Pitchfork

What is it with indie rock and baseball? White Sox and Cubs hats abound among Chicagoland gig-goers, Insound harbors a borderline neurotic obsession with "Steady" Eddie Murray, and right at this very moment the P-fork brass are agonizing over Fantasy League picks. I mean, bats and guitars are similarly phallic and all, but so are badminton racquets. So what is it? Maybe we all evolved from feverishly collecting Topps and Donruss to feverishly collecting Sub Pop and Matador?

In any case, our baseball lives and our indie rock lives are about to collide in a big way, as 2K Sports unleashes Major League Baseball 2K6 this April. In addition to your typical mind-incinerating graphics, the multi-platform video game features in-game music courtesy of upstanding indie faves like Interpol, Pavement, Guided by Voices, Mogwai, and Belle and Sebastian.

That's a hearty sampling of Matador Records fare, although a few non-Matty acts made the cut as well. Here's a complete list of the artists getting their MLB on: Bear Vs Shark, Belle and Sebastian, Cornelius, DJ Spooky, Early Man, Green Carnation, Guided By Voices, Interpol, Mogwai, Pavement, Preston School of Industry, Stephen Malkmus, Pretty Girls Make Graves, the Double, the Fall of Troy, and Yo La Tengo.

According to Matador, the label simply licensed the songs to 2K after securing artist permission, so don't expect any new tunes or elaborate soundtrack cross-promotions. Also don't expect the ridiculously apropos Belle and Sebastian song "Piazza, New York Catcher", as that little ditty appears 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress, put out by Rough Trade and not Matador. Bummer, dudes.