Hoover Almost Takes Over Baseball (1951)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2024

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s March 10th. This day in 1951, the owners of Major League Baseball are looking for a new commissioner, and a surprising name appears on the list — FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss why Hoover was a candidate, and what these two institutions — the FBI and MLB — meant in the post-war era.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:11.0	This day, March 10, 1951, it's spring training, the grass is coming in, the birds are chirping,
0:17.3	baseball season is right around the corner, and Major League Baseball is looking for a new commissioner,
0:23.2	looking to maybe replace its existing commissioner.
0:26.0	So in this moment, the owners of Major League Baseball teams
0:29.7	met at the Shoremeade Hotel in Miami
0:32.1	to vote on possibly finding a new Major League Baseball
0:35.2	Commissioner. The vote was meant to be secret, but of course it leaked and soon after on this day the
0:40.9	New York Times reports that one of the names being floated was
0:44.9	FBI director J Edgar Hoover. Hoover didn't of course get the job but even the idea that these
0:51.5	two American institutions are linking up in this moment. It says a lot about
0:55.6	the era and the place that both baseball and the FBI have in the public imagination
1:00.8	coming out of World War II heading into the 1950s. So let's talk about
1:05.4	MLB's g-man flirtation here as always Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly
1:10.8	Carter Jackson of Wesley. Hello there. Hello Wellesley. Hello there.
1:13.0	Hello Jody.
1:14.2	Hey there.
1:15.0	We haven't talked much baseball in this show.
1:16.6	I think we did an episode about how the Star Spangled Banner
1:19.5	came to be sung at Baseball games.
1:22.4	We've touched on sports here and there.
	...

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