In the Beginning...

Two years ago, I set out to speak to a few baseball players for a book project I was working on. A few. You know, maybe five or ten. I was no stranger to interviews, having already interviewed more than 100 people (including WWII veterans, politicians, and notable attorneys) for other books.

How did I begin? With the equivalent of picking a name out of a hat. I perused some team rosters from the 1950s and selected a player I thought would be interesting to speak to: Paul Foytack. I looked him up, and thus (quite innocently) began my project. Foytack was terrific and interesting. He'd even played in Japan and pitched to the great home run king Oh.

I was entranced and enthused.

Next up I thought it would be neat to try to reach the man whose picture graced the first baseball card I ever owned - former Met Craig Swan, whose 1978 Topps card was my first. After some phone tag, we connected, and I conducted another amazing interview.

At this point, I really had no focus or theme. I was just interested in getting a sampling of some former players so I could give my readers an authentic feel.

Incidentally, these weren't my first baseball-related interviews. Some years back, probably around 2001 or so, I had spoken to Helen Hannah Campbell, daughter of Truck Hannah, who was a teammate of Babe Ruth's. That bit was just a tangent to the rest of our conversation, though I was tantalized enough by it to write down  what she said about her father...just in case I ever had occasion to use them:

Daddy said he was six-foot-two and weighed 225 pounds. When he was with the Yankees, a bunch of them would go to a place called Toots Shors, a favorite steakhouse in Manhattan. Well, they were walking down Fifth Avenue, and he was the smallest of the whole gang. They were all men with good appetites, and they were tired and hungry after a game. They probably made off with a half a side of beef. I’m sure I met Babe Ruth and shook his hand, because he loved kids, but I don’t remember because I was only five years old. When Daddy was with the Yankees, Lou Gehrig had not appeared on the scene yet. But in the following years, there were barnstorming teams. One year [1927] Daddy and I went to a game at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles where Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were in uniform managing the exhibition teams. Daddy wanted me to meet Ty Cobb, who was there as a spectator.

More to come. Stay tuned...