The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

This week, Steve is joined by Jim Leeke, author of From the Dugout to the Trenches: Baseball During the Great War, plus the usual preamble involving baseball and current events. Plus: An old song that sounds ominous!

Warning: There is one off-color word about 15 minutes into the show.

No one was replaced by Jackie Robinson*A few terrible, no good, very typical days*Jim Leeke: Baseball and “Preparedness” in 1917*The National League says no*Patriotism in a 1917 context*How World War II swamped the memory of World War I*Was the drilling of ballplayers naïve?*Clark Griffith’s war effort*Even bad people aren’t bad all the time*Why was the American League so eager to quit?*The “Work or Fight” order*Ban Johnson’s gaffe*The “Work or Fight Order” vs. the World War II “Green Light Letter”*The value of entertainment in wartime*The Steel/Steal League and Shoeless Joe Jackson*The mystery of Babe Ruth’s wartime activities*Hank Gowdy, American*An Eddie Grant Memorial*Christy Mathewson and Pete Alexander in the war*The unprecedented brutality of the First World War*The Angl0-American Baseball Project*Baseball in the land of total war*Goodbyes.