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Listen to Jerry, along with producer Brooke, to hear about a forgotten record holder Pud Galvin. Our first pitch is on Geddy Lee's baseball book.

A coffee table book opened a door: from Geddy Lee’s unlikely baseball shrine and a donation to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to a web of autographs that includes Ruth, Eisenhower, Sinatra, Fidel Castro, and all four Beatles. That curiosity trail led us to a bigger fixation—how stories survive—and straight into the life of Pud Galvin, the nineteenth-century workhorse who helped build the record book but slipped out of memory. See Dan Rather interview at 22:30 for Geddy talking baseball. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP_JvHFiNpo

We trace Galvin’s path from St. Louis to Buffalo to Pittsburgh, unpacking a résumé that still startles: two no-hitters, 646 complete games, the first to 300 wins, and 20-plus victories in ten seasons without a pennant. The backdrop matters. Walks shrank from eight balls to four in a single decade, rotations ran two deep, and ERA didn’t even exist until historians backfilled it in the twentieth century. Through it all, Galvin thrived on control, guile, and a pickoff move so sharp SABR chronicles him loading the bases only to erase every runner and taunting Cap Anson by walking a batter just to nab him at first.

We also reckon with a headline that feels modern: performance enhancement. Before an 1889 game, Galvin tried Brown-Séquard’s animal-extract “elixir,” tossed a two-hit shutout, and drew praise rather than outrage. Science later dismissed the tonic, but the episode exposes an old truth—athletes probe edges, and culture decides where the lines are. Finally, we follow the long road to recognition, where Buffalo historian Joseph M. Overfield’s advocacy helped pry open the Hall of Fame door in 1965, decades after Galvin died poor and largely forgotten. Join us for a brisk, story-rich tour that reframes early baseball, honors the researchers who rescue lost legends, and asks how we choose which heroes to remember.

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A 37-foot wall shouldn’t hold this many stories, yet Fenway’s Green Monster keeps surprising us. We bring a diehard Red Sox fan into the studio to unpack the history, the hidden details, and the real people who make that left field slab feel alive. From the old days of ads and tin to the deep forest green we know now, we trace how a practical fix for rooftop freeloaders became one of baseball’s most iconic features.

We go inside the wall—literally—to explore the manual scoreboard room, the thousands of metal number plates, and the signatures layered by generations of players. You’ll hear how the crew once relied on a park phone and tickers for out-of-town scores, why a yellow number signals runs-in-progress before flipping to white, and how this analog heartbeat still thrives in a digital age. We also decode the Morse code tribute to Tom and Jean Yawkey, revisit Duffy’s Cliff and the uphill sprints it forced, and clear up the Manny Ramirez myth with someone who’s seen the inside.

On the field, the Monster reshapes strategy. Line drives that sail out elsewhere slam off the wall for doubles, and left fielders must master its angles to survive. We talk ladder caroms, Monster seats, the art of playing the bounce, and why Carl Yastrzemski set the standard for reading ricochets. Even rivals admit it: stepping into Fenway, seeing that wash of green, and hearing the crowd swell is pure awe. If you love ballpark history, baseball lore, and the little quirks that change outcomes, this one’s for you.

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