On a balmy Brooklyn evening this past August, Seattle’s BOAT challenged their tour mates, Creeping Weeds, to a celebratory game of Wiffleball following the bands’ show at Union Hall. With fans rounding out the numbers on both sides, the four-inning contest commenced in a park a few blocks from the venue at 1:30 in the morning. It was BOAT’s first night in New York on their first national tour, and frontman D. Crane couldn’t have been happier. 

“BOAT got in a 0-1 hole,” Crane said, with characteristic enthusiasm for this and all BOAT-related activities. “Then our bats came alive in the second. [Drummer] J. Long hit a monster home run to right. We went up 3-1 and never looked back… 6-1 final.”

Sports—even the kind played with a yellow plastic bat—and indie rock might make for an odd couple, but Crane is a baseball fanatic. For BOAT’s new EP, Topps, Crane hand-drew a series of 26 cards featuring the likenesses of 1980s baseball stars. Each seven-inch vinyl EP contains five printed cards, and—to complete the nostalgia—a stick of bubblegum.

“I’m just a taller version of a goofy kid,” Crane said, explaining what inspired the EP’s unique packaging and baseball-themed title track. “[As a kid] I was totally obsessed by little stuff like pretending I was on the New York Mets, organizing baseball cards in the living room, soda, action figures, and cartoons. As an adult, it’s like you are supposed to give that up. I long to feel that joy, excitement, and innocence of being a kid.”

With a handful of self-released material to its credit, and three releases on Portland indie label Magic Marker Records, BOAT isn’t exactly a rookie band. But the same sense of wholesome, oddball fun evident in Topps runs through all of BOAT’s back catalog. The band’s quirky, basement-born pop repertoire includes songs about ninja action figures, reptiles, awkward family vacations, and the failings of the Chicago public school system. But for someone so obsessed with the silly, Crane’s life is rather adult.

It might be a function of Crane’s personality—he’s a baby-faced guy with a big smile whose major vice is his gratuitous consumption of Diet Coke—or the fact that, years after grunge, “rock star” is still somewhat of a slur in Seattle, but contrary to the hedonistic rock star stereotype, stability, structure, and a dose of healthy escapism have been the gateway to BOAT’s success. Crane has priorities, and while BOAT is one of them, other things definitely come first.

“I would love to play more shows and travel, but I think I would have a hard time if my life depended on the music. I don’t think it would be healthy for me, the music, or my wife,” Crane says.

At 29 years old, Crane is happily married, has a mortgage on a house in Tacoma, and a fulfilling job teaching middle school. He says that teaching keeps him a “perpetual 12 year old” in terms of how he relates to the world, and that his wife, herself a drummer, whom he affectionately refers to as “a silly lady,” is his “toughest critic.” Yet, the challenges of managing life at work, at home, and in the band, positively affect Crane’s creative output.

“It helps me take my creative time seriously,” Crane says. “Juggling it all is pretty exciting. The stress creates magic for me.”

Indeed, stress was at the genesis of BOAT. After an ill-fated year spent teaching seventh grade in inner city Chicago, a burnt, deflated Crane returned to Seattle and poured his creative energy into a self-recorded project called Comic Book Rock. With the encouragement of family and friends, Crane formed a band and began playing shows as BOAT.