Episode 63 with Detail-Oriented, Master Storyteller about Sports and Beyond, and Author of Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between, Eric Nusbaum

Show Notes and Links to Eric Nusbaum’s Work and Allusions/Texts from Episode 63

 

On Episode 63, Pete talks with Eric Nusbaum about his freelance writing for such publications as VICE, Sports Illustrated, and ESPN the Magazine. The two then talk in great detail about Eric’s powerful new book, Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between, which deals with the communities forced to move to make room for Dodger Stadium. This discussion

 

Eric Nusbaum is a writer and former editor at VICE.  His work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine, The Daily Beast, Deadspin, and the Best American Sports Writing anthology. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he has also lived and worked in Mexico City, New York, and Seattle. He now lives in Tacoma, Washington with his family.

Buy Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between (Bookshop.org)

 

Stealing Home Book and Eric Nusbaum Personal Website

 

August 2020 Eric Nusbaum NPR Interview about Book

 

"Dodger Stadium's Shameful Origin Story"-Interesting Info and Background on Abrana and Manuel Aréchiga 

 

At about 1:45, Eric talks about his early days writing for Deadspin

At about 3:00, Eric talks about his reading life as a child, living in a “print-rich environment” and reading local and legendary Los Angeles Times writers like Jim Murray and Bill Plaschke and Sports Illustrated for Kids and Sports Illustrated

At about 6:10, Eric discusses formative moments that led to him becoming a writer

At about 6:55, Eric discusses texts and writers that have given him “chills at will,” including the USA trilogy of John Dos Passos

At about 8:30, Eric details his Dodger fandom

At about 10:45, Eric traces his evolution into a professional writer; he recognizes some of his great and inspiring professors/teachers along the way, including Richard Kenney and Lou Matthews; he also references a huge building block in his writing life-his and Ted Walker and Patrick Dubuque’s baseball blog-Pitchers and Poets

At about 13:10, Eric describes the piece he wrote that was included in 2010’s The Best American Sports Writing-the essay was “The Death of a Pitcher”

At about 13:45, Eric discusses the balance between reading for a pleasure and reading with a critical eye

At about 15:00, Eric describes the “surreal” feeling of writing for magazines that he idolized as a kid

At about 16:25, a random note about language and “realizarse”

At about 17:00, Eric talks about his book Stealing Home and the importance of a descriptive subtitle

At about 18:00, Eric details how a school visit by Frank Wilkinson and other events started the wheels in motion for Eric to write and publish Stealing Home

At about 21:00, Eric outlines some background and history from the book, especially the three neighborhoods-La Loma, Bishop, and Palo Verde-that make up “Chavez Ravine”

At about 21:50, Eric explains ideas of trust, burden, trauma, and responsibility in making sure that he got the important story correct

At about 24:00, Eric talks about the research process and talking to family and friends of those involved in the book’s events/history, as well as reconstructing dialogue and events from the 1940s/50s, etc.

At about 27:00, Pete and Eric discuss the skillful ways in which Eric wove together so many apparently disparate stories-from that of General Santa Anna, Veracruz, MX, Abner Doubleday, etc.

At about 28:45, Eric details the myriad connections between the events of the book and today’s world

At about 29:50, Eric recounts the anecdotes that link baseball, its origins, and General Santa Anna

At about 32:20, Eric gives the rationale for his successful usage of 72 (!) chapters, mostly about “creating tension” and why he decided to avoid using academic-style footnotes

At about 34:20, Eric reads from page five, the last paragraph in the book’s Preface

At about 36:50, Eric and Pete discuss the relationship between sports fandom and the need to acknowledge how society’s inequities play out in sports as well-i.e., the shameful treatment of Colin Kaepernick, the shameful ways in which Dodger Stadium was built on others’ homes

At about 41:00, Pete and Eric discuss the shameful and racist histories often associated with early Los Angeles figures, many of whom are still memorialized today in street names, and in the book; Pete shouts out a book about 1900s LA-John Fante’s Ask the Dust

At about 43:00, Eric and Pete discuss the lack of salient villains in the book’s storyline, and Eric discusses his focus on people’s motivations in writing the book

At about 45:00, Eric talks about the complicated legacy of Frank Wilkinson

At about 49:00, Eric details the life in the three neighborhoods razed to make room for Dodger Stadium before the team even thought of moving them

At about 52:00, Eric reads the end of the book, focused on Abrana Aréchiga, the matriarch of the pioneering family, and a symbol of the neighborhood pre-Dodger Stadium

At about 54:25, reads from the last paragraph of Page 208, which serves as a wonderful summary of the myth of sport and its connection to the book

At about 56:00, Pete recounts some great recent books, like Eric’s, like Pete Croatto’s From Hang Time to Primetime: Business, Entertainment, and the Birth of the Modern-Day NBA and Bradford Pearson’s The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America, that are not just about sports

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