vs. jocks battle that once dominated ballparks and school cafeterias. . The collapse of this debate allowed Petit League (which had temporarily distanced itself from baseball-themed artwork to avoid stereotyping) to re-embrace baseball traditions.
“There’s a false separation of, ‘This is art, this is sport,'” Cook said. “I actually think we’re living in a really good time right now where they’re much closer together than ever before, because a lot of our favorite musicians are huge sports fans. So definitely be on the court. Braves pitchers, first and foremost Spencer Strider, are big Strokes fans. The Strokes have a Mets song.”
Mr. Cook enjoys the communal celebration of sports, and on hot summer days he regularly finds himself relaxing to the soft sounds of baseball games, and enjoys the iconic logos and looks of sports design. It always caught his eye. His closet is full of vintage caps and T-shirts, and he’s always scouring eBay for the next bargain. He dreams of one day collaborating with someone like Ebbets Field Flannels.
“If I had infinite money, I’d make nice jerseys,” Cook joked.
He hopes the worlds of music and sports will continue to merge, and someday host events like Jazz Night at Citi Field, while accommodating niche interests in larger stadiums, as sometimes seen at minor league games in Connie. I want to see things. island. Having grown up abroad, he knows how important it is for people to embrace their homeland, whether it’s sports for his team or his band.
“So much of the music is also about identity and where you’re from. The Replacements are from Minnesota, and it means as much to people from Minnesota as the Twins do,” Cook said. “If you’re passionate about where you come from and you feel represented, that can happen in music, it can happen in sports, and that’s great. Why would anyone deny that or intentionally I don’t know if you’re trying to make fun of it. If you’re interested in sports, that’s great. There are people who want to talk to you. If you’re interested in music, that’s a different story. If you’re interested in music, that’s a different story. If you like both, we have everything.”
Petite League’s latest release, Suburban Speed Demons EP, is available now. The band will then go on tour next month. The dates are as follows.
02/17 Boston, MA – Lockwood Music Hall
03/07 New York, NY – New Colossus Festival
03/08 Ithaca, NY – Deep Dive
03/09 Washington DC – Pie Shop
03/10 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Milky
04/04 San Francisco – Kilowatt Bar
04/06 Los Angeles – MakeOutMusic