SSTN Interviews Alan D. Gaff

June 5, 2025

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This week, I share my interview with author Alan Gaff.

Please tell our readers a little about yourself and your new book.

Physical description:  Age–old.  Sex–see previous answer.  Hair–sparse.  Eyes–only family member with green eyes.  Hmm.  Height–shorter than I used to be.  Weight–I don’t own a scale.  Overall health–like an old car, parts missing, parts not working, parts wearing out.

Education:  Graduation from elementary school, middle school, high school, Indiana University (BA in History), Ball State University (MA in American History), decades of common sense.

Family:   Wife Maureen, married 55 years, runs the family and deserves a lifetime achievement award.  Son Don is a professor of anthropology and likes to dig things out of the ground.  Son Jeff works for UPS and enjoys communing with old typewriters.  Maureen and I live with rescue cats named Sweetie Pie (old and cranky), Cisco (named after the Cisco Kid), Pancho (Cisco’s sidekick), and George (girlfriend of Cisco, don’t ask).  Sherlock, our only granddog, visits occasionally.

Military:  Sergeant, U S Army Military Police, Retired.  Trained to provide security at U S embassies (Marines were being sent to Vietnam), but assigned to a military prison instead.  Proficient in all U S Army small arms in use during the 1970s.  Learned the use of everything from handcuffs to installing Claymore mines.  None of my training transferred to civilian life.  Currently classified with a 100% service-connected disability by the Veterans Administration.  Maureen is my official caregiver (add another achievement award)

Occupation:  Retired after nearly thirty years of service in the Postal Service.  Supervisors were as dumb as captains and lieutenants had been.  Make that dumber.  With few exceptions, clerks and carriers were solid employees who cared about customers.  Those were the days.

Please tell our readers about your new book.

My newly released book is titled Baseball’s First Superstar:  The Lost Life Story of Christy Mathewson.  The main portion of the book is a biography of the famous Giants pitcher published in newspaper columns a few months after his death.  These columns included information from his wife Jane and best friend, sportswriter Bozeman Bulger, as well as some written by Christy for an autobiography he never finished.  Biographers of Mathewson have stopped their research with obituaries and have overlooked this important source of personal information, hence the word “Lost” in the sub-title.

What do you most enjoy about writing?

The best part of working on a new manuscript is uncovering information that has not been used by previous authors.  It is simply amazing to find material which has been overlooked by historians and biographers for 100 to 250 years in our nation’s history.  Blending new facts into a narrative is the culmination of tedious research.

Are there any new projects you are working on?  

I have four baseball manuscripts in various stages of completion.  My son and I will soon be signing a contract to reconstruct Swat Milligan, a fictional baseball story that was a huge success in 1908.  Sadly, there are no original copies now in existence, so we are bringing back to life a small segment of American baseball that has been hidden for over a century.  There is also a completed manuscript containing two years of correspondence between Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig and Rogers Hornsby.

Why are people so drawn to baseball and its stories, legends, and people?

Baseball, including its cousin softball, is popular because it is accessible to anyone around the world.  Boys and girls, men and women of any cultural background can form teams, then obtain balls, bats, and gloves.  Once equipped and loosely organized, a ball field can be formed in a farmer’s field, a city alley, or a local park.  Although some athletic individuals will stand out on a ball field, the whole concept of baseball is built around teamwork.  Playing together for a common goal builds trust and responsibility while having a good time.  Professional baseball, whether Major or Minor Leagues, is a spectator sport in which people today have immediate access to both games and players.  That has certainly changed over the years.  I still remember watching a black and white television when Mantle and Maris slugged it out in their home run derby of 1961. 

What is your favorite baseball book?

I do not have a favorite baseball book.  I only buy them for reference.  I prefer military history books since I have written seventeen of them, including one that will be published in England.  That does not mean I do not run into baseball stories.  In their off time, soldiers would prefer playing baseball instead of any other sport (exluding chasing women).

Outside of baseball, what is your favorite book and/or who is your favorite author? 

Right now my favorite book is Empty Sky, a collection of interviews with RAF pilots from World War Two who were in their 80s and 90s.  Unrestrained at that age, they gave their honest wartime experiences, including praise for the crewmen who kept the aircraft flying and stocked with ammunition.  Although many would become aces and receive medals, they generously acknowledged those who never got recognized as an essential part of a single team.

There's a lot of talk about baseball needing to be "fixed."  Is baseball broken?  If you were the Commissioner of Baseball what change(s) (if any) would you make to the current game?

My biggest complaint about Major League baseball is the length of games.  Original Major League games would end well under two hours, often coming in at one and a half.  Do we really need programming that shows batters calling time out just to adjust their pants or managers holding conferences at the mound?  What’s next?  Will the catcher bring out a chair to chat with his pitcher about what pitch to throw?  Move it along.

I love to talk about the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Which former Yankee most deserves to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame?

I just came back from getting a Diet Coke and forgot what I was going to say.

What is the greatest baseball movie of all time?

Hands down, Field of Dreams.  Who would not want to play ball with his or her father again?

What is your favorite baseball memory?

My favorite memory from a limited baseball career was an event while in Little League.  I can assure you that no spectator at a Major or Minor League game ever witnessed what happened during my baseball game.  Our diamond was located next to a road and beyond that flowed a small creek.  While at bat, I managed to foul off every game ball into the creek.  The game was halted for fifteen minutes while men tried to reach soaked balls with tree branches or rummaged through their car trunks in search of ragged balls of which the umpires would approve.  Fifteen minutes!!  Beat that, you Major League All Stars!!

Thank you Alan. This was a lot of fun. I cannot wait to see your next books.