It's called "the national pastime" but how did baseball become America's favorite sport? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, some of baseball's secret history. Also, stories from the Negro Leagues, and biologist Stephen Jay Gould explains why there are no more .400 hitters.

SEGMENT 1

Historian G. Edward White tells Judith Strasser how baseball became the national pastime and what's happened to it lately. White is the author of "Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself 1903-1953."

SEGMENT 2

Buck O'Neil was an all-star player with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. He talks with Jim Fleming about the exclusion of Black players from major league baseball, and life in the Negro Leagues. O'Neil is currently chairman of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City and the author of a memoir, "I Was Right on Time." Also, Mark Winegardner tells Jim Fleming about the baseball season of 1946 when the Mexican League brought together some of the best players in the world regardless of race or nationality. Winegardner uses this extraordinary season as the backdrop for his novel "Veracruz Blues."

SEGMENT 3:

When Stephen Jay Gould isn't curating Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, he's watching the Red Sox at Fenway Park. Gould explains to Steve Paulson his theory on why we don't have any more .400 hitters.

Distribution dates:

• week of 10/06/96 - hour 3
• week of 06/22/97 - hour 2