I'm admittedly not a massive baseball fan but I do enjoy a good origin story and some outrageous fiction. This episode has both!   I'm joined by Tom Gilbert, author of the book, How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed.   The wrongness of baseball history can be staggering. You may have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Neither did. You may have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. They didn’t. You have read that baseball’s color line was uncrossed and unchallenged until Jackie Robinson in 1947. Nope. You have been told that the clean, corporate 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings were baseball’s first professional club. Not true. They weren’t the first professionals; they weren’t all that clean, either. You may have heard Cooperstown, Hoboken, or New York City called the birthplace of baseball, but not Brooklyn. Yet Brooklyn was the home of baseball’s first fans, the first ballpark, the first statistics—and modern pitching.   For more info and to grab your copy of How Baseball Happened visit https://howbaseballhappened.com/   --------------------------------   If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests.   For more episodes visit https://www.curiosityness.com/   Connect with Curiosityness... YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/curiosityness Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/curiositynesspodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Curiositynesstv Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/curiosityness   Get your FREE Curiosityness sticker at https://www.curiosityness.com/freesticker/   Find Travis, the host of Curiosityness, on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/travderose/ Or send him an email to [email protected]