Effectively Wild Episode 1536: Three Days at the Ballpark

May 1, 2020

EWFI
Facing the prospect of a season without fans in the stands, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley console themselves and fight baseball withdrawal by revisiting classic accounts of going to games. The authors of three revered books based on single games—Arnold Hano, the author of A Day in the Bleachers (1955), Dan Okrent, the author of Nine Innings (1985), and Rob Neyer, the author of Power Ball (2018)—join the show for a conversation about the enduring appeal of the genre their books belong to, the challenge of writing a book that describes a single game, the different approaches they took, the evolution of baseball’s spectator experience, Arnold’s memories of going to games in the 1920s and 1930s and seeing legends like Babe Ruth, Mel Ott, and Carl Hubbell, baseball’s capacity to offer comfort, and more.