About this episode

This episode explores Zane Grey's story 'Sunday Ball', reflecting on the early days of baseball and its impact on small towns in America.

"Sunday Ball" by author Zane Grey gives us a rare look at the early days of baseball in middle America, what it meant to small towns, what people thought of it, and in this case, what moral dilemmas were caused when certain teams and towns started playing baseball on Sundays. Zane Grey's story is a window into time, and a true one, because we know that he played minor league ball for years, earning a scholarship to The University of Pennsylvania, where he played ball and studied to become a dentist, following in the footsteps of his father. But his real passion wasn't dentistry-it was writing, and he found every opportunity he could during his professional career as a dentist to write. His first success came at age 37, with the book "The Shortstop", from which we have taken Chapter 13, "Sunday Ball", at the recommendation of one of our listeners, Dr. Gerald G Gelle, DDS, who is a dentist who also enjoys baseball as well as 1001 Classic Short Stories Podcast and Zane Grey. Zane Grey, by the way, went on to write 88 great stories, mostly westerns, of which 111 movies were made, and he also became an avid outdoorsman and fisherman. Born in Zanesville, Ohio, he knew and played small…

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