A 1912 T202 Hassan Triple Folder tobacco card featuring Hughie Jennings and Ty Cobb.

We’re happy to finally have filmmaker, journalist and author Greg Klein (@JYDbook) on the pod for a chat his new book, his old book and more..

To start, we discuss Greg’s new book, The Paper Tigers, a fictional account of a real-life incident in baseball history. After Ty Cobb was suspended in 1912 for going into the stands and attacking a fan, his teammates refused to play a game in Philadelphia, leaving manager Hughie Jennings to find replacement players. The novel tells the story of some of those players, including two con men and a seminary student., with the central character being a local barmaid who was the sister of one of the con men and married to the other. We talk about how Greg got the idea for the book, which was originally a screenplay, balancing facts and historical fiction, the truth behind Cobb’s attack on the fan, the connection to the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, baseball movies and more.

(22:20) - From there, it’s mostly wrestling chat. We talk about Greg’s book The King of New Orleans about the Junkyard Dog, Sylvester Ritter. We talk about Greg’s fandom growing up in suburban DC but also getting to see Houston wrestling, the rise of JYD in Mid-South Wrestling for Bill Watts, his popularity in New Orleans and the rest of the territory, his leaving for the WWF, Watts trying to replace him with other black wrestlers, Greg meeting JYD in later years and more. We also talk about our shared love of Mid-South as a whole, some of its more famous angles, the transition to the UWF, studio wrestling vs arena wrestling and lot of other wrestling topics.

There were a lot of planned topics left on the table, including Greg now living in Cooperstown and how the Baseball Hall of Fame was effected by the pandemic and past and present work stoppages in the sport, his wrestling career and being trained by Adrian Street and lots of other fun stuff, so we will definitely try to get Greg back on in the future.

Note: We had some Skype issues during recording, so hopefully the editing was not too egregious and the flow of the conversation was maintained.

Thanks for listening.

We are happy to welcome The Cubs Fan (@luchablog) back to the pod for the annual post CMLL Anniversary show under very unusual circumstances to say the least.

First off, there’s a match-by-match breakdown of the show, including discussing the matches that did not take place, either due to injury or COVID-related illness. Which matches were exceeded expectations, which did not and how did the luchadors that getting a chance to shine in the spotlight fare on the night?

Then, we discuss how lucha as a whole has dealt with the pandemic in Mexico. Who has been able to run shows, how have the wrestlers coped with no income for months now, how have the promotions and officials taken care of them (or not)?

Next, with voting still taking place at time of recording, we examine all the lucha candidates on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame ballot. After the logjam in the lucha category was thinned out last year, how do the prospects of old and new candidates look for the likes of Los Brazos, Caristico and others?

We end the show with some quick postseason baseball chat, with the playoffs Astarting tomorrow and a discussion of the next generation video game consoles. Is it worth getting a new PS5 or Xbox Series X at launch?

Also, we are hoping to very soon launch a new project on the website that may or may not have a podcast component to it. Keep an eye on the website and Twitter for details.

Thanks for listening.