EPISODE 261: Baseball's Most Unlikely Hall of Famer? - With Tom Alesia

"Dave Bancroft should not be in the Hall of Fame."

That's how this week's guest Tom Alesia's new book "Beauty at Short: Dave Bancroft, the Most Unlikely Hall of Famer and His Wild Times in Baseball's First Century" starts - a curious way to begin the first (and only) biography of one of Cooperstown's most underappreciated inductees.

A competent, if not unremarkable major league shortstop (Philadelphia Phillies, New York Giants, Boston Braves, Brooklyn Robins), and manager (Braves; All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Chicago Colleens, South Bend Blue Sox) - Bancroft was well short on statistical credentials (e.g., .279 lifetime batting average; just 32 career HRs; .406 managerial winning percentage) to warrant obvious inclusion.

But his solid play with the two-time World Series winning Giants in the early 1920s came in handy when two of his fellow players from those teams - Bill Terry and Frankie Frisch - became influential members of the Hall's Veterans' Committee in the late 1960s, and squinted hard to tap their collegial teammate for induction in 1971.

Part of a stable of early 1970s enshrinees labeled as Terry and Frisch "Giant cronies" (e.g., Jessie Haines, Chick Hafey, Ross Youngs, George Kelly, Jim Bottemley, Freddie Lindstrom), Bancroft was nonetheless one of his era's more prominent and popular figures - a "player's player," both on and off the field.

By the end of this conversation with Alesia, you'll understand why Bancroft's membership in the Hall of Fame actually makes sense.

Beauty at Short: Dave Bancroft, the Most Unlikely Hall of Famer and His Wild Times in Baseball’s First Century - buy book here

EPISODE 165: Pioneers of AAGPBL Baseball – With Kat Williams

It’s our deepest dive yet into the legendarily one-of-a-kind All-American Girls Professional Baseball League with Marshall University Professor of Women’s Sport History Kat Williams (The All-American Girls After the AAGPBL: How Playing Pro Ball Shaped Their Lives).

Widely acknowledged as the forerunner of women's professional league sports in the United States, the pioneering AAGPBL featured more than 600 female players over the course of its twelve seasons between 1943-54 – spanning 15 mid-sized markets across the American Midwest, and drawing sizable crowds – including nearly a million fans at its peak in 1948.

In its first season, the league played a game that resembled more softball than baseball: the ball was regulation softball size (12 inches) and the pitcher's mound was only 40 feet from home plate – a third closer than that of men’s baseball.  Pitchers threw underhand windmill (as in softball) and the distance between bases was 65 feet – a full 25 feet shorter than in the men’s game. 

But, over the AAGPBL’s history, the rules gradually evolved to approach those of full-fledged men’s baseball; by the league’s final season in 1954: the ball was regulation baseball size, the mound distance was 60 feet (a mere six inches closer than the men’s game), and the basepaths were 85 feet long (just five feet shy of those of the men). 

To prove its competitive seriousness, the league peppered its on-field managerial ranks with male skippers of substantial major league baseball pedigrees – including eventual National Baseball Hall of Famers Max Carey and Jimmy Foxx.

The quality of play was consistently high, convincing even the most purist of traditional baseball fans that “the Girls could play.”  By 1947, the AAGBPL was even emulating the majors in identifying and recruiting talent from the fertile playing fields of baseball-mad Cuba – a story Williams helps illustrate with her new profile (Isabel “Lefty” Alvarez: The Improbable Life of a Cuban American Baseball Star) of one of the handful of émigrés who ultimately came to the US to become “All-American.”

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Red Lightning Books imprint of Indiana University Press – who offer our listeners a FREE CHAPTER of pioneering sportswriter Diana K. Shah’s new memoir A Farewell to Arms, Legs and Jockstraps!

     

The All-American Girls After the AAGPBL: How Playing Pro Ball Shaped Their Lives - buy book here

Isabel “Lefty” Alvarez: The Improbable Life of a Cuban American Baseball Star - buy book here