On this episode of Our American Stories, Jack Marucci didn't set out to create a sporting goods company; he was simply trying to find a wooden baseball bat for his son. When he couldn't find one small enough, he opened up his shed and made one from scratch. Then another kid wanted one. Then another. Before long, the bats that had started as a project for his son were finding their way into the hands of Major League players and gaining a reputation as some of the best in the game.

Marucci shares how that backyard hobby grew into Marucci Sports and how the company earned its place in professional baseball one bat at a time.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, Mike Leven learned one of his most important business lessons in the hotel franchise world: treat the franchisee like a customer, and give that owner every reason to succeed. Done well, he argues, franchising combines the resources of a larger brand with the energy and accountability of individual entrepreneurs.

Sharing the story through recalling his time with Days Inn and Holiday Inn, Leven explains why growing organizations so often lose touch with the people they serve and why, in business and beyond, the bigger the bureaucracy becomes, the easier it is to forget who the customer really is.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, a century ago, much of the American South was brutally uncomfortable in summer, skyscrapers could only rise so far, and keeping track of thousands of products in a store was a slow, manual job. Then a handful of inventions quietly changed how people lived and worked. Air conditioning helped transform entire regions of the country. A safer elevator made the modern skyscraper practical. And a pattern of black lines printed on a package changed the way nearly everything we buy is tracked and sold.

Economist and bestselling author Tim Harford, author of Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy, shares the surprising stories behind air conditioning, the elevator brake, and the barcode, three inventions so ordinary today that it is easy to forget just how much of the modern world was built around them.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in February 2006, Buck O'Neil and Bob Kendrick were packed and ready to fly to Florida for what they believed would be a Hall of Fame celebration. Instead, O'Neil fell one vote short. Kendrick was devastated. Hundreds of supporters gathered at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum were angry. Buck responded differently.

Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, remembers how O'Neil celebrated the 17 Negro Leaguers who had been elected, comforted everyone grieving on his behalf, and then went to Cooperstown to honor them. Fifteen years later, Buck O'Neil was finally elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, George O'Brien became one of Hollywood's biggest leading men after starring in John Ford's 1924 silent epic The Iron Horse. But long before Hollywood made him famous, O'Brien had already served in the Navy during World War I, and when Pearl Harbor brought America into World War II, the 41-year-old husband and father volunteered to serve again.

As part of our ongoing Hollywood Goes to War series, Roger McGrath, author of Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier, shares the astonishing story of how O'Brien went from silent-film star to Navy beachmaster, serving under fire at Attu, Saipan, and Leyte before returning once more to uniform during the Korean War.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, it was the Cold War on ice, and no one expected Team USA to win. But in 1980, a ragtag group of college kids stunned the world when they beat the seemingly unbeatable Soviet Union at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics.

Our own Greg Hengler and Mike Eruzione himself, captain of the U.S. men’s hockey team and the man who scored the game-winning goal, share the inside story of one of the greatest upsets in sports history.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in May 1861, three enslaved men, Frank Baker, Shepherd Mallory, and James Townsend, escaped from Confederate labor at Sewell's Point, Virginia, and crossed to Union-held Fort Monroe. When their enslaver demanded their return, General Benjamin Butler faced a problem. Sending them back would mean returning three men to work on Confederate defenses aimed at his own fort.

Our regular contributor Jon Elfner and historian Kate Masur, author of Until Justice Be Done, share the story of how Butler's decision to hold the men as "contraband of war" helped open Union lines to hundreds, then thousands, of freedom seekers and pushed Congress, Abraham Lincoln, and the Union Army toward a new policy on slavery: ending it entirely.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, before Randall Wallace wrote Braveheart and directed We Were Soldiers, his father, Thurman Wallace, taught him what it meant to keep your word, work hard, and treat everyone with dignity. Thurman had grown up without a father, went to work at 14, and spent his career as a traveling candy salesman who seemed to know everyone he met.

Randall remembers the man he calls "the greatest man I ever knew," from his father's early doubts about a career in writing to his pride after Braveheart. He also shares the final days they spent together on the set of We Were Soldiers and the encounter after his father's death that showed Randall just how deeply his dad had touched the lives of others.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, Sarah Gonzalez was six years old when her father, a former gang member and addict who became a jail chaplain, suddenly died. His death shattered the joyful childhood she had known and eventually led Sarah to reject the Christian faith in which she had been raised. By her teenage and college years, she was using drugs, drinking heavily, and practicing witchcraft.

Then, during a trip to New York City in 2016, she reached a breaking point. Sarah shares her deeply personal story of how she returned to the faith she had rejected and, years later, found herself continuing the prison ministry her father had begun at Chicago's Cook County Jail.

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