Arts
My guest is Richard Cuicchi. He's a New Orleans baseball historian and the founder of the Metro New Orleans Area Baseball Player Database. Born in Shaw, MS, he has spent most of his adult life in New Orleans, and says he's now a true "New Orleanian."After graduating from Mississippi State University, Richard came to New Orleans to work for the local utility in IT. As a husband & father of four, he took the traditional route to retirement. That is, 40 years of living within his means, staying out of debt and diligently contributing to a 401K.After retiring in 2011, he wrote his first book, Family Ties: A Comprehensive Collection of Facts and Trivia About Baseball's Relatives, which constitutes 20 years of research about baseball’s family relationships. He also started doing research and writing for SABR (Society for American Baseball Research), contributing to sports-related websites and a few magazines.Additionally, he maintains The Tenth Inning website, which contains all his research, writings, and baseball interests.In this episode, we talk about how he first started writing. Richard used to keep various lists of things about baseball—one in-particular about families piqued his interest. Once he realized just how much baseball family ties information he had, he started trying to put it in writing, which is what eventually led him to self-publishing his first book.We also discuss what led him to write about my grandfather, John “Fats” Dantonio. A SABR member asked him to do a piece on "Fats" as part of a book on "replacement players" during World War II. He says that was the first time he'd written a story about any baseball player.If you love baseball, this episode is for you!