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Leadership Lessons from Our Top Presidents with Talmage Boston · Liberty + Leadership

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty and friends who are making an impact.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Today I'm your host, roger Ream.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Today I'm joined by author, historian and lawyer Talmadge Boston.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Talmadge is a partner at the Shackleford Bowen, mckinley and Norton law firm and specializes in trial and appellate commercial litigation.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: He is one of the most recognized and awarded lawyers in Texas and is the only lawyer to receive a presidential citation from eight different presidents of the State Bar of Texas for outstanding service.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: As a historian and author, his combined legal knowledge and his fascination with all things American history have contributed to a catalog of books on the subjects of law, american history and baseball.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: His latest book, which was published by the Post Hill Press in April of last year, is how the Best Did it Leadership Lessons from Our Top Presidents.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I'm delighted that Talmadge will be speaking at TFAS on March 19th to our Washington semester students and our alumni, where he'll have the chance to share some of the leadership lessons he has learned from these eight presidents.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Talmadge, thank you for joining me today.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: It's my honor to be on your show.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Roger Talmadge, thank you for joining me today.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: It's my honor to be on your show.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Roger, let me ask you first for a bit of background.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: You've had a very successful career in the law in Texas.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: You've had a parallel career going as a historian I would say an acclaimed historian now, having written books on baseball and the presidents.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: First of all, what sparked your interest in the law?
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Well, I had an uncle who was a very prominent lawyer in Houston, who spent his career working with Leon Jaworski at his firm, who was very instrumental in my desire growing up to become a lawyer.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: My heroes as a child growing up were Abraham Lincoln and Atticus Finch and Tequila Mockingbird, and of course both of them were great courtroom lawyers, and so that's what I wanted to be.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: I was a big high school debater and always enjoyed public speaking.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: I always enjoyed argument, real intellectual exercise with somebody smart on the other side, and so it just came naturally as a career and I got out of law school 46 years ago.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: University of Texas Law School, came to Dallas, grabbed Ben now for 46 years and I'm still a practicing lawyer handling lawsuits, handling arbitration matters, so forth business litigation.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: But the vocations of being a lawyer and a historian I mean both of us do a lot of writing to promote your books.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Obviously you do a lot of speaking.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of thoughtful analysis that goes into being able to frame your books.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Obviously, you do a lot of speaking.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of thoughtful analysis that goes into being able to frame your arguments and then make the argument itself.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: So a lot of overlap in the skill sets needed to be successful in both lines of work, and certainly being a historian has given me a leg up in my platform as a lawyer, and I like to think that the discipline of the law has been instrumental to my being able to write good history books.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: I'm also a contributing columnist for the Dallas Morning News and being able to make op-ed pitches on a wide variety of issues, most of them tied to presidential history, but not all of them.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: I had a piece on President's Day talking about the most important traits of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and wishing that there's a way in the world that President Trump might decide that he wanted to follow in their footsteps and aspire to use their traits for the greater good.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: We can always dream.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I know your interest in history started when you were young, but when did it become a passion that drove you to write about it?
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: I first started writing for a publication in 1991, and I think everybody is usually looking for an outlet for your creativity.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: I could not play a musical instrument.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: I was not an artist who could draw great pictures.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: I've always enjoyed singing, but that's just singing somebody else's music.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: So writing really is the outlet for my creativity and I've always enjoyed teaching and sharing information and having good conversations with smart people, and so all those factors led to wanting to publish my thoughts as a historian whether in newspapers.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: I've written over 100 pieces for the Dallas Boy News and over 60 for the Dallas Business Journal and several for the Texas Bar Journal, who I was on the board of editors for years.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: So the main thing is it's just an outlet for my creativity and people seem to respond favorably and it does give me a bigger platform for public speaking, for being hired as a lawyer, so forth.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: That's why there's so many reasons why it was so appealing to me Well before we dig deeper into your latest book, how the Best Did it, I did want to ask you kind of about your approach to it.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Do you set aside a particular time of day where you do your writing and your research?
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: These books you write seem to me require a lot of deep dive research into them to write them the books on baseball, the books on presidents.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: But just a little brief overview of how you approach that I think might be interesting.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've written five books and each of them basically takes about two years.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've written five books and each of them basically takes about two years.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: And my approach is you've got to maintain a schedule and a discipline, and particularly when you have a full-time job like being a lawyer.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: So the way that I've been able to do it is I'm typically asleep by 8.30 pm andI typically wake up at 4 am and I read my Dallas Boy News and my Wall Street Journal and then I've got three and a half hours of total solitude where I do the research and do the writing and the editing and the whole process.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: And if you have three and a half hours of total solitude every day, it's amazing what you can get done.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's to the sacrifice, obviously, of a nightlife.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: I'm not a golfer, I'm not a hunter, I'm not a fisherman, we don't travel the world.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: So you have to decide, obviously, how are you going to spend your time and since I get so much enjoyment out of writing for publication and speaking in connection with it, I'm happy to give off these other pursuits that so many other people enjoy so that I have plenty of time to be able to do the research and the writing.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: In your latest book, how the Best Did it Leadership Lessons from Our Top Presidents.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: You identify leadership traits of eight presidents, and I loved your opening quotation from Dwight Eisenhower, when you quote him as writing.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: The one quality that can be developed by studious reflection and practice is the leadership of men.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: And could you talk about the criteria used to identify which presidents to include in your book?
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: I've selected who I believe to be our eight greatest presidents, thinking that they've got more to teach readers than anybody else in the way of effective leadership.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: For the most part, the eight I chose are tied to the C-SPAN presidential ranking poll.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: The television network C-SPAN.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Every time one president leaves the White House and another one comes in a changing of the guard, they do a poll of the 150 leading historians in the country to rank the presidents from best to worst on the basis of 10 presidential leadership traits, and people can Google C-SPAN presidential ranking polls and read all about them.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: But in the last two polls 2017, when Obama left and Trump came in, and 2021, when Trump went out and Biden came in the results of the poll for Presidents number one through nine in the ranking were identical Number one Lincoln.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Two Washington.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Three Franklin Roosevelt.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Four Theodore Roosevelt.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Five Eisenhower.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Six Truman.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Seven Jefferson.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Eight Kennedy.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Nine Reagan.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: So I took those nine and I removed Truman.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: I think he's overrated.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: He got us into Korea and had no idea how to get us out.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: He had no idea how to deal with McCarthyism.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: He gets credit for dropping the A-bombs and bringing a prompt conclusion to World War II, when in fact he really had no other choice.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Plan B was to invade Japan, which would have resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: I think Truman is overrated.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: I think Reagan's underrated.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: I move him up a notch to make him in the top eight.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Since, particularly the book came out last April 2024, known as the presidential election year, I want to sell my books to both Democrats and Republicans.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: So in the modern era, I have two great Democratic presidents FDR and John F Kennedy and two great Republican presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: And then, third and finally, with all the polarization that we had in 2024, we have now in 2025, I want Democrats to read and recognize that we've had great Republican presidents, and I want Republicans to read and recognize that we've had great Democratic presidents.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: And let's evaluate greatness on the basis of what it is, as opposed to party alignment.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: And so it's my small way of trying to break down these barriers that people create to make judgments based on factors that I don't think are important in terms of which political party a particular president was a member of.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: So that was my process.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: The book is what I call a study in applied history, and that is it's one thing to read and enjoy history.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: It's something else to read it with the idea of how can I apply this to my daily living.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: And John Avalon wrote the full word.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: He's a wonderful presidential historian.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: His books are Applied History, one about Washington's farewell address, the other about Lincoln's final days and his plans to reunite the country.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: And John was the one who really inspired me to pursue this whole angle on applied history.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: And so at the end of each of my eight chapters on the eight presidents, I have a section called Personal Application for the reader to ask him or herself how am I doing in these traits that caused Washington to be great, or Jefferson to be great, or the rest of the eight?
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: So I want the book to be more than just a fun read.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: I want it to be an interactive experience so that people, hopefully, can actually think of ways to improve their efforts, to become better leaders.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I'm so thrilled that we have you coming in March to speak to our students in our spring semester program and our alumni who are inviting as well, because they need to hear that and apply these lessons to become courageous leaders.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I wonder, after what you just said when you travel and give talks about your book, do you get pushback from people in the audience who, either for partisan reasons or other reasons, are upset that you left someone out or you included someone?
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: From time to time.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: There's been a few questions.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: Some people say why isn't Lyndon Johnson in your top eight?
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: I say, on the one hand, lyndon Johnson was a great president in the area of civil rights, probably second only to Abraham Lincoln as far as that goes.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: But on the other hand, he had Vietnam, a colossal foreign policy disaster the only war we ever lost so debilitating to him that he couldn't even run for another term.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: And Vietnam, on the one hand, was a morass that nobody could understand at the outset.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: So I'm not being critical of the fact that he necessarily mishandled it, but what I am very critical is how many times he lied to the American people about what was going on in Vietnam, and that, to me, is inexcusable, and I could never elevate somebody into my top age who had such a history of lying to the American people as Johnson did on Vietnam.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Some people have wondered why don't I have Obama?
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: In fact, in the most recent C-SPAN poll, obama finished 10th.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Obviously, now, with Biden going out and Trump coming in, there's going to be a 2025 poll.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: I'd be surprised if Obama stays in the top 10.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: And Harry Truman famously said it takes 50 years for the dust to settle in terms of really being in a position to evaluate a president.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: I think, as time goes by, I don't know what people could think about in terms of the success of the Obama presidency in the area of foreign policy or in domestic policy.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Some people think it was great with the Affordable Care Act, but obviously that's a mixed bag, so I'd be surprised if Obama stays in the top 10.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I take it it's a disadvantage if you served in the White House and didn't face a crisis.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know Lincoln and Washington and Franklin Roosevelt had wars to fight or major crises to deal with and you know I've always had a high opinion of Kelvin Coolidge and Grover Cleveland, but they aren't going to make a top 10 list, probably because they didn't face the kind of severe crisis that some of these others faced.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: The exception out of the top eight.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: I think you could look at seven of the eight as having faced a crisis successfully, but that was not true of Theodore Roosevelt and Roosevelt's right number four.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: He's on Mount Rushmore.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: The main reason for his being perceived as such a highly ranked president is he expanded the presidency.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Whether we're talking about national presidency, whether we're talking about national parks, whether we're talking about the Panama Canal, whether we're talking about trust busting, whether we're talking about him getting involved in big national labor disputes like the big coal strike that he resolved, he was always thinking what needed to be done that Congress is not doing, and he was very aggressive about the use of executive orders.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: But for the most part, the things where he grew the presidency had happy endings and great results, and so it is possible to be recognized and appreciated as being a great president without a crisis.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: But certainly, to your point, if you do have a major crisis during your presidency and you succeed in handling it well, that is going to increase the likelihood that you'll have an enhanced stature and legacy as a presidency, because such big things were happening during your years.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: And for Franklin Roosevelt, for example our third-ranked president, the only guy who got elected four times to have back-to-back crises of the Great Depression and then World War II, and his handling of both is what causes him to be ranked number three.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about some of the chapters in your book and the leadership traits you feature.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I thought I might ask you know to talk a little bit first about George Washington, your lead-off chapter, and the way you characterize this leadership he showed.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Well, as I said, historians rank Washington number two, obviously being our first president.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Nobody knew how this was going to work.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: The new nation was very fragile and to get things off to a very good start, I mean, it helped that Washington was his beloved hero, who had led the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War against great odds, an eight-year war twice as long as the Convention as chairman, which led to the supreme law of the land and its ratification.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: But then stepping in as our first president, knowing how fragile things were, his serving both as conscience in chief, setting this incredibly high standard for integrity and having total credibility in everything he said, never any suggestion of any ulterior motives to anything he did, and his also commitment to being the unifier in chief.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: And during the eight years, of course, adams and Hamilton were forming the Federalist Party and, on the other hand, jefferson and Madison, what was then called the Republican Party that today has evolved into the Democratic Party.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: But with each passing week, more and more division.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: And Washington, who never admitted that he wanted to be a member of a political party, thought his job was to keep these two parties from destroying each other.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: And he did.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: And he had sound judgment.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Brilliant people on both sides with strong opinions as to why they disagreed with one another, and Washington, as the ultimate decider on these disputed issues, had amazingly consistent sound judgment.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: He, like Eisenhower, when his term was up, wanted to give a farewell address from his perspective, and his main thrust was about avoid foreign entanglements but also stay away from factional divisions, slash polarization.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: So just an unbelievably wise leader who kept the country together at a time.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: There's no doubt that no one else was close to having his skill set among those founders to be able to lead the country and get it off to such a great start.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: So Washington certainly is very deserving of his high ranking for getting things off to the great start.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Here we are still in place and he's still our hero, and we still celebrate President's Day and recognize how important he was and his longstanding contribution to the American dream and the American way of life.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: And we've had a number of consecutive elections recently where we've talked about the need for a unifier without the person we're electing really doing a lot to unify us.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: It seems to me that's the traits of Washington are particularly needed today in our country and have been needed for a number of years.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: Well, most of these great presidents were unifiers.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: They all were elected to a second term, except for Kennedy, who got shot.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: If he had not been shot, I feel sure he would have won a second term.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: And so when you're winning these elections handily, that's because you are connecting with the people, the great American middle.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: You're not couching your policies and favorites toward either the extreme right or the extreme left.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: You're trying to get the read on where the people are and pursuing policies in accordance with it.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: And so to be a successful president, you have to be a unifier.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, for example, when Reagan was elected, originally people were like, oh, he's such an extreme conservative, et cetera, et cetera.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: And yet when he ran, he was such a great communicator.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Of course, coming off the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter, all of a sudden there were Reagan Democrats and he won 44 out of the 50 states because people liked his approach to dealing with the Cold War, people liked his approach to dealing with an economy that was in decline.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: And so the great presidents have their finger on the pulse of the sizable majority of the American people and know how to create policies that are going to resonate with them and, as we know, many times the American people are not exactly in the right.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: They need a great leader to move the needle on their public opinion to where they see the light.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, for example, franklin Roosevelt.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: In the late 30s and early 40s most Americans were isolationists.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Hitler's taking over Europe.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Churchill can't possibly defeat him.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Churchill's begging FDR and America to help join the war effort or we're never going to beat this guy, hitler.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: And most Americans say no, we don't want to go halfway around the world and fight a war.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: We did that 20 years ago in World War I.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: We don't want to do that again.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: And yet FDR knew this Hitler guy was for real and he was going to take over Europe and Asia and Africa and Australia in the high seas and he'd be coming at us.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: And so he saw his job to get the American people out of being stuck in isolationism and recognizing the need for America to play a strong role in the world to prevent a crazy dictator like Hitler from taking over.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: And so that's part of the presidential job is the people are not always right.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: They need guidance from time to time and you reorient them where they need to be in the best interests of the country.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: One thing about your book that resonated with me is the fact that you don't present these eight presidents as totally perfect figures.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: You touch on flaws that they had as well as these great leadership characteristics, and I think that's important for young people especially, to understand that they can develop leadership characteristics while still having weaknesses.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you something, since you touched on Ronald Reagan.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: You talked about his optimism just now and you write about it in the book, and that seems like a characteristic today that is lacking in many of the candidates for office.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: They get up and talk about how bad things are in our country and how we're going downhill, and we need to.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: You know it's not just Trump's make America great again, but there's a lot of negativism, from our leaders, I think, and from our candidates.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Well, you saw America as a shining city on the hill.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, for that matter, I think Trump does too.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: That's not to say that Trump has the eloquence of Reagan or the capacity to attract the substantial majority of the American people to support him, but Trump has a vision that things are going to be fabulous as long as he's the leader, and Reagan felt the same way about his expectations under his leadership.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think you're right.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: I think, being able to successfully lead any organization or, in this case, a nation you darn sure better have a sense of optimism that things are going to get brighter and that you are going to come up with ways to make things better.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: If you didn't have that perspective, you'd never get elected.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: People don't elect pessimists.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: They elect people who they think can actually do the job and improve their situation, and that's always the driving force.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: You always hear about how people vote their pocketbook.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Which presidential candidate is going to be the best for the economy?
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: But obviously, in an ever increasingly dangerous world, foreign policy becomes an issue.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: We obviously want to live in a safe world, a stable world, a peaceful world, and which presidential candidate seems most likely to achieve that result?
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Well, it's a great book and I encourage people to buy it and read it.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I think it can help anyone become a better leader and, as you would agree, I'm sure, leadership is something that young people can develop leadership traits by studying the examples.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And what I love about your baseball books as well is they're about people.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: It's not just about a game, it's about the people who played the game, and those books are I'll just mention 1939, baseball's Turning Point and Baseball and the Baby Boomer a History Commentary and Memoir.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: I'm curious how you developed that passion for baseball and enough that you wrote these books.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Well, my childhood was spent in Houston, and while I was there was when Major League Baseball came to Houston in 1962.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: When the Houston Colt 45s entered the National League and three years later they would become the Astros and the Astrodome would open.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: I collected baseball cards.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: I had a wonderful Little League baseball experience in Houston.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: I come from a family of history lovers and the history of baseball is better preserved than the history of any other sport, with the possible exception of golf.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: And so there were so many great stories about Babe Ruth and Luke Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams and Ty Cobb and the opening of the Hall of Fame and the creation of Little League and the Negro Leagues and then, finally, jackie Robinson, breaking the color barrier.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: And, as you say, it's about people who did extraordinary things, kind of like presidents who do extraordinary things.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: And many of them virtually all of them came from very humble beginnings, poverty-stricken, and baseball caused them to elevate and become national sports heroes, and those are great stories.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: And a lot of adversity was overcome for them to get to where they were and they provided so much joy and pleasure for so many American people.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, one of my favorite lines is Franklin Roosevelt World War II comes along and people say lines is Franklin Roosevelt?
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: World War II comes along and people say you got to cancel the baseball season because all these young ballplayers, they need to be soldiers and that's where all of our attention needs to be.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: And Franklin Roosevelt says no, this war is going to be hard, it's tough.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: We need something that's going to give the people at least some measure of pleasure, and so I'm not about to cancel the baseball season.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Of course, many major league players did serve in the war and they did have replacement players, for the most part that filled out the Major League rosters, but at least they kept playing the games.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: And of course, jackie Robinson's story is one of the greatest stories in American history, whether you like sports or not.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: And here in Texas, sports or not.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: And here in Texas, nolan Ryan is such a heroic figure pitched 27 years in the big leagues, seven no-hitters, career leader in strikeouts and role model, good guy all around, family man.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: So there's reasons to warm up to sports heroes Lou Gehrig, the story of his consecutive game streak, and then all of a sudden he gets hit with ALS and can't play anymore.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: And they make the unforgettable movie with Gary Cooper and given the luckiest man on the face of the earth speech.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: These are some of the greatest stories in American history, so it's fun to tell them, it's fun to talk about them, and they still bring people a lot of joy.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: I hadn't realized that 1939 was that kind of pivotal year where you mentioned it was the 100th anniversary of baseball.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: It was what.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: The first year they televised games Little League was created.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: First year that every team was on the radio.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Hall of Fame opened right.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Hall of Fame opened.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Ted Williams, still the only rookie to lead the major leagues in RBIs.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Bob Feller's first year to win 20 games.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Red Barber's first year in Brooklyn in the Catburg seat.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Dimaggio's greatest year.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Historians think the 39 Yankees are the greatest team of all time.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: So you put all these things together all happening in one year and it makes for a lot of great stories.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you tell the story of Satchel Paige as well, right, yeah, you know the.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Negro Leagues were on the lip of the cup and they were playing off-season barnstorming games against major leaguers, and everybody realized that the African-American ballplayers were every bit as good, or in many cases better, than the white ballplayers, and it was just a matter of time.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: It took World War II and a recognition that, my goodness, if African-Americans can fight and die for their country, shouldn't they be able to sign big league contracts and be able to play Major League Baseball?
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: And that's why Ken Burns made his big documentary, because it's an American story.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: It's integrated into the great racial awakening civil rights movement.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Such a rich history dealing with the Depression and how it impacted everything, including baseball, how wars impacted baseball and everything else.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: It's woven into the fabric of America and has been pretty much ever since the Civil War.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was really in the Civil War when it started to spread, and in particular it spread in the prisoner of war camps, where people are just sitting around with nothing to do, and in particular, it spread in the prisoner of war camps, where people are just sitting around with nothing to do.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: And so they started playing baseball against each other and then, when the war's over, they all went back to their different parts of the country and started playing it in their local communities and next thing you know, teams are formed and next thing you know, people are getting paid if they're really good players and selling tickets and making money and it becomes a business and it makes the newspapers and it just becomes the phenomenon that we celebrate as the national pastime, even though we all know that the NFL and football has now passed it, but it's still in the big three up there, along with the NBA and basketball.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Well, in your book on baseball and the baby boomer I think you've gotten me just by a year or two.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: But I don't remember Roger Maris hitting 61 home runs in 1961, just barely too young to remember that but having the name Roger and then getting his baseball card some years later, a few years later I just I had this great love of Roger Maris.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: One of the best things that happened.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: You know, roger Maris died at age 51 of cancer, which is sad.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: So he's been gone quite a while.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: And I have a friend who was Roger Maris' best friend, andy Strasberg, and he said that if I would send him a copy of that book he would forward it on to Roger Maris' widow, pat Maris.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: And he did, and I got the sweetest letter from Pat Maris saying she thought I had captured the essence of her late husband and how much it meant to her.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: And boy, that was a great day.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: And then I had the chapter on Carl Ustremsky, and he's notoriously reclusive.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: I thought there's no way in the world I'm ever going to meet Karius Grunsky.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: And lo and behold, he read the chapter and I spent a day with him in Florida and walked around the golf course with him.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: He told me all kinds of good stories and, as you say, it's a book about people and if you tell their stories in the right way it lifts them up, and it lifts the American people up, because these are great stories.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, he has the consummate overachiever who wins the Triple Crown and leads the Impossible Dream, the 67 Red Sox, all the way to the World Series against 100-1 odds.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: They lost 100 games the year before.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: It's one of the greatest stories in baseball history and the way he led that team and the way it electrified New England.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: That really changed everything that ever since 1967, the Red Sox have been such a focal point.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: They've fallen out of favor in the 50s and the early 60s because they were just a losing team.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Year after year after year and after 67, the fascination and the interest and the fan base and everything took off and it's still a huge deal in New England every summer, red Sox baseball.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Well, talmadge, I grew up in Milwaukee and was a Braves fan, henry Aaron fan, and I have to just quickly mention I serve on the US Postal Service Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee and this past year we came out with a Henry Aaron stamp.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: I lobbied unsuccessfully to have him wearing a Milwaukee Braves hat or a Milwaukee Brewers hat, but he's in his Atlanta hat.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: I got to spend two days with Hank Aaron.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: One of his managers in Milwaukee and then in Atlanta was Bobby Bragan, who lived here in Fort Worth, and Bobby was a real mentor to me, father figure to me and he had the Bobby Braden Youth Foundation which I was actively involved with and for two different banquets Hank Aaron came and I got to spend a lot of time.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: What a great guy.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Quiet but thoughtful, smart, high integrity, obviously unbelievable baseball player who had to deal with his own racial issues to overcome, to get to where he was.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: But the story of Hank Uren is one of baseball's great stories.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Well, I think we're up against the clock here, but I just again thank you for joining me today and for your book how the Best Did it.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: It's available on Amazon, barnes, noble and hopefully in bookstores near you, and I do highly recommend it and look forward to seeing you in March when you come up to speak to our students.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much, talmadge.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure looking forward to it, roger, and I sure appreciate you letting me do this podcast with you.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Thank, you.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfasorg, and be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five-star review.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, roger Ream, and until next time, show courage in things, large and small.