Will Braund

Will has the quintessential background for doing what he does, telling the stories of extraordinarily talented ball players who were also funny, endearing, and flawed. He planned to go into entertainment but his love of history led him into teaching and, unfortunately, he excelled at it. He was nominated for the Governor General’s Award (in Teaching) partly because his students’ parents would read the booklets he wrote that included juicy details that weren’t in any textbooks.
Will was a pretty fair ball player himself and in his early thirties he was an instructor at the Toronto Blue Jays Instructional camp. Now he digs and digs and digs until he uncovers things about his subjects other writers don’t, for example that Babe Ruth’s enemy Ty Cobb had hit on the love of Ruth’s life when she 15. Claire was so gorgeous her father (Cobb’s lawyer) would have her stride through the courtroom while the all-male jury was supposed to be listening to his opponent’s summation. Will’s goal is for viewers to hop on their devices at the end of the show and say, “Holy shit, Rube Waddell really did wrestle alligators and jump out a second-floor window to prove he could fly. Ed Delahanty really did go over Niagara Falls!”