Hey, everybody, I'm Justin McGuire, and this is baseball by the Book, the podcast in which we talk to authors of baseball books past and present.

Today we are joined by Stephen Goldman.

He's the host of The Infinite Inning Podcast.

He's also a consulting editor for Baseball Prospectus, and he's the author of Forging Genius, The Making of Casey Stengel.

Today he's here to talk about his new book. It's called Baseball's Brief Lives,

player stories inspired by the infinite inning. Let's get started.

Hi, Stephen. Welcome to Baseball by the book. Thank you. I'm so pleased to be here. I've been aware of

the show for a long time. I've listened to it. And as a long time baseball writer, I thought, well,

why not me? I've written baseball books. But now the day has finally come. I can check that off of my

bucket list. Oh, well, I'm glad to hear that. Well, let's talk about the infinite inning

because the subtitle of the book is player stories inspired by it. So for people who, again,

I think a lot of my listeners are probably familiar with your podcast and probably your listeners

so they know about it. But for those who maybe don't or who haven't picked up the book,

can you just explain a little bit

about how the podcast inspired this book?

The show's been running for, I think, a little over five years now. I started it in 2017.

And after, as I said, a long career writing for baseball prospectus and various other sites and

publications, I wanted to do the kind of baseball store. writing for baseball prospectus and various other sites and publications.

I wanted to do the kind of baseball stories that I enjoy doing and hope that there was an

audience for them. And that kind of story is often but not always historical and sometimes

is not on the nose of baseball. And yet there's

always a baseball connection. What I find myself saying on the show quite often is that baseball is

...