Interview: Peter Schilling, Author of “The End of Baseball”

One of the cool things about writing about baseball is that you sometimes get to speak to people you would never otherwise speak to.

Last week, I had the opportunity to interview Peter Schilling, who is the author of The End of Baseball.

The End of Baseball is a fictional book that tells the tale of Bill Veeck, the maverick promoter, returned from Guadalcanal with a leg missing and $500 to his name, who has hustled his way into buying the Philadelphia Athletics.

Hungry for a pennant, young Veeck jettisons the team’s white players and secretly recruits the legendary stars of the Negro Leagues, fielding a club that will go down in baseball annals as one of the greatest to play the game.

MLG: Thank you, Peter, for joining me today. Now before we get into the book, I noticed you grew up in Michigan. Were you a Detroit Tigers fan growing up?

PS: Yes, and remain one to this day unfortunately.

MLG: Well, now you live in Minnesota. Is it hard being a Tigers fan living in Minnesota?

PS: Well, I do like the Minnesota Twins a lot. I like the style which they craft teams. The Twins have a really good farm system, and I like the way they bring up players.

The Twins will always have certain players who play the “Twins way,” which is something the Tigers haven’t done over the years. But living in Minnesota, I get the best of both worlds.

The difficult thing for me was watching that one-game playoff last year. I was torn because if the Twins won, I get to go to the playoffs because I am here, and if the Tigers win, well, they are my team.

I did think that game was the swan song for the Tigers, as I think it will be a while before they get to prominence again. I do like the Twins a lot this year.

MLG: I like the Twins a lot too. They are actually my World Series pick this year. So when did you develop your love for baseball? Was it at an early age, or was it later in your life?

PS: Well, it’s interesting because I am a little bit unique in the sense that growing up I had no friends or family who had interest in baseball. In 1976, I fell in love with Mark Fidrych like the rest of the world.

I was eight years old, and I just thought this guy was amazing. I became obsessed with Fidrych and baseball, and because of that, my family became fans as well. We all kind of learned about the sport together.

We lived in middle, northern Michigan in this town called Mount Pleasant, so we really didn’t get down to games too often, but we always listened to Ernie Harwell on the radio.

It’s really interesting with me because I can remember the day when I became a baseball fan. It was June 5, 1976 and Fidrych was pitching on TV and Fidrych was doing all his crazy antics on the mound, and that was the day I got hooked.

MLG: So let’s get into the book a little bit. How did you come up with the idea or concept of the book?

PS: The idea came to me when I was just casually reading Bill Veeck’s autobiography, Veeck as in Wreck. In the book, Veeck casually mentions that he was going to do this crazy plan.

It was maybe three paragraphs in this 1,500-page book. He had the idea to buy the Philadelphia Phillies and because all of their white players were off fighting the war and they became really bad, Veeck wanted to have a team of all black players.

Veeck and his father took the idea to the commissioner at the time, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and Landis wouldn’t allow it to happen. Now how serious Veeck was about this has been disputed by baseball historians.

I have a friend who is doing a very researched biography on Veeck, and he told me it was true. But I just couldn’t get this idea out of my head. So I started doing my research and thinking what if this actually happened?

MLG: The topic sounds fascinating. Were you a fan of Veeck before reading the book, or did it develop as you read his book?

PS: The connection for me was that living in Minnesota, we have the St. Paul Saints, which is run by Mike Veeck, and they were doing all these crazy promotions. That got me intrigued about Bill Veeck and he had three autobiographies, so I read the first one and the next one and the next one.

But I just couldn’t get that idea out of my head. And to be honest, I wasn’t planning on writing a book because I was still working on my first novel, but as I started to think about it more and more, I was just like I have to do this.

It’s too incredible of a story not to be written about.

MLG: The book mentions a lot of the Negro League superstars such as Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, and Buck Leonard. In researching these characters, was there anything that you found out that you didn’t know, and how did you go about doing the research for the book?

PS: What I always try to do when it comes to research is go to the newspapers because they talk about players as they perceived them at the time rather than in 20/20 hindsight. What’s interesting is there are not a lot of biographies on the players, but there are a number of oral histories, so that is what I went with for the players.

But even the great players of the Negro Leagues, like Satchel Paige, is very easy to find information on. Like Buck Leonard and Ray Dandridge, there is a lot of information and a lot of oral histories about them.

But when you go to some of the lesser known—and I hate to say lesser known—you find out that they are referenced by other players that they played with. The good thing about writing about a lesser known player like a Dave Barnhill, for example, is that it gave me the freedom to create his personality in the book.

I have less freedom with characters like Paige and Veeck because there have been so much written about them that everyone knows what type of personalities they had.

MLG: Now in this period of time, do you think Veeck could have pulled this off and this collection of talent could have won?

PS: That is ultimately the question that the book tries to answer. The challenge for me in writing the book was that you had these incredibly talented players, but I had to make it an interesting read. I had to make it so people wanted to keep reading the book.

You can’t just say, oh well, this is the best team in the history of baseball and they are going to win 140 games. You couldn’t have a season that was a runaway. That’s not exciting except for the fans of that particular team.

So there had to be struggle with this team. Even though this team is made up, you see teams all the time that are good on paper and don’t reach their potential. I thought that situation was relevant to this book.

These guys were just thrown into a situation, and the book really tries to go into how the players would handle stress and racism in Philadelphia both on and off the field.

MLG. The book itself has gotten tremendous reviews. Are you going on a book tour?

PS: I am going on a mini-book tour. I am doing a reading here in Minneapolis, and I will be doing two readings in Chicago.

MLG: Where can everyone find the book The End of Baseball?

PS: Right now everyone can find it at the large chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble, Borders, and if you are not near any of these large chains, then Amazon.com as well. I also encourage everyone to buy the book at your local, independently owned bookstore because I like to have business go through the little guys as well.

MLG: The book is a must read for any baseball fan. I have attached a link to Amazon for everyone.