Hey, everybody, I'm Justin McGuire.

And this is the first ever bonus episode of Baseball by the book.

If you're listening to this, that means you support Baseball by the book on Patreon, and I'm extremely grateful for that.

Your generous financial contribution will allow me to keep bringing you

interviews with the top baseball authors in the world. Just a reminder that our next bonus episode,

a panel discussion on baseball movies of the 1980s, will be available on October 16th to all

patrons who give $5 a month or more.

Okay, let's get right to it.

We're here to talk about a classic baseball book.

The glory of their times, the story of the early days of baseball, told by the men who played

it, was written by Lawrence S. Ritter and originally published in September 1966.

The first edition of the book included interviews with 22 players

whose careers ranged from 1898 to 1945,

including Rube Marquard, Fred Snodgrass, Harry Hooper, Sam Crawford, and Paul Weiner.

Four additional interviews were added in subsequent editions.

Ritter, who is an economics professor and a department chairman at NYU,

said he got the idea for the book in 1961 after the death of Ty Cobb.

To do the interviews for the glory of their times, he wrote,

I traveled 75,000 miles, searching for the glory of their times, he wrote, I traveled 75,000 miles searching for the heroes of a bygone era.

They were not easy to find.

When he did find the players, he sat with them for hours,

listening to them tell their stories into his tape recorder.

...