“Piazza, New York Catcher” by Belle & Sebastian

"Piazza, New York Catcher" showed up on Belle & Sebastian's 2003 album Dear Catastrophe Waitress, a slice of baroque pop that works like a love letter tucked inside a baseball card. The title borrows the name of Mike Piazza, then catching for the New York Mets, a player Stuart Murdoch found himself drawn to after seeing him at Shea Stadium, and the song touches on the rumors about Piazza's sexuality. Underneath all that, it's Murdoch's own story of courting his future wife in San Francisco.

The details are sharp enough to set off some detective work: FanGraphs writer Carson Cistulli went hunting for the actual Mets-Giants game it describes, down to Piazza's .318 average, and decided it most likely wasn't one particular game at all. In 2007 the song landed on the soundtrack of Juno.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.