Hey, everybody, I'm Justin McGuire.

And this is baseball by the book, the only podcast that matters.

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

Well, folks, if you were listening to this episode on the day it comes out, it's St. Patrick's Day, March 17,

2022. And in honor of that, today's episode focuses on a guy who was born in Ireland in the

19th century and played a big role in the development of early baseball. We're joined today by

Pat O'Neill. He is the co-author, along with Tom Kaufman, of Ted Sullivan, Barnacle of Baseball.

Let's get started.

Hi, Pat. Welcome to Baseball by the book.

Hey, Justin. I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ted Sullivan is a guy who, in his day, was called the Daddy daddy of baseball. He was called the godfather of the

national game. But I have to be honest with you, even as somebody who is pretty knowledgeable

about baseball history, I hadn't come across this guy's name very often. Maybe I had once or twice

when I was reading about 19th century baseball, but it certainly isn't a name that ever stuck with me. How did you find out about Ted Sullivan and his extraordinary life? And why did

you think it was worth writing about? Well, and that's a good question. Justin, we, you know, I came across

him. I was writing some articles for the Kansas Star in the spring, just history sort of articles. And,

you know, 20 years ago. And I remember looking into the Kansas City unions in 1884 talking about,

really that was Kansas' first professional baseball team. I mean, the union association,

you can argue was the might have been beaten by some of the minor league teams but for a year

Kansas City was in the major leagues for the first time and when I'm reading about that that

that that summer it kept referring to a guy named red Sullivan as the manager and he was kind of a

character I got that and and it mentioned somewhere I saw back then that he had been born in

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