Lincoln Mitchell On Books And Writing

For my latest author interview, I turned to Lincoln Mitchell.

Our exchange, which has been edited lightly, is below.

“The One Hundred Most Important Players in Baseball History” was released this month. Would you tell me a little bit about it?

“The One Hundred Most Important Players in Baseball History” is a series of short essays about one hundred players who made an impact on either baseball or American history. My idea was to tell the stories of players who helped form the game of today or through whom we can understand baseball history.

I also included players who had an impact beyond the game. So, some of the players in the book like Babe Ruth, Willie Mays or Jackie Robinson are well known, but others like Dolf Luque, Hal Chase and Andy Messersmith are not. I also included Negro League players, Japanese players and women who were unable to play in the American or National Leagues but who are also part of the story of baseball.

My hope is that this book will appeal both to intense baseball fans who want to learn more about corners of baseball history with which they are not all that familiar as well as to people who know little about the game but are aware that it is an important American, and increasingly global, institution.

How long did it take to write?

I started writing the book in January of 2022 and turned in the final manuscript around July of this year, so one answer to that question would be 18 months, but that does not feel entirely accurate. I have been thinking about baseball intensely for about 45 years and have been asking, in one way or another, what makes baseball important for around 40 years, so another answer to that question is that it took me a lifetime to write this book.

How did you go about getting the book published?

I initially published a much shorter version of this book in the form of what is better described as an annotated list on a website called Start Spreading the News, which is an independently run Yankees website that is a great resource for Yankees fans. The man who runs that site, Paul Semendinger, recommended a small press called Artemesia, so I reached out [to] them and they liked the idea. This is my first book…