46/50 - From the Vault: Our Interview with Larry Lester and the Best and Worst Super Bowl Halftime Performances (From the Vault)

46/50 - From the Vault: Our Interview with Larry Lester and the Best and Worst Super Bowl Halftime Performances (From the Vault)

Author: A podcast about baseball, music and culture. January 2, 2025 Duration: 55:46
Craig and Rex are taking two weeks off so we reached into the vault this week to present two segments from shows past. The first segment is our January 2021 interview with Larry Lester, baseball historian and co-founder of the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. This interview took place just a few short weeks after MLB officially recognized seven leading Negro Leagues from 1920 to 1948 as Major League Baseball. We talked about the process for researching and certifying Ne...

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…