Hey, everybody, I'm Justin McGuire, and this is Baseball by the Book, the only podcast that matters.

That's right, folks, you are once again listening to Baseball by the Book, the podcast in which we talk to authors of baseball books past and present.

Today, author Alan H. Levy joins the podcast. He is a professor of American history at Slippery Rock

University, and he's the author of several books, including biographies of Rue Baudel and Floyd

Patterson. Today he's here to talk about his new book. It's called Walter Alston, the rise of a

manager from the minors to the baseball hall of fame.

I'd like to thank Sean Crest for his help in putting this episode together.

And as always, thanks to Jay Daniel, who does all our social media graphics.

Let's get started.

Hi, Alan. Welcome to Baseball by the book. Hi, Justin. Happy to baseball by the book.

Hi, Justin. Happy to be here.

When people think of Dodgers managers, we often think of these kind of bigger-than-life personalities like Tommy LaSorda and Leo DeRosha.

I mean, Lassorda was a guy who when I was growing up was a Dodgers manager and he was, you know, he was on TV all the

time. He was a celebrity, you know, as famous as any of his players. DeRosha was a guy that even when

he wasn't an active manager was appearing on TV shows like the Munsters and things that I saw in reruns

when I was growing up, these guys, like I said, were sort of bigger than life personalities.

Walter Alston was actually a more successful manager with the Dodgers than either of those guys,

yet he's not nearly as famous and didn't have that kind of a media profile.

Why do you think he doesn't get as much credit and isn't maybe as famous as those guys?

I think it goes very much to the heart of what made Alston tick as a human being. His

personality was in no way a contrivance, in no way he was he posturing. He was very naturally

tuned given his small town, Ohio background to being someone who enjoyed fitting in with a

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