ORDINARILY HOPEFUL: FOLKIE CHUCK BRODSKY WILL PERFORM THURSDAY AT KRCU COFFEE HOUSE

His uniform was baggy -- he had gigantic feet

His hat was always cock-eyed & he had but a few teeth

And a schnozz as big as Baltimore -- and a heart as big as Devon

Max Patkin made the children laugh -- and for that he's gone to Heaven ...

-- From "Gone to Heaven"

Chuck Brodsky writes songs about baseball and unrequited love and road rage and sings them in a voice that learned something from John Prine and Taj Mahal. He is a politically observant 21st century troubadour with a message he simply describes as "hope."

Brodsky will perform at 7 p.m. Thursday in a benefit for KRCU-FM. The coffee house will be presented at the University Center Ballroom. Tickets are $10.

Four Brodsky songs are in the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y. One tells the story about a white baseball player named Eddie Klepp who, back in the days of the Jim Crow laws, played in the Negro League. Another tells of Bonehead Merkle, who missed second base and cost the Giants a pennant.

In a phone interview from his home near Asheville, N.C., Brodsky said baseball is a favorite subject because going to baseball games or playing baseball is a universal American experience. He is most interested in the old characters of the game like Klepp or Richie Allen, the player Philadelphia fans loved to boo, or Max Patkin, the Clown Prince of Baseball whose act went out with the changing times. "Some guy in a chicken suit is circling the bases," Brodsky sings, "with a corporate logo on his back -- and in one or two other places."

Many of Brodsky's songs celebrate ordinary people. "Radio" is his song about a boy with Down syndrome who was embraced by the town of Anderson, S.C., and became its star. "I think that's a beautiful example to hold up to the whole world," Brodsky says. "We could all be like this."

If Brodsky had been born in Elizabethan times, he would have been a troubadour spreading the news and delivering musical messages.

"Music softens people up as opposed to a preacher at a pulpit pounding out the message," he says. "You can subtly get the points made while you're relaxing people."

He grew up in Philadelphia and worked at a folk club while still in his teens. He didn't learn to play guitar until he was in college. Brodsky chose folk instead of rock because of the logistics. "I knew it was something I could pull off by myself. I wouldn't have to rely on anybody else," he said.

He won the Emerging Songwriter Award at the Napa Valley Folk Festival in 1992. He records for Red House Records, one of the top folk labels, and has four albums: "Last of the Old Time," "Radio," "A Fingerpainter's Murals" and "Letters in the Dirt."

Jim Hickam, one of the hosts of the KRCU show "Your Folk Connection," heard Brodsky perform in Blytheville, Ark., and recommended him for a KRCU benefit.

"He's one of the Young Turks coming along," he says. "... He impressed me as being somebody with a point of view and a good concert performer."

Brodsky thinks folk music always will have a small part of the music market, but laments that the music industry currently is aimed at finding the lowest common denominator.

"A lot of people use entertainment as an escape from thinking."