[200 years
ago this week, “Father of
Baseball” Henry Chadwick was born. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied
Chadwick and other 19th century baseball histories, leading up to
this special weekend post on my new podcast on 19th century baseball
and much more!]
This Sunday
I’ll drop the sixth Inning (episode, but y’know) of my weekly narrative history
podcast, The Celestials’ Last
Game: Baseball, Bigotry, and the Battle for America. If you haven’t had
a chance to listen yet, you can catch up on all the prior Innings at that
hyperlink! Here I wanted to reflect on a few quick takeaways from my first
experience with podcasting:
1)
Brevity: When I was initially planning the
podcast, I anticipated something like 45 minutes for each Inning, and honestly
was expecting that they might end up more like an hour long (as y’all know I’ve
got a lot to say, and this is a story I really want to tell in full). But in
writing and especially in recording them, I found that about 25 minutes was
much more of a sweet spot, not only for me but also for my ideal audience
experience. There’s always more to say, and I very much hope listeners will
continue to research and read and learn about all the histories and issues that
I’m highlighting. But I also believe it’s far better to leave them wanting a
bit more than to overstay my welcome, and I hope I can keep applying that
lesson to all my public scholarly work, where I’d say it’s a universally good
goal. Soul of wit and all!
2)
Honesty: There are various reasons why the
book project that was my longstanding expectation of how I’d tell this story never
quite came together, some of them entirely outside of my own control. But one
significant factor is that there’s a dearth of information on some of its core
histories, including the details of the Celestials themselves (both in their
New England semi-pro league and in their 1881 final game in San Francisco). I
couldn’t quite figure out how to frame that in a book manuscript, at least not
without creating overtly fictionalized sections which just wasn’t how I wanted
to approach it. But in a podcast, I could simply talk about those limitations,
share how I was hoping to fill in some gaps with educated speculation, and hope
that listeners would appreciate my honesty and be willing to go on this journey
with me.
3)
Storytelling: That ability to share honest
reflections was one nice effect of creating my first oral scholarly work, but
even more exciting was the way in which it felt like I could lean into
storytelling as a central goal. I’ve long argued that stories, narratives, offer
us ways to learn about our histories, our communities, our identities that at
the very least complement, and in many ways transcend, more informational or pedantic
modes of communication. That’s why I wanted to create a narrative history project
for my 7th book—and when that book transformed into a podcast, I was
able to lean into that emphasis on stories and storytelling even more fully and
happily. I hope the results speak to you as much as the process has to me!
Next
series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. Hope
you’ll check out the podcast!
