[Did it bother you to stop playing and become a coach?]

CLYDE SUKEFORTH: No. I was messing around with it. I was taking batting practice and pitching batting practice and doing something all the time. Of course, I missed the actual playing quite a bit, but it didn't hurt my desire in the least bit. I still wanted to play, and I wanted to stay in baseball.

[Tape seems to stop, then start again]

You're looking for a caption [title]. You can put that in your words. I mean, that was no exception. Way back in those days, in the early part of this century, practically all the boys went through something like that. They had to.

[You mean getting the scores by stagecoach?]

Well, no telephone. No TV. No radio. Not before 1930, radio was no good. I mean, even the city boys, they had to wait until the newspapers came out. Of course, we had to wait a little longer. We had to wait until the old stagecoach got there to take them to the...The paper came up by train. Communication was pretty slow up until 1925 or '30.

You could paint a picture of what the old-time ballplayers went through without mentioning me in particular. I mean, you could mention me, along with others, but you could make a title out of that without making me an author, I think.

[Mike explains to Sukeforth why his story is unique]

But that same thing has happened to a thousand boys. In the early days, a great percentage of the ballplayers were Southern boys. I mean, they didn't come from the big citities, they were country boys. An awful lot of players came off the farms all over the country, in the South and other places. They went through the same thing that I did.