Modern Baseball

Modern Baseball were an American emo and indie rock band formed in Maryland by Jake Ewald and Brendan Lukens, who later moved to Philadelphia to attend Drexel University, where drummer Sean Huber and bassist Ian Farmer completed the lineup. The band's name was inspired by a book from Ewald's childhood home. Their music combined confessional, often self-deprecating lyrics with catchy, guitar-driven arrangements, becoming a touchstone of the mid-2010s emo revival that grew out of Philadelphia's DIY scene.

Unusually for a band of their size, Modern Baseball had no single primary songwriter: Ewald and Lukens split writing duties roughly evenly, each singing his own compositions, which gave the band's records a dual perspective and distinct emotional range. After their debut «Sports», they released «You're Gonna Miss It All» in 2014 and «Holy Ghost» in 2016, with the latter reflecting on Lukens's mental health struggles and addiction recovery, a candor that resonated widely with fans and helped normalize conversations about mental health within the punk and emo community.

The band toured extensively with acts like Knuckle Puck, Crying, Somos and Foxing before eventually going on indefinite hiatus, leaving behind a catalog widely regarded as influential within the 2010s emo revival.