Hello and welcome to Issue 005 of Shoeless Notes, the email newsletter for the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum and Baseball Library in Greenville, South Carolina.
We started this newsletter after the conclusion of the first season of my podcast, My Baseball History, so it’s possible that some of you aren’t aware of it. With the MLB season wrapping up soon, the second season of MBH will begin shortly thereafter. I figured now would be a good time to remind people about it, and fill you in on what it is, if you haven’t listened to any of the episodes yet.
In addition to revamping our website and increasing our social media presence with new Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages, I thought another great way to bring our museum into the digital age would be to start a podcast. I realized before even recording a single episode, though, that it would have to be about a topic more broad than just Shoeless Joe Jackson. Joe passed away in 1951 and hasn’t played a Major League game in 100 years, so it’s not like there’s an unlimited amount of new information coming out about his life and career. Do we discover a handful of new things every year? Absolutely. But is that enough to have a regular podcast, without quickly becoming redundant? Not quite.
Knowing that I would eventually run out of fresh material if the show were only about Joe, so I decided to make a podcast about baseball history. There will never be a shortage of stories we can tell or topics we can discuss which are related to baseball history! But as someone who listens to podcasts semi-frequently, and is always willing to give a new podcast a try for at least one episode, I’ve found that I am pretty particular when it comes to what I enjoy listening to. Long podcasts where it’s just one person talking the whole time don’t really do it for me. An individual episode may be interesting, but a weekly or monthly series starts to feel dull after a while.
I noticed that I love podcasts where each episode is an interview with a new guest, even if the guest is someone I’ve maybe never heard of before. If they’re speaking about a topic I enjoy, I’m willing to give it a shot. If they’re an expert on that subject, even better! There are tons of 5-minute interviews where every answer is canned and phony, but that’s not something that interests me. I think there’s a hole in the sports content universe when it comes to in-depth, authentic interviews. I also tend to like interviews which are done in person (as opposed to over the phone or via skype/zoom) because the audio quality is better, and the conversations seem more natural and intimate.
I thought this would be a great opportunity to create the type of podcast which I would want to listen to. And that’s what My Baseball History is. A long form interview podcast where each episode, I speak to a different person who has some sort of affiliation to the game of baseball. They could be a current or former player, manager, executive, or scout. A broadcaster, a photographer, a researcher, or historian. A collector, an author, an artist, or a fan. To me, one of the things that makes baseball so great is that it takes all of these characters to create the full experience. It’s more than just the 9 players on each side. We’ve seen that this season watching games with empty stadiums. Are we technically watching the sport being played? Yeah. But is it truly baseball? It sure doesn’t seem like it.
The official artwork of My Baseball History, by Gary Cieradkowski
Once I had the premise down for the show, I got in touch with my friend GARY CIERADKOWSKI and had some artwork made up. The idea was to have some old school baseball equipment in an old school locker. A quintessential locker room stool sitting in front of the locker, with a vintage looking microphone on top. The jersey and hat hanging in the locker are reimaginations of the 1908 Greenville Spinners uniform which Joe wore when he played for the team that year. The glove, cleats, and bat are all based on photos of Joe’s own personal equipment, too. To a casual observer, they’ll just see a generic baseball image and understand that it’s a podcast about baseball history. But having those little easter eggs related to Joe make the artwork more meaningful to me.
1908 Greenville Spinners team photo (Joe Jackson is 5th from left)
Next, I knew I needed some music for the show. A theme song, some music to play between segments, and an outro song. I used to run a record label in Chicago and have been lucky enough to become friends with a lot of the musicians in my favorite bands over the years. I got in touch with my friend Ryan Starinsky from THE SIDEKICKS and SLUGGING PERCENTAGE. Ryan created an original theme song for the show, and recorded a beautiful acoustic version of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” which we play at the end of every episode. My friend Randy Moore from GET MARRIED and THE MOORE FAMILY BAND made a baseball organ version of one of my favorite Get Married songs, and we use that to transition from segment to segment within an episode. Music has been a big part of my life for a long time, so it’s really cool to me to be able to incorporate that part of my life into this project. I’m grateful and lucky to have talented friends who are generous with their time.
Okay, so I had the premise of the show, I had artwork for the show, and I had music. After buying some really pro gear to make sure the sound quality of every episode would be the absolute best it could be, the only thing left to do was to get in touch with a handful of my favorite people to talk to and see if they’d like to be guests. Lucky for me, everyone I asked said yes!
Season One of My Baseball History starts out with a short episode about me, where I introduce the premise of the podcast and give my personal history and background. I talk about the history of the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum and tell the story of how I came to be its Executive Director. Every episode after that initial episode is the true form of the podcast.
I do a short introduction at the top, letting you know who the interview guest is for the episode, and then we play the interview in its entirety. After the interview ends, we have a segment called “What’d You Think, Mom?” where I sit down with my actual mom and we do a recap of the interview we just listened to, with some historical perspective and personal stories peppered in. Then there’s an outro where I usually tell a quick story about baseball history that has some relevance to the interview from that episode, I ask a trivia question that listeners can answer on twitter to win prizes, and that’s it.
Our guest list for Season One was great. I made the concession not to have every episode be about Shoeless Joe, but I’m going to try to have the first interview episode of each season have some direct significance to Joe. That episode for Season One was an interview with MIKE MILLER, who is one of the world’s leading experts on the professional playing career of Shoeless Joe Jackson, and has volunteered as a tour guide at the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum and Baseball Library in Greenville for over a decade.
Next up was GRAIG KREINDLER, who is a renowned baseball artist, historian and researcher who takes old black and white photos of baseball players, characters, and iconic moments, and paints them in stunningly realistic color. I traveled to Kansas City, Missouri to speak with PHIL S. DIXON, who is an author, public speaker, researcher, and historian who has been focusing on the Negro Leagues for more than 40 years. I took another road trip to Dyersville, Iowa to speak with CRAIG PURCELL, who is a journalist originally from Iowa, and is a tour guide at the Field of Dreams Movie Site.
The second half of Season One was equally as strong as the first half. I spoke with BRIAN BERNARDONI, who is the Official Historian of Wrigley Field, and has been a tour guide at the park since 1998. Fate brought my next two guests to me all the way from the UK. JOEY MELLOWS (who you may know on Twitter as @BaseballBrit) is a chap who loves baseball and set out to learn as much about it as he possibly could by going to games in Korea and taking a summer-long road trip across America. Next up was ANDY BROWN, who is an award-winning British artist who has traveled the world painting ballparks and baseball games live, along with the many people who surround them.
Another road trip brought me to Cincinnati, where I interviewed WARREN BROWN, who was the Bat Boy for the “Big Red Machine” Cincinnati Reds from 1970-1972. The final episode to air from Season One was actually the first interview I recorded, with TIM CARROLL, who is a world-renowned baseball card pop artist who has his works displayed in museums across the country, including at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
If you click on any of the names above, it will take you to the “liner notes” page from that episode, where you can follow along as you listen. If there is a topic being discussed which you would like to research more in-depth, the liner notes have a picture and a link or two to help contextualize the conversation. It definitely isn’t necessary to read along as you listen, but many listeners have found them extremely helpful. Just another resource I tried to provide to make the experience more enjoyable and informative.
If you want to follow the podcast on social media, we’re @shoelesspodcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We’re on every major podcast platform, and a bunch of the obscure ones, too: Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, TuneIn, Stitcher, Deezer, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Overcast, Downcast, BeyondPod… I swear those are all totally real, absolutely NOT made up podcast platforms, and you can listen to My Baseball History on each of them. If you prefer to listen to your podcasts on a different platform and can’t find MBH already there, let me know and I’ll get it added for you.
It’s been a challenge to get new interviews accomplished in person with so many travel restrictions during this time, but I’ve managed to already get six interviews done, and have a handful more scheduled. The new season will have interviews about Babe Ruth, about the Philadelphia Athletics, and about the true origin story of the game of baseball. We’ll talk with a super collector who has dedicated his life to the pursuit of collecting anything and everything associated with one of the game’s greatest hitters ever. We have an interview with someone who not only knew Joe and Katie Jackson, but was given Black Betsy, Joe’s favorite bat, after the Jacksons passed away. And much, much more. Season Two is coming soon, so subscribe to the show to make sure that all new episodes get downloaded directly to your device. Until then, go back and listen to the episodes from Season One which sound interesting to you.
Each newsletter, we’re going to spotlight one new member as a token of our appreciation. This issue, since we’re already talking about podcasts, we’d like to tell you a little bit about Lou Olsen, who recently became a member of our museum.
Lou, his father, and his brother-in-law at Game 6 of the 2018 NLCS. One of the greatest baseball games of Lou’s entire life.
Lou is (and I promise, I’m quoting here) “just some guy who lives in Wisconsin” who is an IT professional and dog dad by day. He collects mostly baseball stuff and has a deep-seated love for John Stockton. But he also helps co-host the PsyPhy Original Podcast and The Hall of Very Good Podcast.
Each week, Hall of Very Good co-hosts Shawn Anderson and Lou Olsen sit down and talk to people in and around the game of baseball that help make America’s Pastime great. They recently surpassed 250 episodes posted, which is an incredible accomplishment, but when you look at their guest list, it’s even more impressive: Wade Boggs, Ferguson Jenkins, Dave Winfield, Dale Murphy, Ozzie Smith, Jim Kaat, John Kruk, even Larry King! Though I must say, I’m pretty partial to THIS EPISODE.
Lou heard about the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum when Joey Mellows and Andy Brown were in Chicago staying at my house (which is when we recorded our episodes of My Baseball History). They had each previously been guests on HOVG, and sent pictures of each other trying on the old time White Sox uniforms to Lou who immediately asked where this was happening and who owned those old jerseys!
Lou saw Eight Men Out when he was in his teens, so those uniforms were immediately recognizable to him. Seeing that film for the first time introduced him to the Black Sox Scandal in a way which allowed him to really be able to process the gravity of it. Not only the gravity of the cheating, but the gravity of what players were paid. Lou said “at that time, ball players made very little money, so I remember always feeling like those guys did wrong, but the understood the ‘why.’”
HOVG has had many guests whose area of expertise is the Negro Leagues. From Bob Kendrick of the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, to Phil S. Dixon, to Graig Kreindler and Jay Caldwell. So it was no surprise to me when Lou said his “Time Machine Game” would probably be any game during the 1942 Negro League World Series. Satchel Paige and Hilton Smith on one side. Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson on the other. He doesn’t even care that KC swept the series. Getting to watch those players on the biggest stage would be about as cool as it gets for him.
If you want to have a chance to be the new member we spotlight in our next newsletter, you can BECOME A MEMBER of our museum at whichever level best fits your current budget.
As always, thanks for being here. Until next time…
-dan
Dan, I don’t know how you do it, but with each issue, you manage to top the last one! It was really interesting for me to read more about the history of your podcast and how it came to be, including the music and artwork involved. I love the fact that you’ve traveled specifically to meet particular people in order to interview them and pick their brains! You choose your victims well! I’m going to go back and binge watch/listen to the first season and I can’t wait for the next season to come. I wish I had the words to express just how much your newsletter and your dedication with every project you undertake means to me. You encourage me to research more and (hopefully) expand my knowledge. Keep up the fabulous work you’re doing!