Hi, everybody. I'm Justin McWire, 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 we are joined by author Jason Cannon.

He's here to talk about his new book, Charlie Murphy, the iconoclastic showman

behind the Chicago Cubs. Let's get right to it. Hi, Jason. Welcome to baseball by the book.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me, Justin. When the Cubs won the World Series in 2016,

there was, of course, a lot of attention given to the fact that they hadn't won the World Series before that since 1908.

And there was a lot of attention, therefore, given to that 1908 team and that era.

And people might have heard at the time about Tinker and Ivers and Chance and maybe Mordecai Three Finger Brown and some of the other people associated

with that team. But one guy I don't think we heard too much about in 2016 was Charlie Murphy,

the guy that you wrote about. And in fact, he was a key figure in that 1908 Cubs team. He owned

the Cubs from 1906 to 1913. And in that time, they won not just at 1908 World

Series, but they won it in 1907. They won the Penn at 1906 in 1910. They were really the first

dynasty of the 20th century, the first baseball dynasty of the 20th century. How important a role

did Charlie Murphy play in that dynasty?

Well, I think he played a very important role. I think history has forgotten about Charlie's

contributions. I think for a couple of the reasons that you mentioned, you have the double

play combination that over the last century has taken on

almost mythical proportions. You also have three finger brown. Again, another outstanding

person, a ball player with a great career who has a mythical story of his own. And so those four particular players, I think over the course of time,

have really taken up the most amount of space, if you will,

...