Hooks & Runs · A podcast about baseball, music and culture.

268 - Baseball & Music w/ Bill Nowlin

·1 hr 2 min·4 clips

Rounder Records' first Grammy win came from Clarence Gatemouth Brown's All Right Again in 1982.

Craig and Rex introduce Bill Nowlin as a guest who sits naturally at the intersection of baseball and music. He is the co-founder of Rounder Records and the author of over 100 books, along with hundreds more essays about baseball. The center of the conversation is Native American Major Leaguers, the anthology he co-edited with Rob Daugherty. The book was just released and is available free to SABR members, with print editions also available for anyone who wants a hard copy. That preference for something you can hold becomes one of the quieter threads in the episode. The hosts ask what first brought the project together. Bill talks about the range of Native American ballplayers and the work of gathering them into one place. The discussion keeps moving between research, remembrance, and the practical work of getting stories onto the page. From there, the episode opens into a larger question about baseball and music as overlapping forms of memory. Bill argues that music can be appreciated in different formats, just as books can. He prefers a physical copy of a book, even while acknowledging the usefulness of downloads and audio. The hosts pick up on that and start thinking through a possible future book about baseball and music. Bill says SABR is currently working on one, with an eye toward a 2027 release. He and Eric Gray are set to co-edit it. They have not yet sent out the full call for authors, but Bill invites ideas from SABR members and from people who join because they want to contribute. The possible subjects are broad. He mentions the national anthem’s place in ballparks, the long life of walk-up music, and the songs that become attached to team wins. He brings up the Red Sox and Dirty Water, along with a memory of seeing the Standells open for the Rolling Stones in 1966. The talk also reaches into how ballpark music works as a signal and a ritual. The episode stays grounded in baseball history, but it never treats music as a side note. Instead, the two are treated as related ways people hold onto memory around a game. Bill’s experience as a writer and label founder gives the discussion a practical edge. He speaks like someone who has spent years thinking about how culture gets preserved, shared, and argued over. That gives the episode a quiet kind of warmth. It is not flashy. It is knowledgeable people working through a topic they actually care about. By the end, the show has covered a new book, the mechanics of SABR publishing, the idea of a future baseball-and-music anthology, and the small rituals that make ballparks sound like themselves.

As heard by us

Baseball history and music lore meet in a loose, rewarding conversation.

Bill Nowlin gives the episode real baseball weight, and the discussion moves with ease from the anthology to SABR's publishing work before widening into the overlap between baseball and music. The result feels rooted in experience, not like a list of talking points.

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Why you'd press play

For baseball history with music detours and a collector's eye for the physical book.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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