Beyond the Sticky Stuff-- Part 1: Baseball and Spirituals

From the March 2015 Our State magazine, North Carolina by Andrew Kenney.

BATTER UP:  Baseball has pitch and tar alike.  Some batters think tar helps hit a pitch and apply pine tar, which is more viscous than pine pitch, on their bat to improve grip.

Some pitchers use it on their hands, too (retired major league pitcher Gaylord Perry, a Williamston, N.C., native, is said to have kept some under his cap, but that is not against the rules).

SHAPES FOR SINGING:  Up among the pines of Haywood County, they are focused on a different sort of pitch: the musical kind.

Lake Junalaska is the site of one of the largest annual gatherings of shape-note singers --  a variety of white spiritual written so that shapes replace the heads of musical notes, making it easier to read the scale.

--Cooter