Yard Work is proud to welcome back Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim Derogatis, who makes his first-ever trip to spring training to lurk in the bleachers with Trent Reznor, where he finds the Nine Inch Nails frontman sounding off about Josh Beckett, the Florida sun, and his brilliant new album “Ghosts I-IV”

When Trent Reznor was nineteen years old, he drove from Cleveland to Tuscon, Arizona during spring break. Although most college-age kids would rather head to Florida’s beaches for sun, sex, and sangria, the future Nine Inch Nails kingpin spent ten days coughing and sputtering in the dry Arizona air. It was the price he grudgingly paid in order to see the Cleveland Indians play during spring training. “Those days were the calm before the storm”, sighs Reznor, “before I was gnawed at by music industry venom and MTV bullshit.” Here in the eighth row of the third-base side bleachers of the Indians’ Winter Haven ballpark, he sits hunched over a mustard-drenched hot dog with his scorecard and program balanced precariously on his knee. He stops to take a monstrous bite and begins to chew, never once diverting his steely brown eyes from home plate.

By 1993, both the Indians and Reznor had moved on from their respective locales. The Indians moved to Chain of Lakes Park in Winter Haven, Florida, which remains their spring home up to the present day. Meanwhile, Reznor holed himself up in Sharon Tate’s California mansion and dredged through some of the most unsettling times of his personal life. However, his career — and the play of the Cleveland Indians — was approaching stratospheric levels of success. The irony of it all is certainly not lost on him. The Indians gave in to the lure of beaches and bikinis, but it was ten years too late for Reznor, who was too jaded to embrace the hedonism that eluded him during his youth. But 2008 is a very different time, and the monkey of self-consciousness that he carried on his back in the mid-90’s has melted away like a Creamsicle in the Florida sun. “At one time, I cared about whether it was cool to be here”, says Reznor, grabbing a fistful of nachos smothered in cheese and sour cream, “but these days I couldn’t give a fuck about that. In that spring when I was nineteen, I didn’t care about what was considered cool or about finding Daytona Beach pussy. I did whatever made me happy. After that, there were plenty of years that I wasted my mind and body, but now I’ve come full circle.”

In more ways than one, Trent Reznor is out of place in Chain of Lakes Park. His dour posture, dark mop of hair, and long black coat stand in stark contrast to the colorfully dressed families of four in their matching Bermuda shorts and sporty visors. But even in eighty degree weather, with the bases loaded for Travis Hafner in the bottom half of the sixth, Reznor barely breaks a sweat. This late-inning clutch-hitting situation is nothing compared to the stress of promoting a new album — and it’s the latter task that Reznor is avoiding by being in Florida to begin with. He’s been posting updates on his website direct from “Hong Kong” and other exotic locales, but in truth, Reznor has been here in Winter Haven the entire time, quite literally “out of place” from where his fans and even his own management believe him to be. At this very moment, he’s supposed to be booked for a TV interview in Japan and yet here he is, Trent Reznor, the leader of the industrial rock revolution that swarmed alternative radio for most of the 1990’s, stomping his heavy leather boots on the bleacher seats while “We Will Rock You” blares over the ballpark’s dilapidated loudspeakers.

The new Nine Inch Nails album is a monstrous 36-track effort entitled “Ghosts I-IV”. This two-hour instrumental tour de force captures NIN in all their unrestrained, snarling glory. Effortlessly careening from their most radical sonic explorations to their most radio-friendly currency and back again, it captures this constantly evolving band at their visceral, psychedelic best. It is hard not to notice that the album’s swirling, menacing aura is an appropriate mirror for the turbulent political climate in America. “Ghosts” provides an honest assessment of the times we are living, more so than any other album that is likely to be released in 2008. So what impact did recent world events have on the creative process, I inquire, and how will this impact NIN’s music heading forward?

“Actually, politics bores me these days”, states Reznor matter-of-factly, “people care more about seeing Britney Spears flashing her snatch from the window of a taxi. They’d rather worry about that than about how fucked this planet is. So why should I subject the pain in my soul to the task of conveying emotions that people would rather ignore? I’d rather hang out here.”

Our conversation halts while today’s Indians squad, composed of an unusual juxtaposition of veterans and rookie hopefuls, snuffs out a rally by the opposing team. Between innings, Reznor continues his surprising tale about how “Ghosts” came to be. “About a year ago, I was messing around in the studio, working on a theme for [Indians star center fielder] Grady Sizemore , y’know, something for them to play when he came to bat. It was an exhilarating experience because I had complete and total creative freedom. I didn’t have to worry about pleasing record company suits or publicists, or really anyone other than me and Grady. The project just kind of took off from there. Before I knew it, I’d written 36 tracks.” Feedback from Indians players who were fortunate enough to hear the rough mixes was enthusiastic — maybe too enthusiastic. They urged Reznor to forget about baseball, and instead to funnel his efforts into releasing those themes as a stand-alone album. “At first I was hesitant”, admits Reznor, “but one night I got a call from [Indians reliever] Rafael [Betancourt], and he was practically in tears, telling me how ‘Hurt’ helped him recover himself mentally during his steroid-related suspension, and that all the boys supported me and wanted ‘Ghosts’ to be a widespread release.” The next night, he received another call, this time from Indians manager Eric Wedge. When Reznor expressed doubt about whether his record company would take to the concept, Wedge, who rates “The Downward Spiral” as his #3 album of the 1990’s (behind only “69 Love Songs” and “Maximquaye”) encouraged him to “do a Radiohead”, and the rest, as they say, is history.

By now the game is complete, with the home team vanquishing yet another unfortunate rival. On the way out, Reznor becomes embroiled in a conversation with a mullet-haired, slightly overweight man wearing flip-flops and a neon green fanny pack. The tails of Reznor’s knee-length coat flap gently in the breeze as they speak. “We would have won it all last year if it wasn’t for Beckett” moans the Mullet Man. The Nine Inch Nails frontman nods in agreement. “Beckett is a performer that can summon a reservoir of black bile from the pit of his guts”, he lectures, “but he’s an inhuman, soullessly empty machine whose frayed back muscles will haunt his charred ego in 2008.” The two men appear to come to a mutual understanding on this point. After agreeing that the team will win their division by five games over the Tigers this year, they part ways with a simple nod and handshake. Afterward, Reznor leaves the small parking lot unmolested. Nobody recognizes him in Winter Haven, and that’s the way he likes it.

His plans for the rest of the day are simple. On this day, just like most other days here in Winter Haven, he’ll take a walk around nearby Lake Lulu, grab some food in the evening with former Stabbing Westward guitarist and current Cubs superfan Walter Flakus, and wake up at noon tomorrow before heading to the game in the early afternoon. Most industry insiders believe that beginning with the so-called “Bartman incident”, Flakus and his former bandmates sank into a depressive funk that has forestalled the highly anticipated Stabbing Westward reunion that fans have clamored for ever since their premature breakup in early 2002. Flakus has flown in for the week, directly from the Cubs’ spring facility in Mesa, Arizona. Speaking briefly on the phone with Flakus earlier in the week, he told me: “I’ve been experiencing some violent mood swings, and it’s been scary, man. But if anyone can keep me chill, it’s Trent.”

The tranquility of Lake Lulu serves as a peaceful and less windy counterpart to the Lake Erie shores that lapped at the heels of his turbulent childhood. Most journalists pigeonhole Reznor as a post-Columbine beacon of slum, which is hardly fair. Perhaps it’s true that if NIN had been around forty years ago, they would have played Altamont and killed the 60’s before the Hells Angels and the Stones had their chance. But here in Winter Haven, I was fortunate and thankful to view him in a different light, one that now seems closer to his natural habitat than does the dank solitude of his dimly lit dungeon studio. Trent Reznor is fighting a fresh set of addictions, and baseball is his perfect drug.