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Seamheads.com Founder and Managing Editor, Mike Lynch is our guest on this episode of the Cover the Bases podcast.  He is the author of two baseball books and writes regularly as his web site.  We really appreciate the time that he took out of his night to talk some baseball with us.

His most recent book is It Ain’t So: A Might Have Been History of the White Sox in 1919 and Beyond. It is published by McFarland, and was released in November of 2009.

Mike took a completely unique approach to writing about the Chicago White Sox team of 1919.  After first pitching the concept to his publisher and getting some push back, he pitched another book which turned out to be Harry Frazee, Ban Johnson and the Feud That Nearly Destroyed the American League.  Once McFarland saw what Mike could accomplish, they let him revisit his concept for examining what might have happened if the Black Sox scandal had never taken place.

Out of the Park Baseball provided the computational muscle, while Mike allowed the players who were banned from baseball in 1920, to continue on in their careers.  Mike chronicled the impact that this would have had on the American League races, as well as some World Series Championships. He played the 1919 World Series, completed the 1920 season, and then reset all of the American League teams each season to play a “might have been” version of the White Sox.  This simulation and writing process took Mike about 10 years to complete.

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