Keith O'Brien

They kinda have to go together.

I drew a lot of structural inspiration from Keith O'Brien's Larry Bird origin story, Heartland, and it makes m- more sense to approach the Griffey narrative more as an origin story of baseball's last true superstar.

And most of the high drama of his life happened before the strike of '94.

Uh, he had moments in '95 in the playoffs and certainly in '97 when he won the MVP, and then in 1998 when he was in the home run chase with the juiced-up McGwire and Sosa.

[laughs] Okay, I do have an audiobook for you, and I actually consumed this as an audiobook.

Uh, it's Heartland by Keith O'Brien.

Okay.

It is about the, uh, 1970 whatever, the Indiana State Sycamores with Larry Bird, and the entire trajectory of that team both before and after.

But, Scott, you said who was the guy that he went to school with that we had on our

show? He was ahead of him, but Keith O'Brien, who wrote that great book about Pete Rose.

And we had on to talk about him when Pete Rose was the Sportsman of the Year for 1975.

We had Keith O'Brien on, and he had some great insight to Pete Rose and that great theme.

And we'll have more of that today when Chris Welsh joins us in just a few minutes.

But first, Mark has an ad for us to start today about the Ford LTD, one of those small cars from the 70s.

I, I'm, I'm finding that at least in trying to get my head around, like, a major book project or a major personality to write a biography on or something, that, uh...

And I kinda drew this inspiration from Keith O'Brien's latest book on...

I'm pointing over my right shoul-

Heartland.