American History Hit - The History of Baseball

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Where did baseball come from? Why is every stadium unique? And how do you make it to the Hall of Fame? For half the year, baseball remains a national pastime in the USA. It is also a game of many myths, and plenty of legends. In this episode, Don speaks to one of them - Joe Posnanski is a two time Emmy Award winner and has been named National Sportswriter of the Year by five different organizations. From Gaylord Perry's moonshot, to the teenage girl who pitched for Babe Ruth, to the crossing of barriers of race and gender in major league baseball, Joe takes us through some of the key moments in baseball history.Joe's book on this subject is 'Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments': https://linktr.ee/WhyWeLoveBaseballUK.Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's the bottom of the ninth with two outs in a tie game with the home team at bat. The count is full as once more the pitcher winds up and delivers.

With a resounding crack, the bat meets the ball, launching it skyward against the backdrop of a blue cloudless expanse. The crowd rises to its feet. Crackerjack and soda spilling, all eyes fixated on the ball high in the air arcing through the atmosphere. outfielders spring into action, sprinting towards the fences in a futile pursuit to snag it. But it's gone, clearing the fence and an outstretched glove with mere inches to spare. A beaming spectator, surprised and delighted, catches the ball in his bare hands and raises it in triumph. The outfielders ignore him, pivoting back to the field only to watch as the batter laps the bases in all his glory, all the way home where he leaps into the arms of his converged teammates,

showering him with congratulatory hugs, high-fives, and a cooler of Gatorade. It's a walk-off homer, the winning hit. It's the love of the crowd, the smiles of children, the music of celebration. It's the pinnacle that so many youngsters can only dream of here in the grown-up game of Major League Baseball. Hey, everybody, Don Wildman here. We have a fun episode today about the game so. many of us truly love. Thanks for tuning us in. Major League Baseball is one of those rare commodities pervade and enjoyed in different packages. Watch it live at the stadium amidst the green green grass

on television, on your couch, or on the car radio and traffic. Or these days, he can sneak a look on your phone when you're supposed to be paying attention elsewhere. For six months, April to October, nearly every day, our teams are out there on the fields and in the dugouts for hours trying to win in a relentless season of 162 games. And this has been going on in America for more than a century. It's some kind of metaphor for life, but whatever I might come up with has surely been said before by some of the greatest writers in the business of writing. And we are joined by one today, a sports writing legend. Joe Pazaninsky, who has been named National Sports Writer of the Year by five different organizations. He's also won two Emmys. He's authored acclaimed books like The Soul of

Baseball, a road trip through Buck O'Neill's America, and The Machine, a hot team, a legendary season, and a heart-stopping world series, the story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. But today, at the outset of the 2024 baseball season, we'll discuss his newest book, Why We Love Baseball, a History in 50 Moments. Joe, glad and honored to meet you. Let's play ball. I agree. Let's play ball.

Let's do this. So I'll tell you why I love baseball, Joe. the cards I still have piles of them. I was a collector when I was a kid. I built house of cards out of them. I lived with these little pieces of cardboard and I still take them out of the box and stare dumbfounded at them. 50 years later. A love of baseball is unlike any love we have for anything else deep in our souls. Why do you think? Well, I think there are a lot of reasons for it and you actually just nailed one of them, which is, and I found this again and again as I was writing this book, as I was talking to people, for this book. When you ask people why they love baseball, it always comes down to a personal memory. And personal memory very often has nothing to do with what's on the field. It's about collecting

baseball cards. It's about that first time that they went to the stadium with their dad and looked out on the green grass and the blue sky and smelled the hot dogs. And it's such a personal thing. And, you know, when we talk about why we love a band, for example, we would talk about something specific. We love the drummer. We love the lead singer. We love the lyrics. We love something. And baseball, it's not like that.

It's something that we love about how we've lived, what our life has been like. And I think that does make it significantly more personal. I mean, you can get into a car and you can think about Henry Ford. I mean, things in American culture have been around for a long time. But baseball is one of those rare things. where you're actually, you're sort of participating in the longevity of the activity of the sport, and you kind of reach back even when you sit there watching today's game to Babe Ruth and all the rest of them. I think it is the one thing, you know, as we think about a little bit about, you know, what sports are like in the UK, for example.

I mean, there's just this deep, deep connection to history and, you know, all of these matches are being played in these historic stadiums that have been around for 100 years. And we don't have a lot of that. honestly, in the United States. So there's not a lot that goes back to the 19th century that is still a part of our lives. And yeah, you're right. We don't think about the Model T when we get into our car and drive to work. But baseball, we go to the ballpark and these athletes of a hundred years ago, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Ty Cobb are still very much in our minds. And, you know, so much a part of American history is Jackie Robinson and Satchel Page. And these things that have been a part of not only the game, but a part of America.

And I think, you know, I just finished a book that's coming out later this year about why we love football, American football. And it's very different. And it's not this connection. This connection is incredibly unique to America, but I don't think, not unique at all in England. It's the constancy of the sport, you know, seasonally, I suppose, but it's also the constancy of the game. It just takes its time

and some say that that's a dull aspect of it. I personally have always felt like that's a sort of meditative part of it. And it, you know, it moves through slowly. It's one of those few things in life. No matter how much they try to supposedly fix the problem, it can't be fixed. It is a gradual game that unfolds and that's important. Yeah, it just separates it from, I think, any other game.

It's played much more than any other game. Their seasons are 162 games long. They're every single day. Every day throughout the entire spring and summer, we are given baseball every single night. And so that's the constancy of it. But also, as you say, you go to a ballpark and it's a relaxed atmosphere. It's comfortable. There's time to talk.

There's time to reminisce. And that makes it very different than anything else that I think we love. You know, people talk all the time about baseball, not appealing to young people, not being as vibrant a game as it used to be. And there's some truth in all of that. But there's also a lot of truth in the fact that after 150 years, we still care about this game. It's still very much a part of us as fans and also part of us as a nation, I think. Yeah. Why don't your team's doing well? Those stadiums fill up real fast. Yes, they do. I'm just saying the Yankees this year. I'm just saying I'm sorry, you're at Cleveland, man. I know that. Hey, so we'll get to a few of your famous moments here

in a moment, but I just want to talk about something general. The origin of baseball comes, as we all know, from the English game of rounders, but it's more complicated than that, isn't it? And I'm going to say it in a word, Canada. I had no idea. Yeah, I mean, it is a fascinating thing. And again, this speaks pretty directly to baseball. There's a lot of mythology on the invention of baseball, the creation of baseball. What does it go back to? Of course, in the early part of the 20th century, was a huge battle about the idea that baseball came from the English game rounders. There was a tremendous fight to make it know this is a truly American game. It was born in America, created in America. And I mean, this goes so far that today the baseball Hall of Fame is

in Cooperstown, New York, where the mythology is that Abner Doubleday, a civil war hero, one day just invented the game. He just literally, wrote down the, you know, in the dirt almost, just cut, you know, here's what a diamond looks like and here's what the game looks like. And it's a complete myth, a complete mythology. And yet, the Baseball Hall of Fame right now is in Cooperstown, New York because of that. So, so yeah, the invention of baseball, the creation of baseball has been a topic for more than 100 years. And it's, we don't, I mean, there's a pretty direct. Like, how did football get started? American football? How did basketball? Was basketball invented in the YMCA or wasn't invented in Canada? Or, you know, there's all of these things. But people don't generally care, you know.

Well, I mentioned Canada because as a kid in Philadelphia, assuming that mythology was correct, it seemed odd that there were the expos and the – but in fact, of course, because of the British connection, that game of rounders would have come by way of Canada and made its way down into the States. I mean, that's really the origin story, isn't it? Yes, it is. I mean, but again, there are so many multiple origin stories because, as you well know, in Philadelphia, they played a different game than they played in New York. And in New York, they played a different game than they played in Boston, in Boston, a different game than they played in Chicago. So, you know, baseball was it, you know, baseball. And it dates back to the 1700s in some versions. It's really, when it's, it's different versions of the game eventually merged into what we've come to know as baseball. But it's, it is fascinating to me. Right. And it dates back to the 1700s and some versions. It's really when Alexander Joy Cartwright writes down the Knickerbacher rules for the New York clubs that we see the American version crystallize, right? That is, again, somewhat true, but also there's some mythology with that as well. You know, the people who would say that Cartwright was not the guy that actually wrote down the rules and that there's, you know, but again, there's so much about the history of baseball that we care about that we don't really care when it comes to these other sports. First official game, 1846, Hoboken, New Jersey, Nickerbockers baseball versus New York 9. Then it finally develops into a professional league, Civil War intrudes, as we talked about, soldiers playing against each other.

I mean, the first professional team, Cincinnati Red Stockings, 1869. National League starts 1876, the centennial. I mean, I just, I swoon. It's so silly, but I really swoon over this because you feel so personally involved with historical events through this. game, don't you? Yeah, and you do. You do. You feel so connected to it. And these are dates that everybody knows, the 1869 Reds were the first openly professional team. There have been players paid before under the table, but they're the first openly professional team. Then 1876, as you say, the National League is invented in 1901, the American League is created. The First World Series

are in that early days. Of course, at this same time, the game is completely segregated. So in 1920, The Negro leagues are created in Kansas City, and this is where African-American players played all the way up until 1947 and beyond when Jackie Robinson crosses the color barrier. Well, there you go. You're touching on what the theme of this conversation really is, which is every one of these anecdotal histories that are in your book as moments are also tips of icebergs of cultural transformations in America, in many cases. Also transformations within baseball and the way it's played. But it's remarkable, mostly because it's just a constant backdrop, at least for half the year, every year, of American society and therefore American history being played out on the field in a way. Absolutely. And much of it is earlier than when the rest of America sort of caught up with history. I mean, I think all the time about Jackie Robinson in 1947, when Jackie Robinson first played, became the first African American of the new century to play in the major leagues, Martin Luther King was. a sophomore at Morehouse College, right? This is years before Rosa Parks refuses to go back to the

bus, years before I have a dream, years before Malcolm X. So not only was it a part of history, it was, it pretended what was coming in the future. And that happens a lot when you talk about baseball and the labor issues that have happened in baseball, when you talk about the game and the way that it impacted businesses, there's so much about baseball, because it's been such a part of American life that absolutely mirrors American history throughout the 20th century. Let's start with that famous shot. I mean, let's begin with Babe Ruth, as so many conversations in historical baseball start. That home run is famously at Wrigley Field. Where his career was Ruth at this point? This was toward the end of his career. He was already, at this point,

an American legend, and he had already done the most incredible things. You know, he started his career as a pitcher and was a great pitcher. Then he was sold to the Yankees and became this legendary home run hitter. And, you know, it's important to say for people that don't know much about the history of the game, Babe Ruth kind of invented the home run. I mean, the home run existed as a thing. People hit home runs. If you hit it over the fence, it was a home run. But he's the one that turned it into a weapon, turned it into something in his first full year with the Yankees, he hit more home runs than every single team in baseball, every team, because he essentially created this new way to play the game. And honestly, there were a lot of people

like Ty Cobb who hated that he changed baseball the way he did. So by 1932 when he, when he hits the called shot, he'd already set the home run record, broken the home run record. He'd hit 60 home runs, which was unthinkable. Before he came along, the record was half that, less than half of that. So him hitting 60 home runs in his season was at that point for another 50 years considered the greatest sporting achievement of any American. But even the home run was circumstantial, right? I mean, there was the change in the stadium design where they'd added the bleachers. You know, the sport was becoming more and more popular through the 1920s, for sure, the beginning of his career. And they add those bleachers, they shrink the stadium a little bit,

I guess. I mean, there's all kinds of things that are happening, including the technology of the baseball, right? Absolutely. The baseball was made until it flew more, but you make a great point about the technology, I mean, beyond the technology of the stadium, that Yankee Stadium was very famously known as the house that Ruth built, and it was built for a left-handed home-run hitter. It was built for Babe Ruth. And through the years, you know, many Yankee left-handed hitters would thrive hitting the ball, including to this day where right field is quite short at Yankee Stadium.

answer that for me. I mean, I've thought about this game a lot. I still can't really, why are the stadiums so different? I've never understood that there's not a standardized layout. Yeah, it's something incredibly unique about baseball. There's no, you can't as a basketball team say, hey, you know what, we've got really tall guys. Let's make the baskets 12 feet high. And yet the dimensions of every single stadium are different. There is no two stadiums in baseball that have the same dimensions. And, you know, that's just been a part of the game. and, you know, it adds such richness to the game because you have in Fenway Park in Boston, you have the green monster, the tall left field stands there, the fence that is so close to home plate. And then at Wrigley Field, you have the Ivy. Of course, it's known for, depending on how the wind goes, that's going to be how well the game is going to be played

or how the game is going to be played. Yankee Stadium with a short right field fence. So, you know, every stadium has its own, not only dimensions, but its own character. And the game is played differently. If you play a game in Colorado, it's very, very different than if you play a game in San Francisco. You couldn't invent a sport now where that would be a rule. Like, I mean, it had to be something that's grandfathered in over 100 years.

When I first saw the story as a kid about Ruth, I assumed that that was what he was famous for doing, that he would point and hit the thing. But this is a one-time-only deal, right? Yes, it is. And, of course, there's much argument about whether or not he ever even really did it. So it was during a World Series. They were playing the Cubs. It was a very, it was a volatile series.

The two sides were at each other's throats the entire time. And pretty famously, the Cubs players were mocking Ruth and he was pointing at them. And then finally, as the story goes, when he got two strikes on him, he pointed to the center field fence and then hit a home run to exactly where he pointed. And it was the longest home run ever hit at Wrigley Field. and people have been arguing forever whether or not he really pointed to the fence or did he point to the dugout or did he just make a gesture or you know there's so many many arguments and of course I write one of my favorite things about this book and one of my favorite things about writing about baseball is I love living in that space between mythology and fact where you know because I think that's where the game lives and for me nothing is better than both trying to get at some truth but also trying to celebrate the mythology of the moment. And that's one of my all-time favorites because we'll never know, for sure. It's cool to go to the stadium and watch a game.

I know it's cool to be one of those sports writers sitting up in that booth. I mean, you guys are the ones who are really living the game. I mean, I've never sat in there. I'm just saying that you look from afar and you can tell, God, these guys go back in the line. They talk to these guys. They talk among themselves. It must be an incredible existence, really.

It's a wonderful thing. It's half your life. It is. It's a wonderful thing. You know, I have a friend who every day he'll go to the park and he'll put a photo up on Instagram and underneath it'll say, this is my office today. Right. My office is here at Wrigley Field or at Fenway Park or Royal Stadium or wherever. And so, yeah, it's truly wonderful.

Look, it's wonderful to do everything. I mean, I've been lucky in my life. I've gone to a bunch of Olympics. Yeah. But how do you distill yet another nine-inning game down to another, yet another short little story? It's an amazing challenge. I guess it is. To me, every game is different.

Every game feels different. I think it's having grown up with it. But I think just being a part of this loving baseball, you know, I think there's just something that always happens that makes it a little bit different from everything else. I was looking for this answer, Joe. I thought you'd say, Don, after you'd do a million of these things, you just know how to write these things. they just come right out of you. Okay, that's true, too. There might be some truth to that, too.

It's a model we follow. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. There's a name here that really surprised me, Jackie Mitchell. I never knew this story. Fascinating woman, incredible story. Tell me about it. Yeah, an incredible story. So she was just a teenager and through a long series of coincidences and luck, I guess,

she ended up pitching against the Yankees when they had Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth on the team. How? Yeah. Well, it's a very long story. But she loved pitching. She actually learned how to pitch from a great player. And her father was like totally believed in her as a pitcher. So he sent her to a baseball camp to learn how to pitch.

And then he also knew she lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And she knew, he knew the owner of the Chattanooga team and introduced. them and he was this great marketer and promoter and he saw the sort of the brilliance of promoting a game where he would sign her as a pitcher and have her pitch against the Yankees and sell it as this big national thing this young girl which had never happened before was this an exhibition game or it was an exhibition game absolutely they were coming through chattanooga anyway the game had already been scheduled so he came up with this idea and at first the Yankees were pretty opposed to the whole idea of it,

and sort of making a mockery of the game. But eventually they had a whole thing. She pretty famously, she put on makeup before each pitch and, you know, through. And of course, great part of the story is she struck out Babe Ruth. She struck out Babe Ruth, and she struck out Lou Gehrig. And then, of course, there were, you know, speaking of myth, did he strike out on purpose? How did this go? And it's just a wonderful, wonderful part of baseball history.

What about women playing for the big leagues? Was that ever a possibility or were decisions made? How did that work out? I mean, it's been a very tough road for women to try to get into baseball in any form. You know, now we're beginning to see here, women announcers, women in front offices. And there are some women who are trying to move their way up and get into the minor leagues. There have been a couple that have been in independent baseball. So it is happening a little bit more now.

But honestly, it always was viewed as completely separate. And there was even a brief time when it was illegal in the game to sign a woman. Because there were teams in the 40s and 50s who were interested in minor league teams signing the best woman player in town for promotional purposes or because they saw real talent in them. And the game really frowned upon it. And there was a big, big fight about whether women. should play baseball and, you know, baseball and, you know, much in the same way that, as we've talked about, that everything in baseball seems to mirror American history. So the same thing here, where really the question about whether women should be allowed to play baseball was very much mirroring that time

when women were really beginning to try to find their roles in America. Where do you think that's going to go? Because when I watch college softball, those women and saw, I mean, they are winging that ball. Oh, my gosh. It's amazing and very exciting to watch, actually. And, and, And same with tennis. I mean, it seems only a matter of time before it all mixes up in some way. I think so. I think there is a matter of time before a woman comes along that is going to play in the minor leagues and then potentially be a major league. And, you know, how that happens at first, it's not clear yet.

You know, for a time, there was a thought that it would need to be a pitcher. The pitcher may be a knuckleballer. There was some talk about that. There are a lot of different possibilities going forward. But, yeah, to me, there's no question that we will see. see a woman in the major leagues in our lifetime, I believe that. Front and center in your book, you mentioned Gaylord Perry, who was a big star when I was a kid. I have many of his baseball cards, as a matter of fact.

It was easy to get a Gaylord Perry. I don't know why. He was just around forever, I guess. He is sort of known as the inventor, or at least the purveyor of the spitball in so many different ways, which is a fascinating story of pitching and rules-making about pitching, a whole culture change in the sport. Yes. So in 1920, we've talked about how big.

Bruce changed the game. Part of the reason he was able to change the game was in 1920, the spitball was outlawed. So in the early parts of the game, the spitball was very, very much a part of baseball. The balls were heavy. And when you hit a foul ball, the crowd would throw it back and you would use the same ball. Like the people were using the same ball throughout an entire game. So these balls were beat up and cut up and spit on. And so you couldn't really hit one of those baseballs out. Is that what's called the dead ball era? Is that what that means?

That is called the dead ball era. That's exactly why it is. So right around 1920, 19, 19, 1920, two things happened. One was the baseball, they found a better version of the baseball. Now, the one that is with a cor-core and the yarn built around it, basically the baseball that we have today. And the second thing was that they outlawed the spitball. And the reason they outlawed the spitball was because a player got killed,

getting hit in the head with one of these heavy spitballs. So they outlawed the spitball. And once it's outlawed, that doesn't mean people are going to stop doing it, of course. What is a spitball? We should define this. Yeah, spitball is, I mean, it's what it sounds like. I mean, people literally spit on the baseball in order to give themselves a little bit of a better grip. The ball moves a lot more.

It sinks a lot harder. But there are other versions of the spitball, you know, that people put Vaseline on the baseball. They'll put tobacco juice on the baseball. They'll cut up the baseball. That was a big thing. And they're all kind of called spitballs. I mean, there are different names if you want to go to specifically. But Gaylord Perry, who, as you mentioned, he used all different versions of the spitball.

Right. And the idea is to affect the dynamics of that flight of the ball in some specific way that that pitcher is using. And it can be the wildness of the pitch that is the weapon. But as you say, cutting the ball could give you different kind of grip. And therefore, you could direct the spin of the ball. It's all about the spin. It's all about the spin. And it's really all about the sink.

What you really want is the ball to sink so that the player cannot hit the ball in the air. That is the entire factor of the game in so many ways. And so Gailor Perry was famous for his spitball, but it was because that ball was cutting, going down, cutting away from the hitter as well. And his daughter very famously, he was very famous for being a showman about it as well.

And when they asked her if her father threw the spitball, she said, no, it's a hard slider. That's basically the way Gaylord Perry handled it. And he was the most famous for it because he flouted the rule. He basically would, you know, essentially go out there and throw spitballs and dare them to catch him. And he had all of these little tricks and ways to get away from it. It's a really fascinating fact of life that these pitchers just move through these innings. I always tell my wife, who's not a big sports fan.

When we're watching football, I say, just watch the tackle. Just watch the guy do his, you know, take one series of downs and watch. that tackle do what he needs to do. And you realize how the game is really played in the intricacy of one of those positions and how hard that is. The same goes especially for pitchers. I mean, just watch one pitch and how hard it is to throw a pitch 100 miles an hour at a specific target and many times hit that target precisely. That's an amazing human ability. And that's all you need to appreciate the game. Never mind, he has to do it 100 times. Absolutely. Absolutely. And also knowing that if a pitcher

throws a hundred miles an hour into a certain spot and he misses that spot by a tenth of an inch, it's a home run potentially. That's the difference. These hitters are so good. A hundred miles an hour is not enough to get them out. It has to be a hundred miles an hour

on what they call the black, right on the outside of the plate, in order to really get people out. Exactly. I'm not going to convince the people who aren't into it, but it's really worth a try. If you get the moxie up, he hits a very famous home run, which a famous manager named Alvin Dark predicted, right? Yes. So he was a terrible hitter. But before his third start, he was in taking his batting

practice. And a friend of the manager said, oh, look, this guy can really hit. And Alvin Dark says, Perry, we'll have a man on the moon before that guy hits a home run. And seven years later, the day, July 20th, 1969, the day that Apollo 11 lands on the moon, 34 minutes later, Lord Perry hit his first home run. He planned the whole thing. He planned it. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. The last final moment we're going to list here is related to a bigger subject that we'll get

to in a moment. But I want to talk about the hug. Pee-wee Reese and Jackie Robinson, as you've already mentioned, Jackie Robinson comes on the scene in Major League Baseball with the Dodgers in 1947. That in itself is a huge story. But there's a very anecdotal moment where Pee We reached, one of his teammates, in a fraught moment, supposedly did something very generous. This is up for debate. Let's walk through this.

Yeah, so this is right in 1947, right when Jackie Robinson first started. And of course, there was tremendous, tremendous blowback to Jackie Robinson. He had to endure death threats and any number of other kinds of issues when he was called up to the Dodgers. It was altering. It was not just sports altering, but America altering in so many ways. And as the story goes, and it is a story that has been celebrated for me. now what 75 years they were in Cincinnati and at this point this is as far south as any city in baseball at that moment and they're in Cincinnati and as the story goes the fans were not only giving

a really hard time to Jackie Robinson who was playing first base they were also giving a hard time to the shortstop peewee Reese who was from nearby louisville who had grown up fully admitting that he knew no black people, had never really thought about anything related to civil rights, was surrounded by racism, just flat out. And they were giving him a hard time about playing with an African-American. And as the story goes,

he wandered over to first base and put his arm around Jackie Robinson to show everybody that he was with this man, that this was his teammate, this was his friend, and that he was going to stand up for what was right. That is the story. There are multiple statues built to celebrate this moment. The moment has been written about stories, books, everything has been told. There is a real question whether it

happened. And the real question is, was this story sort of created to give a little more credit to a white man at this moment? Is that what this was all about? And there are many people who believe that is what it's all about. However, I write about this at great length in the book and really dive into the story. And I think what I've come to believe is that some version of this story happened, definitely happened. And I take that belief from things that Jackie Robinson himself said, wrote at the time. Now, I don't think the story happened quite that way. I don't think it happened in Cincinnati. I don't think it happened with fans particularly. I think it was probably more related to other teams and people on the other bench yelling at Jackie Robinson and so on. But I do believe

some version of this happened. I do believe that Pee We Reese really did become great friends with Jackie Robinson and really did change. I mean, Jackie Robinson changed him as much as he changed the game itself. This was right at the beginning of all. I mean, they were 20 games in, 21 games into the season at that point. There were rumblings of a labor strike. You know, players were threatening to strike because of this. I mean, this is a very, very fraught matter. The apocryphal nature of this, I think, is defensible because there was very little mention of it in any of the African American newspapers, which is a very telling sign in that that would have been a big headline in their news. Yeah, that's what Ken Burns firmly believed. So Ken Burns really celebrated this moment in his

baseball documentary. And then later came to regret that and came to believe, particularly for the reason you're saying specifically, because it was not celebrated in the black papers that it didn't happen. And he became convinced of that. I'm less convinced that that is a telling sign. Because I don't believe, what I don't believe, there is a movie called 42, which really celebrates this moment. And if you see the moment as it is,

he walks over, the crowd's booing, he puts his arm around him, there's this huge uproar about it. there would be no way to miss that. I don't believe it was that kind of gesture. I think it was a much, much subtler gesture. I think it was directed to the other team. I think he went over, just talked to him, put his arm around him as if to say, hey, we're together on this.

And that's the way Jackie Robinson described it. So I think, like I say, some version of this in my view definitely happened, but it is unfortunately not the grand Hollywood moment that 42 made it. Yes. Those sports writers at work, you know? That's right. There's a fable being made right there. You have a very personal friend of yours, I say related to this previous story, a man named Buck O'Neill, a real hero for you. Can you tell me about this man? Yeah, Buck was like a second father to me. He played in the Negro leagues, in those leagues before Jackie Robinson. He managed in those leagues. He was the first African American coach in Major League Baseball, but was only allowed to do that for a short one. he was a man who was denied throughout his entire life, including denied the opportunity to even go to high school in Sarasota, Florida. And yet there was not a speck of bitterness in him, not even the tiniest bit. And my first book was The Soul to Baseball, as you mentioned, where I traveled around the country with him and wrote about this at length.

And it seemed like every single day there was some new lesson that I was learning from him about grace and about, forgiveness and about his faith in human beings that was unshakable, absolutely unshakable. And I, there were times that, and I wrote about this very plainly, that I could not understand where that strength came from. For somebody who, to the very end of his life, in his last year of life, it looked like he was going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame finally and celebrated. And at the last minute, they did not vote him in to the Hall of Fame. And he died.

He was in the Hall of Fame now, but he didn't go into the Hall of Fame until more than a decade after he died. And even that moment, which is certainly nothing like being denied going to high school or whatever, but even that moment he handled with the grace and strength and courage that he handled everything. And he went and he actually spoke at the Hall of Fame the year he was not elected, he spoke on behalf of those who were elected who were gone. And that's just who Buck O'Neill was. We call it the Negro League. So was that the official title of that organization?

That is what it was called. And what it's still called. And it's uncomfortable, honestly, that it's called that, you know, for obvious reasons. However, I think it's also very important that it's called that because that is what it was referred to as the Negro League's Baseball Museum in Kansas City is in a remarkable place and celebrates and honors those players who played before Jackie Robinson. Buckle knew you used to always say we always celebrate the people who cross. the bridge, but here we celebrate the people who built the bridge. There are great names. They're great players that are really fun to learn about. Satchel Page and Josh Gibson and all the rest of those guys.

And it's really an interesting window on that time in a very positive way, for the most part, as you mentioned, to see these great players and understand that they were standing at the precipice of change. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's one of those things where a lot of people will go to the museum, for example, expecting to see a sad story because it is a story of racism and it is a story of, And it is a story of denial, and it is a story of these incredible players who never got the opportunity to show a nation what they could do. But it's not a sad story.

It's actually a triumph of spirit of these players who said, you won't let us play. Well, we'll create our own league. And the baseball being played in the Negro leagues was more fun, more enjoyable with greater characters than the game that was being played in the major leagues. And Buckle knew you used to always say that he was right on time. He would always say that was his line. I was right on time because he got to play in those leagues, and he wouldn't have traded that for anything. You say there's statues to Buck also the Hall of Fame,

but he was also given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George Bush, wasn't he? He was. Just months after his death, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was incredibly touching and special. He's still very much a part of baseball, still very much a part of the museum. Talk about inside baseball. Tell me how these sports writers talk about the Hall of Fame.

How do you guys communicate about this? Like, for those who don't know, you get into the Hall of Fame by virtue of the votes by the baseball sports writers of America organization. It's a voting thing. And after you've been out of the league for about five years, four or five years, you're finally able to be considered for this. How does it work at that point? Well, it really is exactly what you say. The number is dropped. There are now about 450 writers who get a ballot.

every December, you'll get a ballot and on the ballot will be 25 or 30 players who are retired for at least five years. Some of those players are repeats. Some of them are new players that are added on to the list. And then in order for any of those players to be elected to the Hall of Fame, they have to get 75% of the vote. Right. So that's a lot. That's a very, very high percentage. So it's really hard. So therefore, there's only one or two or three people every year, if they even get in. Right. Some years there are none. I mean, It is truly remarkable. And of course, not to get into too much about this,

but of course, during the 1990s and 2000s, baseball went through a scandal where players were using performance-enhancing drugs. A lot of those players set records. A lot of those players were the greatest players of the day. And almost none of those players are in the Hall of Fame because they could not get 75% of the vote. Sure. Roger Clemens, for one.

Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire. I mean, these were iconic players of the time. the iconic players of the time, and they're not in the Hall of Fame. And I'm not asking about it. That's a telling sign in itself. Just one of those baseball. It's uncomfortable. I don't want to talk about it.

You know, let's just be happy about this. It's an incredible book. We have missed everything, of course, so many other topics, but that's because there's 45 other great 50 moments. So I invite you to please pick up this book early in the season so you can watch the rest of the season knowing a lot more. It's a good idea. Joe Posnanski has been named National Sports Writer of the Year by many different people.

And one Emmys. I already mentioned all this, but I encourage you to pick up the new book, Why We Love Baseball, A History in 50 Moments. It's a good addition to your shelf of baseball books, and it's a really good first book to ever get. So I encourage you to look for it. Thank you so much, Joe. Happy baseball season ahead. Thank you. Go Yankees. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode.

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