Terry Gross

Baseball's official historian, John Thorn, sets the record straight on the game's earliest days ...in the 1700s. Yes, that's right, baseball started decades before Abner Doubleday supposedly created the game at Cooperstown -- and it only became popular when professional gamblers took an interest.

Songwriter Hugh Martin, who co-wrote the classic song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" for Judy Garland's 1944 movie, Meet Me in St. Louis died on Friday. He was 96. Fresh Air remembers Martin with highlights from a 1989 interview.

Director and screenwriter Tom McCarthy's film Win-Win stars Paul Giamatti as a high school wrestling coach struggling with a moral dilemma. McCarthy, a former wrestler himself, explains why he left the mats in high school and turned to improv comedy.