A half-century after a guy from Billings helped change Major League Baseball by challenging its reserve clause, there’s a new book out about the Magic City’s most famous athlete.
“He changed baseball. That’s why the title is the 'Montanan who Revolutionized Baseball,'” says author Dennis Gaub.
Watch Dennis Gaub discuss his new book:
From an American Legion star in Billings to a Major League standout, Dave McNally helped the Baltimore Orioles win two World Series titles.
McNally was one of the most dominant pitchers in the game, winning 20 games four consecutive times, and is still the only pitcher to ever hit a grand slam home run in the World Series.
But it’s not just McNally’s accomplishments on the field and his upbringing in Billings that Gaub focuses on in the book.
“Dave made it possible for both baseball players and both pro sports athletes in general to have a fair shake in the workplace. It opened the door to free agency,” says Gaub.
Gaub says the players, who now commonly negotiate contracts in the millions, owe McNally a big thank you.
Gaub says he talked with several of McNally’s former Legion teammates while compiling the book as well as two of his teammates with the Orioles—Jim Palmer and Boog Powell. He also spoke with sportscasting great Brent Musburger, who is also a Billings native.
Gaub spent his early years in Terry before moving to Miles City and then Billings.
He became interested in journalism while working for his school newspaper and was hired by the Billings Gazette during his senior year at Billings West High School.
“I missed the prom. I missed everything my senior year, but I couldn’t care less. I was doing what I loved,” he says.
Gaub spent 25 years as a newspaper reporter, covering both sports and news. He then moved into the software industry before retiring.
“The worst day I had as a reporter was better than the best day at some of the other jobs I had,” he says.
Gaub has stayed busy writing. “Dave McNally, the Montanan who Revolutionized Baseball” is his fifth book.
The first, “Win ‘Em All”, was on the Laurel Locomotives magical run to the Big 32 state basketball championship in 1969.
“It’s kind of quasi-Hoosiers story,” he says.
He followed that with “Midway Bravery”, a book about Miles City World War II hero Jim Muri.
His third book “Sky Dancer” is a fictional novel about a boy growing up in Billings in the years following World War I.
Gaub then penned “Lindberg in Montana” about famed pilot Charles Lindbergh’s time in Billings and Montana.
He says Montana is a good place to mine material for a writer.
"I love Montana history, and I love Billings history. People don’t appreciate how many great stories there are—some of them I’m not even aware of,” he says.
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