205 - Baseball at War: Working and Playing Ball in the Bethlehem Steel League w/ William Ecenbarger

205 - Baseball at War: Working and Playing Ball in the Bethlehem Steel League w/ William Ecenbarger

Author: A podcast about baseball, music and culture. June 20, 2024 Duration: 44:48
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author William "Bill" Ecenbarger is our guess this week to discuss his latest book, "Work, Fight, or Play Ball: How Bethlehem Steel Helped Baseball's Stars Avoid World War I" (Temple University Press 2024). The book chronicles how Bethlehem Steel's "safe shelter" industrial league in 1917 and 1918 helped Major League players like "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Dutch Leonard and a young Babe Ruth avoid the draft and military service during World War I. In part ...

You might find yourself wondering how a perfect double play and a classic guitar riff are connected, or what a stadium anthem says about the year it topped the charts. That’s the kind of territory explored on Hooks & Runs. This isn't just a series of interviews, though you’ll hear conversations with fascinating figures from the sports and music industries. It’s also a place for thoughtful commentary, where the co-hosts draw lines between the crack of a bat and a cultural moment, between a legendary concert and a legendary season. They dig into both current headlines and forgotten history, finding the stories where pop culture and the national pastime intersect. Each episode feels like a relaxed, insightful conversation that could start with a baseball statistic and end with a music theory debate. New installments of this podcast arrive roughly every Thursday, offering a consistent dose of their unique blend. If you’ve ever felt that the narratives of baseball and the rhythms of music speak a similar language, this podcast provides the commentary to translate.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Hooks & Runs
Podcast Episodes
245 - Disco Was Fun! Baseball, Music & Culture in 1978 w/ David Krell [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:18
David Krell is author of "1978: Baseball and America in the Disco Era," (University of Nebraska Press, 2025). His book explores the wild 1978 major league season with features on the American League East race that went t…
244 - Power Outage! The 1979 Houston Astros [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:25
This week, Craig and Rex take a deep dive into the 1979 Houston Astros, the only team since 1947 to hit fewer than 50 home runs while posting a winning record and also the last team to hit more triples than home runs in…
239 - Willie McCovey: Remembering a Forgotten Superstar w/ Chris Haft [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:36
Author Chris Haft's new book, Willie McCovey: A Giant Among Giants (University of Nebraska Press, 2025) adds to the baseball literature by examining the life and baseball times of perhaps the most forgotten member of the…