Morey, Ritter & the Glory of Their Times

[WillowGrove]

I read the book as a 14 year old and have been taken by the era ever since. And when I found the CD a few years ago - whoa -you gotta listen to it. To hear Chief Meyers laugh at traveling with the LA Dodgers! Hans Lobert telling what JOhn MCGraw thought of him bunting with two strikes as a rookie? It is amazing stuff and makes any car ride or work out fly by!

I too would love to get a check or some other Larry Ritter stuff related to what I call, "the book".

For now I collect photos of the players in the book from the time they were interviewed for it. Picked up a great photo of Goose Goslin at his boat dock while sifting through the SPorting News' acrhives. Love it.

The gentleman running that set up told me he owns the original UNEDITED recordings from Ritter's interviews and they will be available to buy via download in about a year.

and so I shall wait......

[Chris Counts]

I first read the book when I was about 12 and I've been reading it now for nearly 40 years. It's still my favorite all-time baseball book. The Sam Crawford part is my favorite. He tells Ritter at the beginning of the interview that he doesn't have much time to talk, and then he proceeds to talk the writer's ears off! If I recall, Crawford's was the longest chapter in the book ...

[familytoad]

That &*%^$ book ( the all-time classic) has cost me thousands of dollars!

I had to get accompanying old baseball cards to go along with the chapters...including a bunch of Wahoo Sam cards, as he quickly became one of my favorite HOFers.

Some of those cards have moved along in trades, but the HOFers remain here...someday I may get back into that collecting niche, probably brought on by re-reading the book again...perhaps this approaching winter

[MacDice]

Originally Posted by familytoad

That &*%^$ book ( the all-time classic) has cost me thousands of dollars!

I had to get accompanying old baseball cards to go along with the chapters...including a bunch of Wahoo Sam cards, as he quickly became one of my favorite HOFers.

Some of those cards have moved along in trades, but the HOFers remain here...someday I may get back into that collecting niche, probably brought on by re-reading the book again...perhaps this approaching winter

I agree but for me it was the T-206 Rube Marquard card that was pictured in the book after getting that card I have added over 120 more T206 and have been attacked by the "monster"

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by WillowGrove

For now I collect photos of the players in the book from the time they were interviewed for it. Picked up a great photo of Goose Goslin at his boat dock while sifting through the SPorting News' acrhives. Love it.

The gentleman running that set up told me he owns the original UNEDITED recordings from Ritter's interviews and they will be available to buy via download in about a year.

and so I shall wait......

That would come as a big surprise to the Hall of Fame, to whom Larry donated his original tapes in 1970.
Hank Thomas

[Hot Springs Bathers]

At a SABR Deadball Era Committee "Boiling Out" conference about 5 years ago several members told about their last visit to Ritter's apartment in NYC. Rich may have been with me when we listened to their stories.

Apparently Mr. Ritter had a feeling that it was time to part with some of his stuff. He gave those visitors several autographed baseballs he had picked up on his tour.

Both of them said he was without question one of the nicest people they had ever met in their baseball research.

[T206Collector]

...actively promoted the book because they took part in the royalties. Here are a couple of letters including such promotions from Marquard and Snodgrass, both prolific signers of pre-war cards:

[T206Collector]

...the Rube was talking about in the letter above. Evidently the players had tons of these and used to pass them out, oftentimes autographed, as a way to further promote the book.

[jtschantz]

I am curious about a comment made in this thread about someone owning the original tapes. It has been my understanding that the baseball HOF owns the tapes. I really don't care who owns them, I just want to hear more! I also have read the book, but its the voices on the audio book that I really enjoy. I think I have it in every form (LP, casset tape, cd, and now on an ipod). If anyone has any information on the possible release of more of the tapes, let us know more detail if possible.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by jtschantz

I am curious about a comment made in this thread about someone owning the original tapes. It has been my understanding that the baseball HOF owns the tapes. I really don't care who owns them, I just want to hear more! I also have read the book, but its the voices on the audio book that I really enjoy. I think I have it in every form (LP, casset tape, cd, and now on an ipod). If anyone has any information on the possible release of more of the tapes, let us know more detail if possible.

The Hall of Fame is starting a 3-year project to digitize their entire collection, which includes Ritter's original reel-to-reel audio tapes. Perhaps they intend to make the results available online. Actually, they already have in their audio collection a digitized set of the tapes, which my partner and I, Neal McCabe, used for the currently available Highbridge set (5 hours, 4 cds) when we produced it in 1998. I don't know if this digitized version is available for listening at the hall. Ritter also donated a copy of the original tapes to the Joyce Collection of the University of Notre Dame. Here is a link to a list of the full contents, which I'm sure you will find interesting:

http://www.sports.nd.edu/Baseball/ritter.html

Of course, there is tons of fascinating stuff in the 120 hours of the original tapes that didn't make it into the published set. But, after working on this project for many months, we both agreed that the 5-hour limitation we were working with turned out to be oddly perfect for the goals we intended for our set, which was to recreate as much as possible the magic of Larry's book. For us, the material for any kind of a "sequel" just wasn't there, or we would have done one. Virtually everything we really wanted made it into the 5 hours available, and there was very, very, little that we regretted not being able to squeeze in. It was almost as if that was the way it was meant to be.
Hank Thomas