Ritter realized that those who played baseball in the early years of the 20th century were bnow/b old men, and he resolved to interview as many of them as he could in order to record their memories. ... Ritter presented royalties to the 22 men in the original book and their bestates/b, and continued to write them checks into the mid-1980s. Ritter himself earned less than $35000 on this classic. Every player in the book, along with his wife, has since died. ...
