Hey, everybody. I'm Justin Mcuire. 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 Tom Alicia, who's here to talk about his new book, Beauty at Short, Dave Bancroft, the most unlikely Hall of Famer and his wild times

in baseball's first century. Let's get started.

Hi, Tom. Welcome to Baseball by the book. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for being here

today. It's my pleasure. I have to tell you, I have always

been kind of fascinated by the topic of obscure Hall of Famers, because it's a seemingly contradictory

concept, right? How can you be famous and obscure at the same time? Yet those of us who know

baseball history know that there are in fact Hall of Famers who are kind of obscure in the grand scheme of things.

After all, not everybody can be Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Derek Jeter.

You know, there's like legitimately famous people, but then there's a lot of other people in the

Hall of Fame who you have to be kind of a real baseball history buff to even know the name,

never mind know anything about them. And I think that Dave Bancroft falls

well into that category. He's a guy whose name I knew just because at some point in my life,

I had memorized everybody who's in the hall of fame. But I have to admit, I didn't know much about

him other than the fact that he was a shortstop who played a long time ago and had an interesting

nickname. In your book, you talk a little bit

about how you got interested in the topic of Dave Bancroft. And I'm wondering if you could share

that because I thought it was pretty interesting. I didn't know him either. Ten years ago,

my family was in northern Wisconsin, pretty isolated spot. And the closest city was Superior

Wisconsin. That's up in a corner. The Superior

Wisconsin is a hockey football place and that, you know, where your curling Olympians are from,

...