Episode 335: "Baseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years"

Baseball by the Book

Justin McGuire

Authors, Baseball, Books, Statistics, Sports, History, Arts

4.9 • 655 Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Author Steve Gietschier joins us to discuss his new book chronicling baseball history from the 1930s to the 1950s. We discuss how MLB survived the Depression, the rise of the radio, World War II, the end of the color barrier and arrival of big league baseball in California.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody, I'm Justin McGuire, and this is baseballball by the Book, the only podcast that matters.
0:22.3	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.
0:30.4	Today we are joined by Steve Gittshire. He's here to talk about his new book, Baseball, the turbulent mid-century years. Let's get started.
0:41.7	Hi, Steve. Welcome back to baseball by the book. Hi, Justin. Good to be with you. Now, a lot of my
0:46.8	listeners, I'm sure, are familiar with Harold Seymour and Dorothy Seymour Mills, and especially
0:52.7	their seminal books, Baseball the Early Years and Baseball the Golden Age, and especially their seminal books, baseball the early years and
0:55.8	baseball the Golden Age, which, you know, track the history of baseball from its origins in the
1:01.1	19th century, essentially like through the deadball era and the 20s. These were really pioneering
1:06.2	works of baseball history. And again, like I said, I'm sure a lot of the people who are listening
1:10.0	to this podcast are familiar with them. You write in your book that you were in some ways inspired
1:15.7	by those two and their works. Can you talk a little bit about how they inspired you and whether
1:20.6	you see baseball the turbulent mid-century years as kind of an extension of those two books?
1:25.8	You know what I mean? Well, first of all, as you
1:27.6	pointed out, the two books that the Seymour's wrote, the two chronological books, let's forget
1:34.0	about for the moment baseball, the people's game. We're seminal. The first volume was based on Dr. Seymour's
1:42.7	dissertation, which I think most people believe is the first
1:46.5	dissertation in history awarded to anyone writing about baseball. And then the second book was a
1:54.0	fitting sequel. It appeared, I think, 11 years after the first one. And my guess is that they
2:00.5	had plans to write a third volume,
2:02.7	but age and the ravages of time caught up with them. Many years ago, I was part of a panel
2:13.2	discussion talking about the future of baseball research, where the field stood and where it was
2:20.3	going. And Dorothy Seymour Mills, who I did not know at the time, was also on that panel.
	...

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