The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – THE DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF BASEBALL: ECHOES FROM A DISTANT PAST by WILLIAM R. DOUGLAS

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

THE DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF BASEBALL: ECHOES FROM A DISTANT PAST by WILLIAM R. DOUGLAS Authorwilliamrdouglas.com In the year 2166, a post Second Civil War America is finally back on its feet. Among the countless personal and cultural casualties of the war, the sport of baseball has been dead for over a hundred years. 12-year-old Joe Scott lives in the northern Illinois city of McHenry and goes exploring in the woods one day in a no man's land that a hundred years earlier was the site of the bloodiest battle of the war. While there, he discovers a relic from the distant past, from before the war. It sparks a search for its meaning. Little does he know that the wheels of Providence have been unwittingly set in motion which leads to a stunning discovery in Dyersville, Iowa. This second discovery has a direct connection with the relic found in McHenry. As events unfold, Joe finds himself at the center of the rediscovery of a sport long lost and forgotten by the ravages of time and war. With no living person having any first-hand knowledge of the game, can he figure out the pieces of the puzzle to resurrect the game of baseball? Will his friends take to the game? What will the adults think? Soon, the answers begin to unfold, and a magical sequence of events leads to an epic finale on a national stage!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the Chris Voss Show. Just the show, Chris V Boss Show. I'm not going to sing it. I'm not going to do it this time.

I've done it a thousand million times before, but today, I don't know. I just don't. I think we should do something different. We do a different intro to the show every time. If you haven't paid attention, most people have to tune in just to see what our intro is going to be and not sing it. I'm not going to do it. Should I do it, William? Yeah, go ahead. Go for it. There we go ahead go for it there's okay we we've

got vote one in i will second that vote thecrestfoshow.com i don't know why people like that it's the weirdest thing we invented like 20 years ago and we stopped doing it everyone wrote us and said you have to keep doing it and i'm like seriously it was a bit for a week folks but there it is we've been doing it for 13 years. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show. He's got a brilliant novel that he put out this year. And it's going to be a really interesting thing. Imagine the future.

Imagine the future. No, that's not my Twilight Zone voice. But imagine a future where there's a Second World War and baseball. Civil War. Civil War. What did i say second world war yeah second war i went to public school so i can't correct it there you can tell that the author is upset with me in the back now the second civil war in america and baseball has

died and he writes this beautiful book about hope destined the resurrection of baseball and in fact the book is entitled the death and resurrection of baseball echoes from a distant past april 26 2022 william r douglas came out with the book you can find it wherever bookstores so we're gonna be talking to him today as we've been of course having him butt into the show to correct us as well but in the the meantime, go to YouTube.com. Where is this, Chris Voss? Subscribe to the show. The family loves you, but doesn't judge you.

Tell all your friends and family. Sit down with them over Thanksgiving dinner coming up soon and say, I want everyone to sign up for the Chris Voss Show or else no one's getting turkey. No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that. Go to Goodreads.com. Where is this, Chris Voss? Our big LinkedIn groups and LinkedIn stuff and all that stuff we do over on LinkedIn.

We love that LinkedIn thing. Anyway, today, our amazing author that we have on deck is William R. Douglas. He is a first-time novelist. After obtaining a journalism degree in 1980, his career took a turn down the road of information technology. In the IT field, he was able to enjoy writing, no matter if it was technical documentation, newsletters, or other material. He lives in the small town of McHenry, Illinois, with his wife, Lori, and cat, Peaches. And we'll probably find out more about Peaches later. They enjoy spending time with six kids and eight grandkids and are very active in their local church. Welcome to the show.

William, how are you? I am outstanding, and I'm really happy to be on your show. Thank you for the opportunity, Chris. There you go, and we're happy to have you as well. And give us your dot-coms, wherever you want people to find out more about you on the interwebages. Sure. My author website is authorwilliamrdouglas.com. There you go.

There you go. Pretty simple. And this is your first book? Believe it or not, yeah, it's my first novel. Can you believe it? There you go. Hopefully it won't be your last and you'll write some more. I don't intend it to be my last, so.

There you go. So you've written the new book the death and resurrection of baseball echoes from a distance past did nfl kill football what were best baseball what happens in this book do the raiders finally win something after 100 years it's set in 2166 so i imagine my raiders have at least won another football game hopefully the Bears too. There you go. Them and the Browns and everybody else who's left out of the party.

So all jokes aside, let's get to your book. What motivated you to want to write this book? You know, back in like 2014, 2015, I had a thought to write a novel. It was a bucket list item. Hey, write a novel. There you go. I've been told since high school days that I had a gift for writing. I really enjoy writing.

The storyline for this idea actually started to germinate right around 2014, 2015. First, there are several ingredients that went into the storyline. The first one was an article I read several years ago about games that kids used to play before the Civil War of the 1860s. And now these games are extinct and there's no knowledge of them. They're just lost to history. And then I read David Aikman's book back in the 90s, When the Almond Tree Blossoms. That was a very sobering book about a second civil war in America.

Basically, it's along ideological lines, conservative versus liberal. That next year? It had an impact on me. Is that happening next year? It seems like it might happen next year. I don't know. God, I hope not. I read William Fortune's novel, One Second After, which is about an EMP attack on America. He coined the phrase horse and buggy mode.

I get into that in my novel. I'm going to have a little hard time doing a podcast from now on. Yeah, a very hard time. We'll just have to go door-to-door with the podcast. Door-to-door sign language and everything. But then I just loved the game of baseball since growing up in the 60s. I coached my son all through his Little League experience in the late 90s into the early and mid-2000 you know 2000s up to about like 2004 or so the one thing

i noticed was is that at the youth level there's signs of trouble as far as the popularity of baseball now i don't i'm not saying that baseball is going to die tomorrow next week next month next year but i just see some signs of trouble. And there's several things. Number one, you know, growing up in the 60s, we learned to play ball playing what we call sandlot ball. We found a making lot. Our buddies got together.

We played ball without any adult supervision at all. And we played it. If it wasn't every day, it was darn near every day. And it was that constant repetition over and over of throwing, catching, hitting, where you honed your skills. And, of course, we got involved in Little League as well. And when I first got involved coaching Little League with my son, our local Little League had something like, I don't know, 60 teams in it or something.

It was some crazy number. And now they're lucky they can get 12. And you hear that from other venues as well, that the in-town Little Leagues are starting to struggle to get kids to sign up. Travel ball has gotten very popular. A lot of parents want to put their kids in travel ball because they do that kind of repetitive practicing every day and honing their skills. But the problem with travel ball is that you have to try out for it. And guess what happens?

A lot of times you don't make the cut. I mean, they're only going to pick 12 or 15 kids for a travel ball team, and then that's it. So then you have all these other factors that are competing with baseball. You have soccer that continues to grow in popularity. Video games. And in recent times, lacrosse is getting very popular with the kids. Yeah, so is football, too.

Let's face it, of course, the kids love their screen time. They love to play games on their phone or iPad, whatever. And a lot of kids would rather play baseball on a screen than to play it in person. Yeah, that's very true. I think video games have been the biggest detriment to baseball and other games. That and athletics being taken out of so many schools now. Yeah. I miss the old days of the PE teacher yelling at you like the sergeant from Full Metal Jacket.

I miss those days with his 70 shorts and stuff. Yeah. So you have a smaller number of kids getting involved in baseball. Well, guess what happens? They grow up, and now they're adults, and they're not fans of the game. So that's one red flag I see. And then on the adult level, you have adults that have been turned off by the game because of various reasons.

They're mad about the amount of money they make. They don't want to spend $100 for two people to go to a game. It's hard to watch the games now. I mean, when I grew up, WGN, which is a superstation here in Chicago, you could tune in and watch just about any Cubs game you wanted over the air for free. I'm a White Sox fan. We had the same thing on a less powerful channel,

but you could turn it to an end and watch the Sox game. And now it seems like all the clubs have their own sports TV package to watch the home games in your hometown. And some people just don't want to pay. It's a matter of principle. They don't want to pay. It's a matter of principle. They don't want to pay for it. So you take all these ingredients together, and I think down the road, you could say,

well, what if you follow this line 40 years from now? What could happen? And that's what I do in my book. Forty years from now, baseball is on its last breath. There's been a three-year strike at the professional level. The kids would much rather do these other things than play ball. And then the Civil War comes in the year 2061. It's a proverbial nail in the coffin.

There you go. I'm going to put that in. When does it start? I'm going to put that into my Google Calendar. April 12, 2061. I did that. I'm going to put that in. When does it start? I'm going to put that into my Google calendar. April 12, 2061. I did that. I'm a history buff. The American Civil War in the 1860s started on April 12, 1860.

Ah. So are we technically refighting that war, though? No. You know, in David Aikman's novel, it's, again, it's along ideological lines, conservative versus liberal. Now, in my novel, the war is in the past by 100 years. Okay, the main character, Joe Scott, starts out in Chapter 1.

He's 100 years removed from the war. The baseball has been dead for 100 years. from the war. Mace Fall has been dead for 100 years. It's extinct. There's not a person alive that remembers the game in the first person. There's some vague memories of it with some of the older folks, including the character's grandfather, affectionately named Grandpa Moses. But no one has any recollection of the game at all. Wow.

And that's part of the fun of the storyline is how Joe gets involved in accidentally finding a relic that's a tie back to before the war and to the game of baseball. And a sequence of events unfolds where he becomes the focal point at trying to bring the game back and restoring it to the culture of a rebuilt America. You know, there's a line that I'm trying to remember the movie it's from, but it's a famous comedian's movie. I think it's the one where they go. He talks about how, you know, most people in an early age grew up with their fathers taking them to the baseball game back in the days when fathers were in homes. And were prevalent in homes and more prevalent at homes i should say and the relationship he had with his father was going to the baseball game yeah well they couldn't talk about a lot of stuff and there was a lot of tension between him and his father i don't remember the movie i'm thinking of but it was on i think it was a movie

where the the three comedian dudes they go they go on a trip to be rodeo dudes to to to run a herd i don't know if that's ringing a bell at all but yeah he talks about that and it really talks to me that yes a lot of people yeah and so does is is that basically the same sort of experience that this young man has he finds a relic and you talk about how this is a story of hope and how how does that play out or can obviously you can't tell us everything because it's a novel but how give us some teasers as to how that plays out and and yeah so i mean it's at the very beginning of the story so i you know i don't i don't mind sharing a little nugget here but he goes exploring in the woods that for all his life and anybody's life that's alive has been a no man's land because it was a site of famous battle in the Second Civil War. In fact, it's kind of an equal to the Battle of Gettysburg in the First Civil War.

There is a no man's land and he goes exploring there and he finds an old rusty sign on a vine-covered fence, and the sign, barely legible, has the words, No Pepper. Of course, if you're a baseball fan, you know that the words No Pepper have a significant meaning because Pepper was a game of a warm-up, hand-eye coordination-type exercise that major leaders used to employ all the time it's kind of fallen out of favor now i don't know if they use it all that much anymore but it was very popular back in the golden era of baseball so he finds his sign he

he brings it home his father gets involved helping to try and resolve what does the sign mean, because nobody has any idea what it means. Eventually, his grandfather comes in the picture as well. So, as the story unfolds, the hope aspect comes into several things that are in the storylines that

were kind of a reset has happened in America. You know, things are really kind of disjointed right now. The one thing that's obvious in the novel is that there's been a reset in the area of family dynamics and family dialogue. And one big thing I put in the novel is the restoration of what we all remember as the family meal,

where it becomes a routine every night to gather around dinner table and have supper and share in each other's days of triumphs and tragedies and how important that is, has been in the past, I think still is for some families, and could be again for many more. Yeah, yeah. And is there a societal struggle that has come from the civil war that maybe you know the rediscovery of baseball helps maybe bring everyone back together

yes i was very full when i when i i mean the civil war is a strong undercurrent in the story, being that it's in the past. Excuse me. But its destructive power was, you know, well, you have to read it to see it, but it really devastates the country. I was very careful in weaving that part of the story in there in a totally apolitical way. In other words, there's no hint as to which side starts it, which side ends it, which side wins. Of course, I would argue that no side would win a second American Civil War.

It would be the ultimate tragedy of our republic. And so I'm very, very careful in the story that there's no hint of that at all. But what does come out in the story is that Americans have relearned the art of agreeing to disagree and of getting along with one another. Something I think which is badly needed right now. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it used to be that stuff like this brought us together. Baseball, you know, the American pie, you know, baseball is America's American pie, and everybody loved it seems, I don't want to throw everybody in the same boat, but it seems that you don't understand what Connexus is opposed.

And baseball used to be one of those things, you know. Sure. In every way, baseball is a metaphor, I think, for America, you know. That's an interesting perspective. Let's talk more about that. I grew up in the era where baseball was a was a was still a big thing i was a dodgers fan tommy lasorda i think should be president someday wait didn't he pass away um but i you know i was i i grew up with i can't remember the oakland a matter that

was so amazing and steve steve garvey steve garvey i was a big ste Steve Garvey fan growing up as a kid in LA. And yeah, I grew up a Dodgers fan. And of the Dodgers. And, you know, it's, you know, see, those sort of things that connected us and that were just ideally American back in those days. And we could, we had an identity with it. You know, where now we're more, i think our more identity is you know it's kind of ironic to say identity identity politics and we don't we don't see each other as americans so much as as we see each other as maybe politically divided but it's probably time for

you know something like what you talk about to return to some of those core values of something that connects us sure you know the know, the sport of men, if you will. Absolutely. Yeah. It's a really interesting conversation when you think about fathers, when you think about men, when you think about athletics, when you think about baseball. I'm trying to think.

I'm still just perplexed at the movie. I've been pulling up the movies. I know there's a scene in the great movie field of dreams uh this father and i can't i can't quite recall it but uh it's towards the end i think when he plays catch with him yeah yeah a very powerful scene yeah and and i can't remember the comedian who talked about it Any other stories or teasers or characters of the book that you think stand out Or maybe snippets that you can tease out Yeah, so the character Grandpa Moses is the main character, the 12-year-old boy His name's Joe Scott

And his grandfather is affectionately called Grandpa Moses That's his paternal grandfather And he's in his 80s, but he's still got his wits about him and wants to go down with his boots on and very active and was a former congressman and was term-limited out. I put term limits in this story. But he's a very, very lovable character and has a huge influence on his grandkids.

And there's a couple of times when he sits down with Joe Scott and has, I guess, you call it a grandfatherly talk. And he's part of what I call in my book the crucible generation. And I coined that term because after the civil war ends the country is in such a shambles it's in horse and buggy mode and a main goal is just to survive and he's a child of that post-war generation and they were trying to get going again and rebuild things and he's a survivor and that generation is held in very high esteem much like our times we still hold the greatest

generation in high esteem in the novel the crucible generation very highly regarded because of what they went through after the war and just trying to survive and then experiencing you know, the different levels of rebuilding in the country that probably brought it back to where it was before the war's outset.

And I would imagine the storyline entails resurrecting baseball and having that something that brings us all together again, maybe a return. Yeah, absolutely. So after the war, I mean, obviously there's parts of American culture that have disappeared. As I said earlier at the opening of the segment, that when the war began, it was kind of like the nail, the proverbial nail in the coffin for the sport of baseball. And so America's come back at the beginning of the novel. We're back to where we were before the war started.

So we've got self-driving cars, we've got domesticated robots, and some other things. But there's parts of our culture that are missing, and we just don't know because it's been lost to history. And one of the things that happens in the war is that a computer virus comes and wipes out all data on all systems around the world. So that has an

incredibly chilling effect. So it takes a long time to recover all this data because they have to go back and get printed material. They're using books from the Library of Congress and they're trying to get all this stuff restored. And so when he discovers this relic, they find out its connection to this

extinct game called baseball. It really sets off a chain of events that first starts getting his little neighborhood excited and then the town and then pretty soon it starts to snowball from there. Wow. It sounds like a great way to resurrect, you know know a country that's fallen off of its mantle and and gone awry you know it's it's it's i i grew up in the baseball era and i know that they've struggled recently with you know trying to speed up the game and things you know they've got the

graphic now where you can see the box right that was one thing that always used to bug me about baseball was, you know, where was that exactly in the box and did that judge make the right call? You're like, I don't know. He might be getting paid off. I remember when I was growing up, the box was the armpits to the knees. Yeah, yeah. And at one point, it was like some of the guys were calling it, you know, from the waist until, like, mid-chest, and it was like,

man, that's a pretty small strike zone. Sometimes you, like, you know, you see some wild balls, and you're like, that's not a strike. You know, you get all that. And I do agree they need to speed up some of the pitching stuff. You know, sometimes there's a little bit, you know. But that's part of the game is, you know, psyching out the pitcher and the thing.

Yeah, I think a lot of people grew up with the American pie of it. I know. What do you think about what's been going on recently with the Aaron Judge thing? You know, having somebody who's. You know, I was thinking you brought that up because I was talking about that just the other night. Of course, you know we had the what we call the steroid era in baseball yeah and then aaron judd hits the 60 second home run yeah and the son of roger maris says

or declares him the the quote the clean home run king wow that's pretty powerful i think it is because it's a testament to a man on his own like you know i mean i i go to the gym i lift weights i i don't juice i don't i don't want to get involved with steroids there's a cheat that's there i mean are those guys exemplary athletes maybe so but there's a there's there's an edge and having somebody do it clean i think just speaks to the speaks to the quality of the sport the quality athlete sure that's what true athleteism is because you know i mean i do some of my i i mean i probably can't say anything i do some of my best podcasts jacked up on high-end caffeinated coffee but you know a double latte double latte it's kind of a quadruple actually but you know i mean i mean to me that's the respect of the sport the

power of the man in the arena without without any aid other than you know there it is so i i think it's great i think it's probably going to be good for the game of baseball. I still love the game to this day. I went to a Dodgers game several years ago. Like I say, Tommy Lasorda is a god in my mind. I'll always be a Dodgers fan. Growing up in L.A., I'm a Raiders fan, a Dodgers fan, until the very end. Fortunately, the Dodgers win more games than the Raiders do.

Maybe you should do one on the resurrection of the Raiders. They might win a Super Bowl or two. You know, your Dodgers beat my White Sox in Game 6 of the 1959 World Series. I was about four months old at that time. So was that like when Tom Brady stole the Super Bowl from us with the tuck rule bullshit in 94 or 95? No comment. I'm still sorry about that.

I'll give you Tom Brady is the GOAT, but I still want that Super Bowl back. That one's got to come off the list. So I might take a picture with Tom Brady if I see him, or I might tell him I don't like him because of that. It's a hard call. But the movie that I was thinking of was the movie City Slicker with Billy Crystal. That was hilarious. I love that movie. Great movie.

And I believe there's a scene that he talks about it, and I've seen him talk about it in real life. Was it with Billy Crystal? Billy Crystal, yeah. The scene with him? Yeah. Yeah, it's a real story about how you know he and his father couldn't talk but the one thing they could always do is they grew up sitting down watching the baseball game right and yeah like you mentioned earlier it it is harder on families to

go to the baseball game evidently some of the new stadiums they built you know people are priced out of them i mean the nfl has done the same thing i the same thing. You can't do that thing where you and your dad could go to the baseball game. Now fathers are thrown out of the homes en masse, and so many of them single-parent homes are huge. People don't have that relationship. A dad and son relationship is kind of always tough. Because dads are tough, and dads try and prep you for the world so they they try and teach you the world's tough because they they know what you

got to go through they try and prep you you know my dad was always trying to teach me things about you know i need to learn you know and i'd be like i don't want to mow the lawn it's stupid and it's pain in the ass and you know he was trying to teach me life lessons, which is what fathers do. I have a line I use with my grandkids that are in grammar school. I tell them study hard because the world is a cruel place for dummies. There you go.

That's very true. If you want to learn, be dumb because it's going to be cruel. It's cruel if you're smart, too. That's true. The less smarter or the more dumber, I don't know which is the appropriate way to say it, because I clearly flunked school.

It can be painful, so definitely less. Anything more you want to tease out of the book before we go? You know, I think the ending part, when people get to the end, they're just like, they're awestruck. So I won't even give a clue. It's just you got to get to the end. I referenced earlier that Jackie Robinson makes an appearance in the book.

So I'll give you a little clue there. And there's a couple of tips of the hat to The Field of Dreams and Sandlot, two of my other favorite baseball movies in the 42. There's also, you've got to look for them, but there's lots of baseball names and phrases that are kind of woven into the story that some people have picked up on that. So some pretty famous names. There you go.

We just said, we mentioned we were talking to this in the pre-show. We just said Michael G. Long has written several books on Jackie Robinson as well. So check those shows out. And what an amazing athlete he was. And you wonder when you look at his story, if it hadn't been for all the crap he had to put up with, the racism, the people trying to sabotage him at every length. I mean, they would throw things at him from the stands while he's trying to hit a ball. You know, you think about all the

stuff that he put up with from a mental standpoint and physical standpoint, how much greater he really was. He was an incredible athlete at all different sports when he was young. And so, you know, but, you know, hopefully, you know, we see more of what's going on with What's-His-Face in baseball. The gentleman who just hit the new records there. And is the season over? Can he get more? Or is it done? Season's over. So if he gets any more, it wouldn't count as a regular season.

But he matched. It's postseason now. So I want to add, you know, one other thing I hope people take away is that, because I'm seeing this in the reviews, is that when people get done with the novel, it's invoking very strong memories of childhood. And also, it's making them really take a step back and think about where we are at currently as a nation and where we could be headed because the trajectory we're on is not a good one. If you follow it to its final endpoint, it's a potentially very frightening scenario. So people are thinking about that as well when they get done reading the novel. Yeah, the reviews are beautiful. What a beautiful novel of relevance, depending on how things might be.

And whether you're a fan of baseball, a patriot, or just a heartwarming story, you won't be disappointed reading the book. Lots of great reviews on the thing and the five-star category. People really loved it so far. Order it up and give me your dot coms for people to find you on the interwebs. I wouldn't be very good if I didn't

do this, right? Here we go. Plug the book. It's all about the plugs. Obviously, Amazon, Apple Books, Google, even Walmart online. this right here we go plug the book it's all about the plugs so yeah obviously amazon apple books google even walmart online barnes and noble online i would really appreciate your support if you're a fan of baseball if you care about our country and where it is is and could be headed and i would really appreciate your support and reviews and get a real big head of steam going on in this thing. There you go. Order up the books, folks, wherever fine books are sold.

Remember, stay out of those dark alleyway bookstores. You might need a tetanus shot if you're going to them. The Death and Resurrection of Baseball, Echoes from a Distant Past by William R. Douglas. William, thank you very much for coming on the show we really appreciate it sir it's really been a pleasure chris really appreciate the opportunity i've had a lot of fun it's been fun we've been going through americana absolutely the sandlot you know the you know you know that guy with the funny face red hair kind of a fat face from the sandlot he's on tiktok, is he? He's making little videos

referencing the Sandlot. Maybe you should link up with him and send him a book or something. He's over there and he kind of looks a little bit... You know how those kid stars kind of look like they are when they're older? He has the same sort of look. That was such a great movie too.

In the book, the kids play a Sandlot game with no adults. That's awesome, man. That's awesome. Another tip of the hat. All right, bud. Thanks for tuning in to my audience. Be sure to go to YouTube.com, ForgeHusKrisVoss, Goodreads.com, ForgeHusKrisVoss,

all the places we are on the interwebs. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. God bless, everybody.