Good Seats Still Available: Recent Episodes

View Details

Boxer Michael Spinks was one of the most accomplished fighters of his generation, even if his career has never received quite the recognition it deserves. A gold medalist at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Spinks became the dominant light heavyweight of his era before doing what no reigning light heavyweight champion had ever done: move up and defeat the heavyweight champion, upsetting the unbeaten Larry Holmes in 1985 and beating him again the following year.

Yet for many casual sports fans, Spinks is remembered less for everything he accomplished than for the 91 seconds it took Mike Tyson to knock him out in their massive 1988 "Once and For All" showdown. That loss became the final fight of Spinks' career, obscuring a remarkable body of work that legendary boxing writer Jack Hirsch believes deserves far greater historical appreciation.

Hirsch joins the show to discuss his newly published authorized biography of Spinks ("Michael 'Jinx' Spinks: An Authorized Biography"), and the fascinating life behind the fighter: his unlikely path from Olympic champion to reluctant professional, his complicated relationship with promoter Butch Lewis, his historic victories over Holmes, the circumstances surrounding the Tyson fight, and the financial turmoil that emerged years after his retirement.

We also explore Spinks' famously low-key personality, his relationship with brother Leon, and why Hirsch places Michael firmly among boxing's all-time greats — even if the wider sporting public has never quite given him his due.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Michael 'Jinx' Spinks: An Authorized Biography": https://amzn.to/4xs4dQ5

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Before Tiger Woods transformed golf, before Charley Sifford broke the PGA Tour's color barrier, there was Ted Rhodes — a remarkably gifted player whose career unfolded largely outside the spotlight because the game itself refused to let him in.

This week, return guest Dan Taylor joins to discuss his new book, "Out of the Rough: Ted Rhodes And His Fight Against Golf's Color Barrier," the remarkable story of one of the greatest golfers most sports fans have never heard of. From humble beginnings in segregated Nashville to competing against the game's biggest names, Rhodes spent decades proving his talent while confronting the barriers that kept Black golfers from the highest levels of the sport.

Taylor also explores the vital role of the United Golf Association, the organization that created competitive opportunities for Black golfers during an era when mainstream golf remained largely closed to them. Together, Rhodes and the UGA tell a story that extends far beyond fairways and scorecards, revealing an overlooked chapter in both golf history and the broader struggle for civil rights.

Along the way, we examine Rhodes' friendship with boxing legend Joe Louis, his influence on future pioneers including Charley Sifford and Lee Elder, and why even Tiger Woods recognized Rhodes as one of the figures who helped make his own historic success possible.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Out of the Rough: Ted Rhodes And His Fight Against Golf's Color Barrier": https://link.amazon/B011VTLCa

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

For more than 40 years, the Chicago Charities College All-Star Game occupied a singular place on the annual football calendar. Each summer, the nation's top graduating college players took on the reigning NFL champions before packed crowds at Chicago's Soldier Field and a national television audience. Played 42 times between 1934 and 1976, the game became an unlikely bridge between college football and the NFL during some of the sport's most transformative years. In "College All-Stars vs. NFL Champions: The Chicago Charities Football Games," sports historian Warren Rogan ("Sports' Forgotten Heroes") explores the history, personalities and enduring legacy of this forgotten football institution.

Conceived by Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward during the Great Depression, the game began as a way to help promote a young NFL still seeking to establish itself alongside the far more popular college game. Over the years, it became much more than an exhibition. The series raised more than $4 million for Chicago charities and featured future stars from the worlds of sports, politics and public life, including Kenny Washington, Jackie Robinson, future US President Gerald Ford & eventual US Supreme Court Justice Byron "Whizzer" White.

From its inaugural 0–0 tie against George Halas's Chicago Bears in 1934 to the College All-Stars' memorable victory over Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers in 1963, the game produced its share of unforgettable moments before coming to an abrupt, rain-soaked end in 1976.

In this episode, we explore the history, significance and lasting legacy of one of football's most fascinating forgotten traditions — a time when the nation's best college players had one final chance to test themselves against the very best professional team in the game.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "College All-Stars vs. NFL Champions: The Chicago Charities Football Games: 1934-1976": https://amzn.to/4fmad6S

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Ford Frick's name may be familiar to baseball fans, but his story — and his impact on the game — have largely faded from view. Yet for more than four decades, Frick occupied a front-row seat to some of the most transformative moments in baseball history, first as a journalist and publicist, then as National League president and ultimately as Major League Baseball's third commissioner.

This week, we're joined by author Dave Bohmer, whose new book, "Ford Frick: Baseball's Third Commissioner and His Four Decades of Shaping the Game," offers a fresh and compelling reassessment of one of the sport's most misunderstood executives. Drawing on extensive archival research, Bohmer argues that Frick was far more than a caretaker commissioner, emerging instead as a pivotal figure whose influence can be found throughout the development of the modern game.

Together, we explore Frick's unlikely rise from newspaper reporter to one of baseball's most powerful figures, his leadership during the Great Depression and World War II, his involvement in the creation of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and his stewardship during an era that saw Jackie Robinson break baseball's color barrier, franchises move west, television reshape the business of sports, and expansion transform the major leagues.

We also examine the controversies that continue to define Frick's legacy — from the Roger Maris home run debate to longstanding perceptions that he served owners more than the game itself—and discuss why Bohmer believes history has understated his influence on the sport he helped shape.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Ford Frick: Baseball's Third Commissioner and His Four Decades of Shaping the Game": https://amzn.to/4yKveQq

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

For generations, the city of Memphis chased something bigger than a winning football team. It chased major league status.

When the USFL arrived in 1984, the Memphis Showboats became far more than a spring football franchise. For one unforgettable moment, they embodied a city's belief that it belonged on the biggest stage in professional sports.

This week, Memphis sports historian and author Keith Wood returns to the show — this time to explore the remarkable story behind his new book "The Memphis Showboats: The USFL Team & the City's Fight for Major League Status." Together, we trace the city's decades-long pursuit of professional football—from the World Football League's Memphis Southmen to the arrival of the USFL — and examine why the Showboats resonated so deeply with fans despite surviving only two unforgettable seasons.

Along the way, we revisit the vision of David Dixon, the influence of John Bassett, the recruiting coup that landed Reggie White, the innovative football mind of Pepper Rodgers, the overlooked brilliance of quarterback Walter Lewis, and the leadership of Steve Ehrhart that transformed the Showboats into legitimate championship contenders.

The Showboats lasted just two seasons. Their legend has lasted four decades. Join us as we celebrate one of the USFL's most beloved franchises — and the city that embraced it.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "The Memphis Showboats: The USFL Team and the City's Fight for Major League Status": https://amzn.to/4pfjaSV

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

The original USFL produced its share of unforgettable franchises. None was more entertaining — or more unbelievable — than the San Antonio Gunslingers.

On the field, they were gritty, competitive and remarkably resilient. Off the field? Pure chaos.

Bounced paychecks. A front office operating out of a double-wide trailer. Players racing across South Texas to cash payroll checks before the money disappeared. Coaches juggling multiple jobs. Ownership lurching from one financial crisis to the next. And somehow . . . they kept playing football.

This week, we welcome former Gunslingers public relations director Greg Singleton, author of Gunnin' for Glory, for an insider's look at one of professional football's most delightfully dysfunctional organizations.

Singleton takes us beyond the incredulity, introducing the coaches, players and front-office personalities who somehow turned daily dysfunction into lifelong friendships. Along the way come unforgettable tales featuring penny-pinching owner Clint Manges, coaches Gil Steinke and Jim Bates, star quarterback Rick Neuheisel, and a supporting cast so colorful they almost defy belief.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Gunnin' for Glory: The Wild, Weird, Wonderful Stories of the USFL's San Antonio Gunslingers": https://amzn.to/3QCOcY3

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

[While Tim runs up and down the East Coast this week to take in some World Cup knockout matches in person, please enjoy this ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE of our tribute to pro sports' most innovative decade - with award-winning sports history chronicler Michael MacCambridge - from 2023.]

+ + +

After an absence of over six years and more than 300+ episodes, sportswriter extraordinaire Michael MacCambridge ("Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports"; "America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation"; "Chuck Noll: His Life's Work") makes his triumphant return to the podcast - this time to celebrate the release of his brand new, instant sports history classic, "The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America."

It's just about everything you'd expect from the author of what is arguably the most definitive look yet at the decade that undeniably shaped the modern trajectory of sports in America - including (of course) a bevy of challenger leagues, defunct teams, one-of-a-kind events that only the Seventies could produce!

• • +

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America": https://amzn.to/4f93VHv

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Baseball history is often told through championships, statistics and the tales of legendary players. Todd Radom sees it differently.

One of sports' foremost designers, branding experts and visual historians, Radom has spent decades exploring the artifacts that tell baseball's deeper story: logos, uniforms, ballparks, scorecards, mascots and the countless details that connect generations of fans to the game they love.

In this episode, we discuss Radom's fascinating career and his latest book, "The Ballpark and Beyond," a richly illustrated celebration of baseball's people, places and enduring culture. Along the way, we explore forgotten franchises, legendary ballparks, Negro League dynasties, baseball's ties to American history, and the surprising stories hidden in plain sight throughout the sport.

Through Radom's unique lens, baseball becomes more than a sport — it becomes a living archive of American culture. The result is a wide-ranging exploration of the people, places and forgotten connections that continue to give the national pastime its remarkable depth and texture.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "The Ballpark and Beyond: An Illustrated Celebration of Baseball's Rich History": https://amzn.to/43SZdHB

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

From Red Byron's pioneering 1949 title to the modern playoff era, NASCAR's Cup Series championship history is really the story of the sport itself: its birth on the dirt tracks of the South, its rise through the Petty, Earnhardt, Gordon and Johnson dynasties, and its continuing evolution into today's faster, tighter, more unpredictable championship battles.

This week, we dig into that legacy with a conversation centered on "NASCAR Champions: Every Cup Series Champion from 1949 to Today," the new illustrated book by H.A. Branham and Holly Cain. Built as a chapter-by-chapter tour through every Cup champion, the book blends vivid photography, historical sidebars and insider commentary to show how each title, whether won by a legend or a one-time champion, helped shape the sport's identity.

Along the way, we talk about what separates the truly great champions from the merely memorable, how the championship format has changed the meaning of "best driver," and why the Cup title has always carried a weight that extends far beyond the trophy itself.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "NASCAR Champions: Every Cup Series Champion from 1949 to Today": https://amzn.to/4fM6Kza

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

For billions of people around the globe, the FIFA World Cup is the ultimate sporting event. But what does the tournament reveal about the world beyond the pitch?

This week, we welcome Financial Times journalist and New York Times bestselling author Simon Kuper to discuss his latest book, "World Cup Fever: A Soccer Journey in Nine Tournaments." Drawing on more than three decades of firsthand reporting from World Cups spanning Italy 1990 to Qatar 2022, Kuper reflects on how football's greatest spectacle has evolved — and what that evolution says about politics, culture, globalization, nationalism, media, money, and power.

Far more than memorable matches and legendary players, we explore the World Cup as a unique lens through which to view modern history itself. Kuper recounts his experiences covering tournaments staged amid political upheaval, examines FIFA's transformation from a relatively modest governing body into a global commercial powerhouse, and reflects on the growing tensions between football's grassroots appeal and the immense corporate and geopolitical forces that now surround the game.

Along the way, we discuss how World Cups have served as stages for dictators and democracies alike, why the tournament remains one of the few truly shared global cultural experiences, and whether the event has become more accessible — or more distant — from the ordinary fans whose passion fuels it.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "World Cup Fever: A Soccer Journey in Nine Tournaments": https://amzn.to/4dV2SKN

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

For more than four decades, Tom Durkin's voice was synonymous with the biggest moments in horse racing. From the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes to the Breeders' Cup and Saratoga, his soaring calls helped transform great races into unforgettable theater. But as Durkin reveals in his new memoir, "A Life's Calling: The Voice Behind the World's Greatest Horse Races," the story behind the microphone is every bit as compelling as the action on the track.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Durkin reflects on an extraordinary journey that began as a horse-racing-obsessed kid riding Chicago's "L" train to Arlington Park and eventually led him to become the most recognizable race caller of his generation. Along the way, he recounts the unlikely lie that launched his career, the grind of the minor-league fair circuit, and the national breakthrough that put him on racing's biggest stages.

But this episode goes beyond just racing history. Durkin offers a fascinating look inside the craft of live sports broadcasting, discussing the college theater training that shaped his style, the famous "Mayor Daley" notebook where he collected thousands of descriptive phrases, and the relentless preparation that fueled his success. He also speaks candidly about the fear of failure, self-doubt, and anxiety that shadowed his career — even at its highest peaks — and how those challenges ultimately became part of what drove him.

Replete with stories about iconic races, vanished racetracks, broadcasting innovation, and a lifetime spent pursuing excellence, this conversation is both a celebration of one of sports' great voices and a revealing examination of the work, passion, and perseverance required to become one.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "A Life's Calling: The Voice Behind the World's Greatest Horse Races,": https://amzn.to/435AJus

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

We dive deep into the strange, fragmented, often unbelievable history of American men's soccer with acclaimed journalist and author Leander Schaerlaeckens, whose new book, "The Long Game: U.S. Men's Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts," chronicles the U.S. Men's National Team's long, improbable march from global irrelevance to the doorstep of the 2026 World Cup. For generations, men's soccer in America existed as a sporting afterthought: half-forgotten World Cup appearances, unstable leagues, empty stadiums, and a federation that often seemed to be inventing itself on the fly. Schaerlaeckens traces the USMNT's bizarre and deeply American journey from the collapse of the old North American Soccer League and the ill-fated "Team America" experiment, through the make-or-break 1994 World Cup, to today's globally connected generation starring players like Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie.

Along the way, we discuss the structural challenges that long held American soccer back — from pay-to-play youth systems to cultural indifference — and why the sport's growth in the United States has been anything but linear. The conversation also dives into iconic personalities, locker-room dysfunction, the rise of MLS academies, and the looming tension surrounding the hyper-commercialized 2026 World Cup.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "The Long Game: U.S. Men's Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts": https://amzn.to/4tSAJIS

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

For more than six decades, baseball's New York Mets have occupied a singular place in American sports culture: eternally overshadowed, perpetually chaotic, strangely lovable, and deeply woven into the identity of New York itself. Born in the aftermath of the departures of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, the Mets quickly became something far more complicated than an expansion baseball team. They became a vessel for outer-borough pride, working-class frustration, inherited heartbreak, and the emotional DNA of National League baseball in New York City.

In this episode, we dive deep into that history through an expansive conversation with author A.M. (Andy) Gittlitz about his widely acclaimed new book, "Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People's Team."

Rather than telling a conventional franchise history, Gittlitz explores the Mets as a social, political, and cultural institution — one shaped by class struggle, labor history, media narratives, urban change, and the shifting identity of New York itself.

From the lingering ghosts of the Dodgers to the miracle of 1969, from Shea Stadium dysfunction to the strange mythology of Mets fandom, this conversation explores why the franchise has inspired such fierce loyalty despite decades of collapse, disappointment, and absurdity. We also examine the Mets' complicated relationship with the Yankees, the meaning of "the people's team," and whether the franchise's identity can survive the billionaire-era ambitions of owner Steve Cohen.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People's Team": https://amzn.to/42BQSHI

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Next month, the FIFA World Cup returns to North American soil, marking a transformative moment for the sport of soccer on this continent. But to understand the current state of the US Men's National Team as they prepare to host the world, one must first examine their complex and often turbulent relationship with their greatest rival: Mexico.

In this episode, we welcome back soccer journalist, historian and Episode 270 guest Hal Phillips, author of the definitive new book, "Sibling Rivalry: How Mexico and the US Built the Most Contentious, Co-Dependent Feud in World Soccer." Phillips' work frames the rivalry with El Tri not just as a series of games, but as a "co-dependent feud" that has fundamentally shaped the national identities of both countries.

We trace the narrative arc from the Americans' 1934 World Cup qualifier success in Rome through the grueling 46-year "dark age" where the US failed to secure a single victory against their neighbors. Phillips takes us through the pivotal shifts of the 1990s and the birth of the "Dos a Cero" era, explaining how the professionalization of the American game turned a lopsided regional dominance into an ever-escalating athletic confrontation of equals.

Beyond the tactics on the pitch, we discuss the deeper cultural and geopolitical baggage that makes this rivalry unique. From the personal stories of dual-national stars caught between two flags to the economic realities of the "Border War," Phillips explains why this rivalry was the necessary forge for American soccer's survival. As this year's World Cup beckons, we explore whether these two "siblings" are finally ready to step out of each other's shadows and challenge the global elite.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Sibling Rivalry: How Mexico and the US Built the Most Contentious, Co-Dependent Feud in World Soccer": https://amzn.to/3PxRbjK

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

[We mourn the passing of legendary sports broadcaster John Sterling with an ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE of our memorable conversation from 2019.]

+ + +

Legendary New York Yankees baseball play-by-play man John Sterling joins host Tim Hanlon for a cavalcade of career memories from his 50+ year journey in sports broadcasting – including a treasure trove of stops along the way with previously incarnated or otherwise defunct teams (and leagues).

Now celebrating his 30th consecutive season with the Bronx Bombers, Sterling's unique vocal stylings have become synonymous with some of the Yankees' most signature moments during that time – including the team's dominant run of American League and World Series championships across the late 1990s and much of the 2000s.

The path to becoming one of baseball's marquee team broadcasters was far from direct, however, and we (naturally) obsess over some of Sterling's more memorable "forgotten" gigs along the way, including:

• Falling into radio play-by-play with the NBA Baltimore Bullets as a late fill-in for Jim Karvellas;
• Becoming the almost-voice of the ABA Washington Caps (until a hasty move to Virginia to become the Squires);
• Hustling to secure radio rights to the upstart WHA New York Raiders for Gotham's talk powerhouse WMCA - and the irony of later calling games for the NHL Islanders;
• The highs of the ABA New York, and lows of the NBA New Jersey Nets;
• "Phoning it in" for the World Football League's short-lived New York Stars; AND

• The ahead-of-its-time Enterprise Sports Radio Network.

• • +

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Author Bill Ranauro joins the podcast this week to discuss "The Chosen City," his captivating new book on the 1946 Nashua Dodgers and the New Hampshire community that became the first integrated team in "organized" baseball.

Ranauro's book shines a light on a pivotal but often overlooked moment in Brooklyn Dodgers history, when Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe arrived in Nashua and helped turn a minor league season into a major milestone in the fight to integrate the game.

Our conversation explores how Branch Rickey's Dodgers organization helped open the door, and how its affiliated Class B New England League club became the setting for an important test of baseball's future. Ranauro also examines the people behind the team, including the leadership that helped guide the Dodgers through that groundbreaking season. But at the center of it all are Campanella and Newcombe, two players whose talent, professionalism, and presence made history both on and off the field.

"Chosen City" tells a larger story about opportunity, race, and change in American sports, using one small city to show how baseball's evolution often began in unexpected places. This episode offers a thoughtful look at how Nashua became part of the Brooklyn Dodgers' legacy and why Ranauro's book matters for anyone interested in baseball history, civil rights, or the people who helped reshape the game.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "The Chosen City: The Owner, the Players, and the New Hampshire City that Integrated Baseball in the United States": https://amzn.to/4nhpKXV

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

In the early years of professional basketball, before the bright lights and global reach of today's NBA, the game was held together by grit, geography, and a patchwork of teams fighting to survive. Few franchises capture that fragile, formative moment better than the Tri-Cities Blackhawks — a team that didn't just represent one city, but an entire region straddling the Mississippi River.

In this episode, we're joined by author Don Doxsie, whose book "Tri-City Blackhawks: A Turbulent History of a Pioneering NBA Team" serves as both our guide and our lens into this overlooked chapter of basketball history. Based in Moline, Rock Island, and Davenport, the Blackhawks were a product of the industrial Midwest and the now-defunct National Basketball League. They played a bruising, defense-first style, developed standout players, and, for a brief moment, stood toe-to-toe with the best teams of their era.

But as pro basketball rapidly evolved — culminating in the 1949 merger that created the modern NBA — the realities of a small, fragmented market began to close in. Through Doxsie's reporting and perspective, we explore the team's promising early seasons, its mounting financial and competitive pressures, and the instability that ultimately led to its relocation.

It's a story of reinvention as much as decline — one that would eventually see the franchise evolve into today's Atlanta Hawks, but only after leaving the Tri-Cities behind. Along the way, Doxsie brings to life the personalities, league politics, and day-to-day realities of running a team on the margins of a sport still struggling to define itself.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Tri-City Blackhawks: A Turbulent History of a Pioneering NBA Team": https://amzn.to/42x6Cvm

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Ron LeFlore's trajectory from a maximum-security prison cell to starting in Major League Baseball's All-Star Game is a narrative of improbable survival and self-inflicted exile.

In this episode, we sit down with Adam Henig, author of "Baseball's Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore", to unpack the gritty, unvarnished reality of a man who was as much a product of Detroit's turbulent East Side as he was a victim of his own choices. We explore LeFlore's early years in a one-bedroom apartment plagued by poverty , the formative trauma of losing his brother Harry — an Olympic boxer — to a ring injury, and the heroin addiction that led to the armed robbery that defined his youth.

Henig takes us through the high-stakes process of documenting a life that feels more like a crime thriller than a sports biography. We discuss the "76-year-old jigsaw puzzle" Henig spent over four years piecing together through dozens of phone calls with LeFlore, despite the two never meeting in person. Henig also reveals the shadowy figures who facilitated LeFlore's rise, including Mafia associate Jimmy Karalla, who used his connections at the legendary Lindell AC bar to secure LeFlore a prison furlough for a Tiger Stadium tryout.

Beyond the 30-game hitting streak and the stolen-base titles, we examine the dark side of celebrity that LeFlore could never quite outrun. Henig sheds light on LeFlore's dangerous proximity to Frank Usher and the "Murder Row" crime family, a connection that ultimately eroded the trust of the baseball establishment. Finally, we look at the sobering post-career years, from working as an airport skycap to facing the health crises that cost him his leg. This conversation offers an essential look at the heavy price of a second chance and the complicated legacy of a man who reached the heights of the game only to find himself an outcast. + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Baseball's Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore": https://amzn.to/4vJT7pO

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

From wartime England to the rise — and fall — of pro soccer's first big American boom, Roger Faulkner has seen it all — and now, he's telling that story in his new memoir, "You Can't Get There from Here: My Soccer Journey from Derby to Detroit."

In this episode, we sit down with the Detroit Express co-founder to trace an unlikely journey: from growing up in Derby to helping bring top-flight international soccer to the Midwest at the height of the original North American Soccer League. Alongside high-profile partner/soccer impresario Jimmy Hill, Faulkner helped build a franchise that aimed to blend global star power with big-event American sports presentation — highlighted by marquee signings like Trevor Francis and matches staged inside a cavernous new Pontiac Silverdome.

Faulkner offers a candid, behind-the-scenes look at what it actually took to launch and operate an NASL club — where ambition often outpaced economics, and where the line between visionary and unsustainable was razor-thin. He reflects on the league's rapid ascent, its structural fragility, and the lessons learned as the Express hastily relocated amid the NASL's broader unraveling.

Just as compelling, Faulkner shares how he stayed in the game — helping build the foundation for soccer's next chapter in the U.S., including an instrumental role in bringing the 1994 World Cup to Detroit.

It's a revealing conversation — and a fitting companion to his hoot of a memoir — with one of American soccer's most underappreciated builders, who lived both the dream and the reality of the sport's first modern era.

PLUS: Our trivia contest is back - this time for a chance to win a copy of "You Can't Get There from Here"!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "You Can't Get There from Here: My Soccer Journey from Derby to Detroit": https://amzn.to/423VyFO

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

ESPN didn't begin as a media giant — it started as a gamble. In 1979, a cash-strapped startup bet on an unproven proposition: a 24-hour sports cable TV network delivered by satellite, built largely on programming no one else wanted and live coverage that barely existed. By any conventional measure, it was an absurd idea. It also changed sports media forever. This week, we revisit that origin story through a new lens: "Sports Heaven: The Birth of ESPN," premiering April 6th on (where else?) ESPN. The documentary traces how founders Bill Rasmussen, his son Scott, and an unlikely group of partners pushed past industry skepticism, financial instability, and the daunting challenge of programming an "always-on" sports network — laying the groundwork for what would become a global media powerhouse.

Joining us are director Greg DeHart and producer Mike Soltys, ESPN's longtime institutional historian, to explore both the story itself and the challenge of telling it. Drawing on archival footage and interviews with the Rasmussens, along with early executives and production pioneers, the film captures the improvisational, high-risk reality of ESPN's earliest days.

We discuss what the filmmakers uncovered that even seasoned observers may not know, how they balanced nostalgia with clear-eyed storytelling, and why ESPN's startup DNA — equal parts technological leap, programming opportunism, and entrepreneurial persistence — still resonates in today's fractured sports media landscape.

"Sports Heaven: The Birth of ESPN" premieres April 6th at 8:30pm ET on ESPN. The companion audiobook is also available now, with a hardcover book to be released in May.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Sports Heaven: The Birth of ESPN": https://amzn.to/3PRz1cC

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Nonfiction author extraordinaire Luke Epplin joins the pod this week to unpack the intertwined legacies of basketball legends Julius Erving and Moses Malone, as chronicled in his acclaimed new book, "Moses and the Doctor: Two Men, One Championship, and the Birth of Modern Basketball." What unfolds is more than a dual biography — it's a portrait of a transformational era when professional basketball's future hung in the balance.

Epplin traces both players back to their early professional years, including their formative time in the upstart American Basketball Association. There, Erving's aerial artistry helped legitimize a bold, improvisational style of play, while Malone's relentless presence in the paint established a new model of dominance — built on effort, positioning, and physical control.

Together, those contrasting identities shaped their transition to the NBA: Erving, the ever-visible icon and cultural ambassador; Malone, the quiet, force-of-nature interior anchor. Their partnership culminated in the Philadelphia 76ers' historic 1983 championship run — a moment that represented the perfect blend of style and substance, and altered the trajectory of the modern game.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOKS: * "Moses and the Doctor: Two Men, One Championship, and the Birth of Modern Basketball": https://amzn.to/4lVpe0Z

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Manhattanville University sports studies professor Seth Tannenbaum joins the show to unpack the provocative ideas behind his new book, "Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites: Democracy and Division at the Twentieth-Century Ballpark" — a sweeping reexamination of the American ballpark and the myth of baseball as a truly democratic space.

Tannenbaum walks us through how stadiums have long been designed not just for watching games, but for organizing fans — by class, access, and experience. From the crowded urban intimacy of early 20th-century parks to the rise of suburban, car-centric stadiums and today's amenity-driven retro designs, he argues that ballparks have consistently reflected — and reinforced — who the game is really "for."

But this isn't just history. Our conversation explores what these patterns mean for the future: as teams double down on premium seating, luxury suites, and real estate-driven developments, are modern stadiums becoming even more exclusive? And in an era of shifting media consumption and evolving fan expectations, what does "access" to the live sports experience really look like going forward?

It's a sharp, revealing discussion about baseball, business, and the subtle architecture of inclusion — and exclusion.

PLUS: Your chance to win a copy of "Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites" in this week's trivia contest!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOKS: * "Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites: Democracy and Division at the Twentieth-Century Ballpark": https://amzn.to/4lHqYuG

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

This week, we dive into the remarkable history — and uncertain future — of soccer's greatest spectacle: the FIFA World Cup.

Our guest is veteran journalist and soccer author Clemente Lisi, whose newly updated (and eminently essential!) book, "The World Cup: A History of the Planet's Biggest Sporting Event, 2026 Edition," chronicles the tournament's extraordinary evolution from its modest beginnings in 1930 to the globe-spanning mega-event it is today.

Drawing on decades of reporting and interviews, Lisi revisits some of the competition's most iconic matches, legendary players, and defining moments — from Pelé and Diego Maradona to the modern era of global superstars — that helped transform the World Cup into the most widely watched sporting event on the planet.

But the conversation doesn't stop with history.

With the 2026 edition — expanded to 48 teams for the first time — set to be hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, we also explore whether the tournament could face unexpected headwinds. Sky-high ticket prices have already sparked backlash from fans and even US lawmakers -- while debates over immigration policy, visa access for international supporters, and rising infrastructure costs for host cities could complicate what should be a global celebration.

Will the largest World Cup ever staged ignite a new era for soccer in North America — or expose the growing tensions between the sport's worldwide popularity and the economics of modern mega-events?

We explore the past, present, and future scenarios of the World Cup in a wide-ranging conversation with one of the sport's most thoughtful chroniclers.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "The World Cup: A History of the Planet's Biggest Sporting Event, 2026 Edition": https://amzn.to/47LYKsV

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Women's basketball is enjoying a remarkable surge in popularity — but it also stands at a pivotal moment. As the Women's National Basketball Association and the WNBA Players Association remain locked in difficult negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement, the sport faces a paradox: unprecedented visibility and momentum, yet uncertainty just weeks before the next season. In many ways, the tension reflects the league's maturation—and serves as a reminder of the decades-long struggle that built the modern women's game.

This week, we explore that history with Emma Baccellieri and Jordan Robinson, authors of the sweeping new book "Court Queens: Celebrate the Players, Teams, and History of Women's Basketball."

Baccellieri, a staff writer at Sports Illustrated, and Robinson — who covers women's basketball across multiple outlets, including Audacy's "The Women's Hoops Show" podcast — have created a richly researched and visually stunning chronicle of the sport's evolution: from 1892, when Senda Berenson introduced basketball to women at Smith College, through the collegiate era of the AIAW and the rise of the NCAA tournament, early pro experiments like the late-1970s Women's Professional Basketball League (WBL) and the 1990s American Basketball League (ABL), and ultimately the launch — and staying power — of the WNBA.

Packed with hundreds of photos, memorabilia, and vivid storytelling, "Court Queens" celebrates the pioneers, iconic teams, unforgettable games, and overlooked trailblazers who fought for opportunity across more than 130 years of basketball history.

Our conversation explores those stories — and why understanding that long arc of progress makes today's moment for women's basketball feel both thrilling and consequential.

PLUS: your chance to win a copy of "Court Queens" in our vaunted trivia contest!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOKS: * "Court Queens: Celebrate the Players, Teams, and History of Women's Basketball": https://amzn.to/4bg6Jj4

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Before Cy Young, before Babe Ruth, before baseball even had a strike zone, there was Jim Creighton — a 21-year-old phenom whose brilliance and tragic death helped create the modern game. This week, we explore the extraordinary life, myth, and enduring legacy of baseball's first true superstar through a revealing conversation with historian Tom Gilbert, author of the new biography "Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America's First Baseball Hero."

In the late 1850s and early 1860s, baseball was still a recreational pastime dominated by offense. Pitchers merely delivered the ball gently, and games could spiral into chaotic, high-scoring affairs. Creighton changed everything. Pitching for Brooklyn's powerhouse Excelsior club, he pioneered speed, movement, and deception — transforming pitching into a weapon rather than a formality. His dominance forced opponents to rethink strategy, and ultimately pushed baseball's rulemakers to introduce called strikes and formalize the strike zone, forever reshaping the sport's competitive balance.

Yet Creighton's meteoric rise was as brief as it was influential. In 1862, at the height of his fame, he suffered a catastrophic abdominal injury — likely worsened by the extreme physical demands of his revolutionary pitching style — and died just days later at age 21. His death stunned the sporting world and elevated him into baseball's first martyr-figure, a symbol of both the promise and peril of a game still inventing itself.

Gilbert, whose award-winning 2020 book "How Baseball Happened" reframed the chaotic, colorful origins of America's pastime, explains how Creighton's innovations accelerated baseball's evolution from amateur hobby to organized spectacle — and how myth, memory, and historical detective work have shaped Creighton's legend (yet not enshrinement in the National Baseball Hall of Fame) ever since.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOKS: * "Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America's First Baseball Hero": https://amzn.to/4aYCWvc * "How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed": https://amzn.to/4rKhoJX

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Few figures have shaped modern American soccer more profoundly than Alan Rothenberg ("The Big Bounce: The Surge That Shaped the Future of U.S. Soccer") — and in this revelatory conversation, he tells the story in his own words.

Best known as the founding architect of Major League Soccer and the driving force behind the record-breaking 1994 FIFA World Cup, Rothenberg's influence on the game in the United States stretches back decades earlier than most fans realize. Long before MLS kicked off in 1996, he was immersed in the sport's early, fragile professional era.

In the late 1960s, Rothenberg worked alongside Jack Kent Cooke in the United Soccer Association, helping operate the Los Angeles Wolves — an ambitious effort to import top international clubs to American audiences. He later held a brief ownership stake in the Los Angeles Aztecs of the North American Soccer League, gaining firsthand insight into the promise and ultimate collapse of pro soccer's first boom-and-bust cycle in the U.S.

A pivotal turning point came when Rothenberg ran the soccer competition for the 1984 Summer Olympics. At a time when many doubted the American market, the tournament drew unexpectedly strong crowds — helping persuade FIFA that the United States could successfully host a World Cup.

As president of the United States Soccer Federation from 1990 to 1998, Rothenberg delivered on that promise. The 1994 World Cup became the most financially successful in history to that point, and he fulfilled the bid commitment to launch MLS — creating the stable Division I league that had eluded the country for generations. He also chaired the 1999 Women's World Cup, another watershed moment.

In this candid interview, Rothenberg reflects on risk, resistance, political maneuvering, and the long game of institution-building — offering rare, behind-the-scenes insight into how American soccer finally found its footing.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "The Big Bounce: The Surge That Shaped the Future of U.S. Soccer": https://amzn.to/4kSgacQ

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

:first-child]:mt-0 gmail-[&_>:last-child]:mb-0"> Sports lifer. Road warrior. Straight shooter. In this no‑holds‑barred conversation, veteran sports marketer, former minor‑league ballplayer, and acclaimed author Bob Wilber opens up about a wildly unconventional career that somehow connects the Detroit Tigers minor-league system, Converse sneaker deals, indoor soccer barns, and nitro Funny Car mayhem.

Wilber takes us inside a childhood spent in dugouts and press boxes as the son of longtime Major League catcher, coach, and scout Del Wilber, and a trailblazing mother who broke barriers in the St. Louis Cardinals' front office. From there, we follow him onto college diamonds and through the harsh realities of chasing – and losing – the big‑league dream.

The story hardly slows down. Wilber walks through his pivot into sports marketing and front‑office life, selling corporate America on emerging properties and trying to keep the MISL's St. Louis Storm, NPSL's Kansas City Attack, and CISL's Indianapolis Twisters alive in the boom‑and‑bust world of indoor soccer. Then he details his second (third?) act in motorsports, running NHRA Funny Car teams and becoming one of drag racing's most distinctive PR voices and storytellers.

Along the way, Wilber talks candidly about burnout, constant travel, reinvention, and why he finally stepped away to write his autobiographical "Bats, Balls, & Burnouts: A Life of Sports, Marketing, and Mayhem".

If you care about the business behind the games – the hustle, the politics, the strain on real life – this conversation is a masterclass in how sports really work once the lights go off and the fans go home!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Bats, Balls, & Burnouts: A Life of Sports, Marketing, and Mayhem": https://amzn.to/3Myak3F

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

In the spring of 1974, a bold experiment arrived on the American sports scene: World Team Tennis (WTT) — a mixed-gender professional league co-founded and championed by Billie Jean King, who envisioned a more inclusive, fan-friendly, and forward-looking version of the sport. WTT challenged tennis tradition and reimagined how the game could be played, packaged, and consumed. With innovative scoring, raucous arena atmospheres, and genuine star power, the league aimed to pull tennis out of the country club and into the mainstream. Men and women competed side-by-side, fans were encouraged to cheer, and matches moved at a faster, television-friendly pace. It was daring, disruptive, and unmistakably ahead of its time.

The original incarnation of WTT lasted just five seasons, folding in 1978 amid financial losses, franchise instability, and the realities of building a national sports league before modern media economics took hold. Yet its influence — on tennis, sports marketing, and gender equity — continues to echo decades later.

John Schwarz, author of"World Team Tennis and the Legacy of a Sports League", joins the pod this weekfor a revealing conversation that brings rare firsthand perspective to the original circuit's remarkable story. Schwarz is uniquely positioned to tell it: during WTT's initial 1974-78 run, he separately served in the front offices of both the league itself, and then for one of its most emblematic franchises — the Robert Kraft-owned Boston Lobsters.

In many respects, the Lobsters were a lens into WTT itself — a franchise that embodied the league's ambition, creativity, and community appeal, while also confronting the harsh economic truths that ultimately doomed many teams. Despite its short existence, Schwarz explains why WTT mattered, why it struggled, and why its lessons still resonate in today's evolving sports landscape.

ALSO: Your chance to win a pristine vintage 1978 Boston Lobsters full-color poster in this week's trivia contest!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "World Team Tennis and the Legacy of a Sports League": https://amzn.to/3Md4kgE

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Valdosta State University history professor (and Episodes 334 and 244 guest) Tom Aiello is back — this time for an intriguing look at one of the most politically and culturally charged nights in American sports history: Muhammad Ali's comeback fight against Jerry Quarry on October 26, 1970, in Atlanta.

After nearly three and a half years in professional exile, Ali returned to the ring having lost far more than his world heavyweight title. His refusal to be drafted into the Vietnam War had stripped him of his license to box, cost him his prime athletic years, and turned him into one of the most polarizing figures in the country. By 1970, however, the nation had changed. Public opinion about the war had shifted, Ali's moral stance looked increasingly prescient, and the question was no longer if he would return — but where and on whose terms.

Atlanta provided the answer. The fight was as much a civic and cultural event as a sporting one, staged before an audience that reflected the city's rising Black political, economic, and social leadership. Civil rights figures, elected officials, entertainers, and power brokers filled the arena, transforming the evening into a declaration of legitimacy and self-determination. Ali's presence — confident, defiant, unapologetic — symbolized a broader shift in who held cultural authority in America.

Quarry, a skilled and respected heavyweight contender, became the necessary counterpart in Ali's rebirth. The fight itself ended swiftly, with Ali winning by third-round stoppage, but its significance far outlasted the final bell.

Drawing from his new book "Return of the King: The Rebirth of Muhammad Ali and the Rise of Atlanta"Ali," Aiello helps us understand how this night fused boxing, politics, and spectacle — how Atlanta became the stage for Ali's return, and how the event marked a turning point not just in his career, but in the public embrace of a new, unapologetic vision of Black power and identity.

ALSO: A computer pits Ali vs. Rocky Marciano in "The Super Fight"; the curious ringside inspiration for "Uptown Saturday Night"; and the notorious tale of Gordon 'Chicken Man' Williams, as fictionalized in 2024's "Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist".

PLUS: Your chance to win a copy of "Return of the King" in this week's trivia contest!

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Return of the King: The Rebirth of Muhammed Ali": https://amzn.to/4ket0BY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

This week, we pull back the curtain on one of the most seismic shifts in American sports and culture: the explosive rise of legalized sports gambling. Once condemned as a corrosive menace to the integrity of competition, betting on games is now a pervasive part of how fans watch, interact with, and spend on sports. But at what cost?

Our guest, journalist Danny Funt, has spent years investigating the forces behind America's betting boom. His new book, "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling," lays bare how fantasy sports startups, professional leagues, and tech platforms helped normalize wagering — transforming billions of everyday fans into active gamblers.

Drawing on explosive interviews with former sportsbook executives, VIP hosts, lawmakers, and people who've seen their lives upended by addiction, Funt reveals how the industry is engineered to benefit the house and keep bettors coming back for more.

We'll explore how a 2018 Supreme Court decision ignited this rapid expansion, how major leagues reversed decades-long opposition to gambling, and why the odds are stacked against individual bettors' success.

Along the way, Danny explains the social, economic, and ethical consequences of marrying sports and wagering — from the relentless barrage of advertising to concerns about corruption, exploitation, and long-term harm.

PLUS: Your chance to win a copy of "Everybody Loses" in this week's trivia contest!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling": https://amzn.to/3YYEeAF

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

:first-child]:mt-0"> Author and baseball historian Keith Wood ("The Memphis Red Sox: A Negro Leagues History"*) joins the show to explore the rich yet often overlooked story of the Memphis Red Sox, one of Black baseball's most resilient and community‑rooted franchises. From their semi-pro origins in the early 1920s to their run through the Negro Southern, National & American Leagues, the Red Sox embodied sustained Black ownership and stability in a turbulent era for segregated sports.​

Wood details how the Martin family, a group of influential African American professionals, uniquely controlled both the club and its home field, giving Black Memphis rare economic and cultural autonomy around the ballpark. We dig into the social life of Martin Stadium, where Sunday doubleheaders doubled as civic gatherings and a showcase for elite Black talent passing through the Mid-South.

The Red Sox story features future Major Leaguers and other notable figures who wore the Memphis uniform - including Dan Bankhead, Bob Boyd, Buck O'Neil, and even country music hall-of-famer Charley Pride - and what their stories reveal about the broader pipeline from the Negro Leagues to integrated baseball.

Wood also explains how the forces that followed Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier led to the slow decline and eventual disappearance of the franchise by the end of the 1950s - while leaving behind a powerful legacy of entrepreneurship, community pride, and baseball excellence.

PLUS: Charley Pride's only Billboard Top 40 pop crossover hit!

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "The Memphis Red Sox: A Negro Leagues History": https://amzn.to/45QtWGx

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Sports stadiums are often framed as engines of civic pride, economic development, and shared spectacle. But what if they are something more consequential — and more complicated — than that?

In this episode, we're joined by University of Vermont professor Helen Morgan Parmett, author of "Stadium City: Sports and Media Infrastructure in the United States", for a wide-ranging conversation that rethinks stadiums not merely as venues for games, but as powerful urban media infrastructures shaping how cities function, govern, and imagine themselves.

Drawing on case studies from Atlanta, Seattle, and Minneapolis, Parmett explores how modern stadiums operate as connective nodes linking sports, media systems, urban planning, political power, and civic identity. We discuss her concept of the "sportification of place" — the idea that cities increasingly organize space, culture, and public investment around sports and spectacle — and how broadcast media, branding, and digital platforms amplify the influence of these massive projects far beyond game day.

Our conversation examines what stadium development reveals about who cities are built for, how public resources and attention are allocated, and how issues of race, class, governance, and belonging are deeply embedded in sports infrastructure. We also explore how everyday civic voices — not just those of team owners and politicians — surface tensions over access, identity, and urban priorities.

This episode offers a deeper look at stadiums as contested civic spaces — where entertainment, media power, and urban life collide — and considers what their rise reveals about the modern American city.

• • +

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

BUY THE BOOK: * "Stadium City: Sports and Media Infrastructure in the United States" : https://amzn.to/3Z3PuvA

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Baseball's 1926 World Series was more than just a championship showdown — it was emblematic of America in a decade defined by financial excess, social rebellion, and societal reinvention. We explore that dramatic showdown through "Baseball in the Roaring Twenties: The Yankees, the Cardinals, and the Captivating 1926 Season," a riveting new book by historian and author Thomas Wolf.

Wolf takes us beyond the box scores of this unforgettable seven-game clash between Babe Ruth's New York Yankees and Rogers Hornsby's St. Louis Cardinals. He traces Ruth's improbable resurgence from a disastrous 1925 season — a comeback that reignited the public imagination—and revisits the iconic moments that still echo through baseball history, from Grover Cleveland Alexander's legendary Game 7 performance to Ruth's controversial, series-ending stolen base attempt.

But the story extends well beyond the field. Wolf situates the Series within the broader cultural currents of the Jazz Age: Prohibition-era speakeasies, a rapidly modernizing society, and the parallel world of the Negro Leagues, where Rube Foster's bold vision flourished even as hopes for integration faced overwhelming resistance.

The conversation also uncovers lesser-known (and darker) chapters, including the game-fixing scandal involving Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker that surfaced during the Series, and Commissioner Judge Landis's unexpectedly lenient response.

A historian and lifelong baseball devotee, Wolf has long examined baseball's cultural meaning. "Baseball in the Roaring Twenties" is his most ambitious work yet — using one remarkable season to probe the contradictions, triumphs, and tensions at the heart of 1920s America.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Baseball in the Roaring Twenties: The Yankees, the Cardinals, and the Captivating 1926 Season" https://amzn.to/4q2oWGV

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

[We say goodbye to a crappy 2025 with a fond remembrance of frequent guest and long-time friend-of-the-show Steve Holroyd - whose untimely passing earlier this year still stings mightily. In this classic ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE from April 2019, we tapped Steve's encyclopedic knowledge of US soccer history for an essential look at an oft-overlooked event in the life of the original North American Soccer League (1968-1985), that arguably marked the "beginning of the end" of that influential circuit.]

• • +

Professional union labor lawyer and Society for American Soccer History sports historian Steve Holroyd returns to the podcast to go deep into one of the more curious rabbit holes in North American Soccer League history.

In early 1977, Ed Garvey, a labor lawyer and head of the newly-formed National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), recruited Washington Diplomats midfielder John Kerr to help gauge interest among his teammates and those of other clubs in forming a similar organization for the suddenly ascendant ten-year-old NASL.

By the end of that summer, player representatives from all 18 league clubs agreed in principle to create the North American Soccer League Players Association (NASLPA), and on August 29th, 1977 – the day after the New York Cosmos' dramatic Soccer Bowl victory over the Seattle Sounders in Pele's US swan song – officially sought recognition by NASL owners to become the players' collective bargaining entity.

Commissioner Phil Woosnam and league ownership quickly refused, fearing a threat to the still-fragile circuit's integrity by a group run by a union of the NFL, with whom NASL owners already had a tenuous (and in the cases of Ft. Lauderdale's Robbie and Dallas' Hunt families, common ownership) relationship.

With no progress towards recognition of the union either during the subsequent off-season or the next year, members of the NASLPA finally voted 252-113 to strike against ownership – announcing its intention to do so on April 13, 1979, one day before the league's second weekend slate of regular season games.

What transpired next was five unprecedented days of confusion (would foreign imports risk deportation by playing during an American player work stoppage?); desperation (coaches Eddie McCreadie [Memphis] and Ron Newman [Ft. Lauderdale] donning uniforms to help their strike-depleted teams); naiveté (unwitting fans seeking Rochester Lancer "player" autographs during last-minute replacement tryouts); and ultimately, miscalculated futility – as player resolve waned almost immediately, especially among the association's non-US residents, who actually made up the majority of the membership.

The players' point had been made, however, and by mid-1984 – through a long series of subsequent court rulings – the NASLPA finally prevailed in its mission to collectively represent players at the bargaining table with league ownership.

Ironically, by then, it didn't matter – the NASL folded in March of 1985.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

It's our year-end Holiday Roundtable Spectacular, featuring a look back at the year's newest additions to "what used-to-be" in big-time sports (RIP Pro Volleyball Federation, Utah Hockey Club, three UFL teams, half of Major League Rugby, and the NCAA's LA & Bahamas Bowls); AND semi-educated guesses as to what might be ahead for 2026 - with three of our favorite fellow defunct sports enthusiasts: Paul Reeths (OurSportsCentral.com, StatsCrew.com; Episode 46); Kenn Tomasch (Kenn.com, Soccer Rewind; Episode 39); and Scott Adamson (Adamsonmedia.com; Episodes 184 & 240).

Buckle up for our annual mashup of amusement and bemusement at the fringes of the pro sports establishment, as we simultaneously marvel at and lament some of the most curious events of the past year, debate who and what might be next to stumble into oblivion, and conjecture about future scenarios for the next generation of defunct and otherwise forgotten pro sports teams and leagues - including:

• UFL Year 3
• NASCAR antitrust trial aftermath
• MLB's A's, Rays & realignment
• NFL international expansion & flag football
• MLS calendar reset & conference realignment
• An NBA European league?
• MiLB's private equity boom
• The Savannah Bananas' Banana League
• Major League Rugby contracts
• Major League Cricket bickers
• Major League Volleyball vs. LOVB & Athletes Unlimited
• The Women's Pro Baseball League steps up to the plate

PLUS: Will FIFA's greedy delusions of World Cup grandeur in 2026 catapult North America into soccer's global firmament - or spark a revolt among the fans it claims to serve?

AND: Are we in a sports investment bubble?

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "The United States Football League, 1982-1986": https://amzn.to/3YD7n42 * "The Home Team: My Bromance with Off-Brand Football": https://amzn.to/48QJnka

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

He's been called "American soccer's renaissance man," and in this episode, Dr. Joe Machnik returns to trace the remarkable arc of a life spent pushing the sport forward in the United States. When Machnik first joined us for Episode 24 back in 2017, he brought a rare, firsthand view of American soccer's highs and lows. Today, with his new memoir, "From the Sandlots to the World Cup: Inside Seven Decades of American Soccer" freshly in hand, we revisit that conversation with even richer context and perspective.

Dr. Joe's story began in Brooklyn, where an immigrant neighborhood and a love of the game planted the seeds for a career that would — like the domestic trajectory of the sport itself — defy easy categorization. From playing as an All-America goalkeeper at Long Island University and helping win the U.S. Open Cup with the New York Ukrainians, to coaching college teams deep into NCAA championship territory, Machnik's early years were defined by a deep connection to the grassroots of American soccer. He went on to assist the U.S. Men's National Team during its historic qualification for the 1990 World Cup — the country's first appearance in four decades — and even helped the U.S. futsal team earn a bronze medal on the world stage.

But Machnik's influence didn't stop with players and coaches. In the chaotic early years of modern professional soccer in the U.S., he was one of the architects of the rules themselves. He helped devise the original rulebook for the Major Indoor Soccer League, later served as commissioner of the smaller-market American Indoor Soccer Association, and even coached the MISL's New York Arrows — bringing structure and professionalism to a game still trying to find its identity in the American sports landscape.

Outdoors, his imprint has been equally deep. Machnik led refereeing operations for Major League Soccer during its formative years, establishing standards that helped turn a fledgling league into a stable, competitive professional circuit. He also directed officiating for national collegiate bodies and served as a FIFA and CONCACAF match commissioner, carrying the credibility he built in American soccer onto the global stage.

Today, "Dr. Joe" is widely known as FOX Sports' Soccer Rules Analyst—the authoritative voice millions hear during World Cups, Gold Cups, MLS matches, and international tournaments — explaining the game's most controversial calls with clarity and patience. But beyond the broadcast booth, Machnik's legacy lies in the countless players, referees, coaches, administrators, and fans who came to love the game because he helped make it possible.

Machnik reflects not only on the milestones of his own career, but on the larger narrative of how soccer in America has grown, stumbled, reinvented — and ultimately endured — over decades.

PLUS: Tim and Dr. Joe fret over the crassly commercial optics surrounding the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2026 next summer, and lament their shared frustrations — so far — in trying to obtain reasonably-priced tickets!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "From the Sandlots to the World Cup: Inside Seven Decades of American Soccer": https://amzn.to/4pW6aRL

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Baseball has long been America's pastime — and the stage for some of the wildest, most outrageous marketing stunts in sports history. From the postwar era through the 1970s, team owners and promoters pushed the limits of spectacle to fill seats, generate buzz, and entertain fans, often blurring the line between creativity and chaos.

This week, "Baseball's Most Outrageous Promotions" author Joe Natalicchio joins for a wild ride across some of the sport's most infamous attempts to spice things up at the ol' ballpark - where good marketing intentions went mightily awry.

Natalicchio takes us behind the scenes of the Chicago White Sox's notorious "Disco Demolition Night," where exploding records sparked a full-blown riot; the St. Louis Browns' "Grandstand Managers' Night, which turned fans into on-field decision-makers; the Cleveland Indians' infamous "Ten-Cent Beer Night," a drunken frenzy that ended with fans storming the field; and the legendary story of 3-foot, 7-inch tall Browns pinch-hitter Eddie Gadel, who flummoxed the Detroit Tigers with a one-plate appearance/walk in a 1951 game forever enshrined in the MLB record book.

Beyond the laughs and jaw-dropping stories, Natalicchio explains why baseball became synonymous with over-the-top promotions, how these events reflect broader cultural shifts, and what they reveal about the delicate balance between fan engagement, entertainment, and safety.

Whether you're a die-hard fan, a student of sports history, or fascinated by the intersection of marketing and mischief, this episode offers a revealing, entertaining, and sometimes shocking look at baseball at its most outrageous — and unforgettable.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Baseball's Most Outrageous Promotions: From Wedlock and Headlock Day to Disco Demolition Night": https://amzn.to/44cZW72

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

The Philadelphia Flyers didn't just win hockey games in the 1970s — they changed the sport, the city, and the culture around them. In this episode, we dig into the rise, reign, and mythology of the "Broad Street Bullies," the decade-long era (1971–1981) when the Flyers transformed themselves from an NHL expansion afterthought into the toughest, most polarizing, and most beloved champions in league history.

To unpack how a group of gritty, bruising, blue-collar players became civic folk heroes, we sit down with long-time Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter Sam Carchidi and screenwriter/film director Jeff Hare — whose new book "Bullies: Catching Up with the Hound, the Hammer, and the Stanley Cup Champion Philadelphia Flyers," moves beyond the highlight reels and historic penalty minutes to reveal the human stories inside the chaos — the humor, the fearlessness, the insecurities, and the emotional glue that bound this unlikely team together.

Carchidi and Hare take us behind the curtain of the Flyers' rise: Bobby Clarke's galvanizing leadership, Bernie Parent's brilliance, and the intimidating presence of Dave "The Hammer" Schultz and the enforcer corps that made Philadelphia both feared and admired. But they also illuminate something deeper — why these players resonated so intensely with a city hungry for identity and pride, and how the team's swagger helped reshape the NHL itself.

From untold anecdotes to new reflections on how the Bullies view their legacy today, this conversation reframes one of hockey's most iconic eras. Whether you grew up worshipping the orange and black or are discovering the Bullies for the first time, this episode uncovers the heart behind the havoc — and why the legend still looms so large.

PLUS: Your chance to win a copy of "Bullies" via our Flyers trivia contest!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Bullies: Catching Up with the Hound, the Hammer, and the Stanley Cup Champion Philadelphia Flyers": https://amzn.to/4amC9Fw

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Few sports moments have left as lasting a mark on pop culture as the 1985 Chicago Bears' recording of the "Super Bowl Shuffle." This week, we go behind the music, the madness, and the myth with NFL Films Senior Producer Jeff Cameron — director of HBO's new documentary short "The Shuffle" — who takes us inside the making of the iconic rap video that transformed a championship football team into cultural icons. "The Shuffle" reveals never-before-seen, behind-the-scenes footage and fresh interviews with Bears legends Mike Singletary, Jim McMahon, Willie Gault, and Gary Fencik, who recount their experiences recording the track and performing in the video. Cameron shares the story of how Chicago record executive Dick Meyer conceived the idea and how the project unfolded in late 1985 — weeks before the Bears had even officially secured a playoff spot, let alone a Super Bowl berth. What began as a fun, irreverent recording session quickly became a lightning rod for debate: Was it playful confidence, brash hubris, or simply a team having fun in the middle of a historic season?

Cameron walks us through the challenges of capturing that spirit on film: reluctant players, chaotic studio sessions, and the creative energy that turned a one-off novelty idea into both a Billboard pop chart hit and a Grammy nomination.

We also explore how the song and video raised thousands of dollars for Chicago-area food banks, and how it became a blueprint for athletes crossing over into mainstream entertainment — decades before social media made such moves commonplace.

"The Shuffle" debuts November 25th on HBO and HBO Max at 9pm ET/8pm CT

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE ORIGINAL DVD (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Chicago Bears: The Super Bowl Shuffle (20th Anniversary Collector's Edition)": https://amzn.to/3LXXn2m

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Baseball may be a game of numbers, but Tampa Bay's Tropicana Field is a place of stories — and no one knows those stories better than Bruce Reynolds, longtime Rays "fan host" and author of "There Is No Place Like Dome." In this delightfully off-beat episode, we venture under the famously tattered fiberglass roof — currently undergoing repairs and slated to reopen next spring — to explore the quirks, characters, and quiet magic of a ballpark that has been loved, mocked, misunderstood, celebrated, and everything in between. Reynolds shares 16 seasons' worth of memories: the oddball fan encounters, dome-induced surprises, moments of chaos, moments of kindness, and the things that only happen at the Trop because — well, there's no place like it! We talk catwalks. We talk cowbells. We talk about the time the dome shook, the traditions that only insiders know, and why a stadium often dismissed as a "quirky relic" might actually be one of baseball's most human places. And yes — even as new ownership takes over, mulls a new stadium, and crews patch the roof to keep it safe for at least a few more seasons -- the "Trop" continues to charm in its imperfect, unforgettable way. Reynolds' passion is infectious, his stories heart-warming, and his perspective turns a stadium often criticized into a character all its own. PLUS: College bowl games, pro wrestling, the "ThunderDome," arena league football, and the one-game wonder of the original UFL's Florida Tuskers! + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106 BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): "There Is No Place Like Dome: A Fan Host's Unofficial View from the Top of the Trop, To the Stands with the Fans": https://amzn.to/47JcDZt SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats FIND AND FOLLOW: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

[We mourn the passing of pro hoops great Michael Ray Richardson with an archive re-release of our conversation with the former Nets/Knicks star from last year, featuring his biography co-author Jacob Uitti.]

• • +

Former NBA All-Star Michael Ray Richardson and his co-author Jacob Uitti (Banned: How I Squandered an All-Star NBA Career Before Finding My Redemption) join the show to discuss Richardson's riveting new memoir that chronicles his extraordinary journey on and off the basketball court.

Hailed as "the next Walt Frazier" coming out of the University of Montana as a first-round pick (fourth overall) in the 1978 NBA Draft, "Sugar" was a force to be reckoned with, leading the league in both assists and steals in just his second season - still New York Knicks team records to this day - and earning four All-Star appearances and two All-Defensive team honors. But behind the scenes, his career was overshadowed by personal struggles with drugs and alcohol, leading to a historic lifetime ban from the NBA in 1986 while a member of the New Jersey Nets.

Richardson shares how he rebounded from that moment, finding redemption through subsequent stints as a player and coach in places like the CBA (Albany Patroons, Oklahoma Cavalry); USBL (Long Island Knights); Premiere Basketball League; and a prolific 14-year professional league run in Europe, where he guided teams to championships and redefined his legacy.

Now running youth basketball clinics and reflecting on his journey, Richardson proves that resilience and accountability can turn even the darkest chapters into a comeback story.

• • +

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "An American Cricket Odyssey: A Journey into the Soul of the Cricket in the United States": https://amzn.to/4nFOdoh

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Cricket and America - two words that rarely appear in the same sentence without a smirk or a shrug. Yet, as authors Beth Simpson and Mark Greenslade reveal in their new book "An American Cricket Odyssey," the game's roots here run deeper than most realize — and its revival is one of the great under-told stories in modern sport.

We trace the sport's improbable journey - from its 19th-century heyday, when Philadelphia was a global cricket power; to its near extinction after baseball gained popularity; and finally to its 21st-century rebirth, fueled by immigrant passion and the game's modern-day incarnation, Twenty20 (T20). Along the way, Simpson and Greenslade take us inside the subcultures that have kept US cricket alive - from South Central LA's Compton Cricket Club to equal rights-seeking women cricketers to youth development programs from Bronx, NY high schools to suburban North Carolina ballfields.

We also tackle the political dysfunction, internal corruption and repeated false starts that have haunted American cricket for decades - including the 2019 collapse of the USACA national governing body, its not-much-better replacement USA Cricket, and the additionally complicating factor of International Cricket Council (ICC) recognition.

And of course, we examine the handful of attempts to make pro cricket stick in the States from 2004's erstwhile Pro Cricket to today's ambitious Major League Cricket, backed by nearly a billion dollars of domestic and global investment - and ask whether this latest experiment can finally overcome the sport's chronic infighting and infrastructure gaps.

It's a journey through sport, culture, and identity - one that reveals how America keeps rediscovering cricket, and why the game still struggles to find its true home on US soil.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "An American Cricket Odyssey: A Journey into the Soul of the Cricket in the United States": https://amzn.to/4nFOdoh

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

The story of Moses Malone is one of basketball's most remarkable - and underappreciated - journeys. Rising from poverty in segregated Petersburg, Virginia, in the early 1970s, Malone became the first modern player to jump straight from high school to the pros, quickly establishing himself as one of the game's most dominant forces. A three-time NBA MVP, relentless rebounder, and driving presence behind the rise of the early 1980s Houston Rockets and the Philadelphia 76ers' 1983 league championship, Malone redefined greatness - quietly, humbly, and unstoppably. This week, biographer Paul Knepper, author of "Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet," joins us to explore the man behind the legend and how his life reshaped both the sport and professional basketball culture.

Knepper traces Malone's rise from a poor upbringing to his groundbreaking 1974 leap to the American Basketball Association's Utah Stars - an unprecedented move that paved the way for future hoops prodigies like Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, and LeBron James. On the court, Malone was a tireless worker, perennial All-Star, and the most dominant offensive rebounder in league history. Off it, the "Chairman of the Boards" quietly mentored rising stars like Charles Barkley and Hakeem Olajuwon, showing that greatness could coexist with humility.

Through rare interviews and meticulous research, Knepper restores Malone's rightful place in basketball history - not just as a Hall of Famer, but as a "prophet" of professionalism, perseverance, and quiet excellence.

PLUS: Your chance to win a copy of "Moses Malone" via this week's trivia contest! AND: Is the new Amazon Prime NBA theme song "Victory" better than John Tesh's iconic "Roundball Rock"? You make the call! + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet": https://amzn.to/4oHEZJg

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Unwitting US pro soccer historian Tim O'Bryhim ("Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings" and "God Save the Wings") makes his third trip to the show - this time in celebration of his wild new collection of stories from the original Major Indoor Soccer League (1978-92). O'Bryhim has spent nearly a decade chronicling the MISL's wild and woolly history (including his essential "MISL 1980s" Substack) - and his new book "MISL 1980s: Tales From a Lost Soccer League" delights in its recounting of some of the truly underappreciated trials, tribulations and characters of what made this influential circuit special - and, to O'Bryhim's credit, memorable. We discuss some of them, including the 1974 NASL indoor exhibition that accidentally launched the league, the tumultuous year leading to Pete Rose's Cincinnati Kids taking on the New York Arrows in the MISL's first game, Jerry Buss' foray into indoor soccer with the Los Angeles Lazers, the Dallas Sidekicks' improbable 1987 championship run, and the absolutely bonkers ending to that 1985 playoff series between the San Diego Sockers and Minnesota Strikers. "MISL 1980s" also delves into the careers and lives of players and coaches like Erik Rasmussen, Kevin Kewley, and Alan Merrick, examines how players approached their post-MISL careers, celebrates the fans who have kept the league's history alive, and explores why the MISL ultimately failed to become America's next major league sport.

From the short-shorts to the mullets to the pulsating synth music, O'Bryhim's book is a lovingly curated look at the pop-culture sensation that was indoor soccer in the "Me Decade".

PLUS: Your chance to win a copy of "MISL 1980s" via this week's trivia contest! + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "MISL 1980s: Tales From a Lost Soccer League": https://amzn.to/4ht4lYR

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

In the immediate years after World War II, the trajectory of America's pastime looked unstoppable.

By 1949, Minor League Baseball had swelled to 59 leagues, 448 teams, and some 10,000 players - the largest network in its history. But within a decade, the advent of television, suburban migration, and shifting leisure habits began to drain fans and revenue. Hundreds of teams folded, and by 1963, the entire minor-league system was on the brink of collapse.

We explore that turbulent era - the golden age of small-town clubs and ballparks, the struggles of owners and players to stay afloat, and the rescue plan that reshaped the minors for the rest of the twentieth century - with SABR baseball researcher George Pawlush, whose current books "When Minor League Baseball Almost Went Bust: 1946–1963" (a SABR-driven collection of essays); and "Dawn and Dusk of the Colonial League," which chronicles a short-lived Class B circuit from 1947 to 1950, both illuminate this fascinating period.

Pawlush describes stories of teams traveling on dangerously aging buses, cash-strapped franchises uprooting for survival, and the rise of players both transformative (like Jackie Robinson, whose minor-league stints with the Montreal Royals in 1946 helped pave the way for MLB integration) - and forgotten (like Ron Necciai, whose early 1952 strikeout feats dazzled fans and earned a call-up to the Pittsburgh Pirates later that summer) before injuries ended their careers.

We'll dig into how the minors were both a proving ground for future stars and a fragile ecosystem vulnerable to social and economic change: What caused the rapid collapse of so many leagues in the 1950s? How did the Colonial League embody both the promise and fragility of postwar baseball? And how did the 1963 Player Development Plan finally stabilize the farm system?

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "When Minor League Baseball Almost Went Bust: 1946–1963": https://amzn.to/49dMQcX * "Dawn and Dusk of the Colonial League": https://amzn.to/3WNVx6g

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

In the late 1960s, Denver's business and political leaders were convinced they had secured the ultimate prize in international sport: the 1976 Winter Olympic Games. With the backing of the US Olympic Committee and a successful bid before the International Olympic Committee, Colorado seemed poised to showcase itself on the world stage. But just two years later, that dream collapsed in spectacular fashion — when the state's voters did the unthinkable, and told the Olympics to go elsewhere.

This week, we explore the fascinating saga of the "Olympics that never happened" with cultural historian and UNC Greensboro professor Adam Berg, author of "The Olympics That Never Happened: Denver '76 and the Politics of Growth." Berg examines how an elite coalition of boosters and officials promised a glittering event, only to face escalating costs, shaky logistics, environmental concerns, and — most importantly — a grassroots multi-issue opposition movement that united environmentalists, taxpayer advocates, and suburban "NIMBY" homeowners.

It's a story that goes far beyond sport — one about power, growth, democracy, and the limits of civic boosterism in a rapidly changing/modernizing Colorado. Berg reveals how the defeat of the Games energized a new political consciousness, launched the career of future governor Richard Lamm, and reshaped how host cities and the IOC think about public consent for mega-events.

It's one of the most remarkable "what-ifs" in Olympic history — and a story whose impact still resonates today.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "The Olympics That Never Happened: Denver '76 and the Politics of Growth": https://amzn.to/48moE7T

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Peabody Award-nominated writer and Episode 389 guest David Fleming (“Breaker Boys: The NFL's Greatest Team and the Stolen 1925 Championship”) returns to the show to unpack one of the National Football League’s most chaotic and fascinating chapters: the disaster of the 1952 Dallas Texans.

In his new book,"A Big Mess in Texas: The Miraculous, Disastrous 1952 Dallas Texans and the Craziest Untold Story in NFL History," Fleming chronicles the league’s first attempt to plant a professional football franchise in football-crazed Texas — a venture so ill-fated that the NFL reportedly still disavows it.

Fleming guides us through the Texans’ brief and turbulent existence, from their origins as the financially struggling New York Yanks to their relocation to Dallas under the ambitious but ill-prepared Miller brothers. We explore a 1–11 season riddled with logistical nightmares and meet the team’s unforgettable characters: future Hall of Famers Art Donovan and Gino Marchetti, unsung heroes like Buddy Young and George Taliaferro, and a broader cast of characters who fought to keep the team afloat despite unrelenting chaos.

You'll hear about rattlesnakes on the practice field, barroom brawls, bounced checks, paternity suits, one-legged trainers, humiliating defeats, a miraculous victory, strip poker with groupies, and even a future Hall of Fame coach stealing a cab. Amidst the madness, Fleming spotlights the Texans’ lone shining moment: a Thanksgiving Day "home game" upset over the Chicago Bears at the Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio — an improbable triumph that perfectly captured the team’s fleeting flashes of brilliance against a constant tide of organizational mayhem.

PLUS: your chance to win a copy of "A Big Mess in Texas"!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "A Big Mess in Texas: The Miraculous, Disastrous 1952 Dallas Texans and the Craziest Untold Story in NFL History": https://amzn.to/4nBNup5

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

How do you build a professional women’s hockey league from the ground up — and convince the sport’s best players, skeptical investors, and hungry fans that this time it’s built to last? CBC Sports journalist Karissa Donkin, author of "Breakaway: The PWHL and the Women Who Changed the Game," helps us dive into the backstory of the incredible Professional Women’s Hockey League.

Donkin traces the roots of the PWHL back to the collapse of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League in 2019 and the rise of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association, whose “Dream Gap” tours kept women’s hockey in the spotlight when no stable league existed. She also unpacks the complicated legacy of North American professional women’s leagues: the original National Women’s Hockey League (1999–2007), and the later NWHL launched in 2015 — the first U.S.-based league to pay salaries — which eventually rebranded as the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF). The overlap of these leagues, combined with the PWHPA’s touring circuit, splintered talent and divided attention, but it also highlighted what was missing: a single, unified, and financially sustainable league. These years of struggle, advocacy, and experimentation ultimately set the stage for the PWHL’s 2023 launch. We’ll explore how the Mark Walter Group, Billie Jean King, and a coalition of powerful allies turned that vision into reality, and why the league’s first collective bargaining agreement matters so much for players seeking true professional standards. Donkin also unpacks the drama and exhilaration of the inaugural 2024 season — from record-breaking crowds to the intensity of Boston–Montreal showdowns — and explains how the league is balancing rapid growth with the need for long-term sustainability.

Finally, we look ahead: what does expansion to markets like Vancouver and Seattle mean for the league’s future? How will the PWHL navigate the ongoing battles for sponsorship, broadcast exposure, and cultural relevance in a crowded sports marketplace? And most importantly, how will the next generation of girls growing up with the PWHL on TV — and in their hometown arenas — reshape what professional hockey looks like in North America?

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Breakaway: The PWHL and the Women Who Changed the Game": https://amzn.to/3IL81bu

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

The incomparable Jayne Kennedy ("Plain Jayne: A Memoir") joins us for an intimate conversation about a career that defied expectations and left an indelible mark on both sports broadcasting and American culture. Raised in small-town Ohio and catapulted to national attention through beauty pageants and professional ambitions, Kennedy soon found herself in early 1970s Hollywood — landing a succession of parts on TV variety shows, commercials, and film. But it was her move to CBS’s The NFL Today in 1978 that cemented her place in television history.

For two groundbreaking seasons, Kennedy sat alongside Brent Musburger, Irv Cross, and Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder on what was then the most influential NFL pregame show in America. As one of the first women — and among the very first Black women — to co-anchor a national sports broadcast, she brought poise, charisma, and depth to a space long dominated by men.

Kennedy reflects candidly on what it was like to navigate the high-pressure world of network television, from the excitement of breaking barriers to the behind-the-scenes tensions that eventually led to her controversial departure in 1980.

In a conversation that spans both triumphs and challenges, Kennedy shares how her time on The NFL Today shaped her career, the lessons she carried into later endeavors, and why her story still resonates in today’s conversations about representation in media.

PLUS: Your chance to win a copy of "Plain Jayne" via this week's trivia question!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Plain Jayne: A Memoir By Jayne Kennedy": https://amzn.to/42GELJA

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

ADVERTISING & SPONSORSHIP INQUIRIES: * hello@goodseatsstillavailable.com

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Veteran sportswriter, Sports Broadcast Journal columnist, and Episode 233 guest Rich Podolsky ("You Are Looking Live!") returns to the show to explore the story of perhaps the greatest broadcast partnership in NFL history.

In his new book, "Madden & Summerall: How They Revolutionized NFL Broadcasting," Podolsky offers a rare inside look at how kicker-turned-play-by-play man Pat Summerall, and coach-turned-color-analyst John Madden became the voices of America’s Sundays — and why their impact still reverberates across sports media today.

Through Podolsky’s storytelling, we uncover how the duo’s unlikely chemistry — Summerall’s minimalist gravitas paired with Madden’s booming energy and boundless teaching — redefined the way fans understood the game. We trace their journey from the heights of CBS to their groundbreaking leap to Fox, where their presence gave a fledgling network instant credibility. Along the way, Podolsky reveals how Madden transformed the role of analyst, turning film sessions and telestrators into staples of the craft, while Summerall perfected the art of saying more with less.

What emerges is not just a portrait of two men, but of a cultural moment: the rise of the NFL as America’s most powerful television spectacle, carried into living rooms by a duo so iconic that no team since has truly replaced them.

ALSO: Your chance to win a copy of "Madden & Summerall"!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Madden & Summerall: How They Revolutionized NFL Broadcasting": https://amzn.to/3I70YK1

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

SAY HELLO: * hello@goodseatsstillavailable.com

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Few writers have illuminated baseball’s legends with the depth, rigor, and heart of renowned sports journalist and author Jane Leavy. From Sandy Koufax to Mickey Mantle to Babe Ruth, her biographies of the game’s greatest figures don’t just recount their lives — they reveal the eras each helped to define.

Now, with her new book Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It, Leavy turns her sharp eye and seasoned reporting toward the sport itself, asking what’s broken, what’s worth preserving, and how its lost magic might be restored.

In this episode, we sit down with Leavy for a wide-ranging conversation that blends her unparalleled knowledge of baseball history with a candid assessment of its present challenges — analytics overload, youth development crises, dwindling diversity, and the struggle to balance spectacle with spontaneity. She also shares her imaginative, sometimes provocative, ideas for how the game could evolve in the years ahead.

For longtime fans, casual observers, and anyone who cares about the soul of America’s pastime, this episode delivers a masterclass in baseball storytelling — and a glimpse into the possible futures of the game from one of its finest chroniclers.

PLUS: Your chance to win a copy of "Make Me Commissioner"!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It": https://amzn.to/4paR6iX

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Long before the National Basketball Association evolved into a global spectacle, it began as an awkwardly assembled mashup featuring a hefty dollop of relatively small-market teams in places like Sheboygan, Wisconsin; Anderson, Indiana and Moline, Illinois.

Among them were the Waterloo Hawks - the only team from Iowa ever to play in the NBA. Their story is synonymous with the fragile early days of pro hoops in the US - and it’s vividly brought back to life by this week's guest, Tim Harwood - author of the essential "Ball Hawks: The Arrival and Departure of the NBA in Iowa."

Tim and Tim retrace how the Hawks rose out of the old National Basketball League, a circuit of largely factory-backed and regional clubs scattered across the Rust Belt that provided much of the foundation for the modern professional game. In 1949, when the NBL merged with its big-city rival, the Basketball Association of America, the NBA was born - and Waterloo suddenly found itself playing against the decidedly more well-resourced likes of New York, Boston, and Chicago. The Hawks’ lone NBA season was gritty, dramatic, and short-lived, ending with the league contracting and shedding smaller markets that didn’t align with its "major-market" ambitions.

Harwood explains how Waterloo tried to keep its place in the game through the short-lived National Professional Basketball League, and why the Hawks’ disappearance after 1951 symbolized the end of the small-market era in pro basketball. What remains is a remarkable story of community pride, fleeting triumph, and the overlooked role towns like Waterloo played in shaping what the NBA would become.

PLUS: The legend of Waterloo's Murray "Wizard" Wier! + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * The "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Ball Hawks: The Arrival and Departure of the NBA in Iowa": https://amzn.to/3JEuC9W

BUY THE SHIRT (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Waterloo Hawks Basketball Team T-Shirt: https://is.gd/rjLn5X

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

It's a no-holds-barred conversation with footballing legend Paul Cannell — the Geordie striker who lit up mid-1970s Newcastle United, vaulted into the heyday of the North American Soccer League, and left a trail of memorable goals, disciplinary cards, and impish chaos in his wake.

Best remembered for his fiery stint with the two incarnations of the NASL's Washington Diplomats, Cannell was as much a headline in the nightlife columns as he was on the sports pages. On the field, he was fearless in the air and relentless in the tackle, leading the Dips in scoring while collecting enough penalty points to draw more than a few league suspensions. Off the field, he became a fixture in DC-area bars and dance clubs, a radio guest of a young new voice named Howard Stern, and — by his own telling — the first soccer player ever signed by Nike, bringing Studio 54-era disco-inspired white boots to the playing pitch.

Cannell takes us straight into the heart of those wild years. He opens up about the highs and hangovers of the NASL boom (including stints with the Memphis Rogues, Calgary Boomers & Detroit Express), brushes with legends like Johan Cruyff and Pelé, the infamous “F***in’ Hell, It’s Paul Cannell” chant that followed him everywhere, and the unfiltered stories that made his memoir as outrageous as its title.

Blunt, funny, and never shy of controversy, Cannell reminds us why he became one of the NASL’s most colorful figures — and why his name still carries a mix of respect, disbelief, and laughter decades later — especially among DC sportswriters and soccer fans.

PLUS: The "Mayor of Georgetown" helps Tim remember classic DC night spots of the day like Winston's, Tramp's & Sign of the Whale! + + + Get the best in high-quality commemorative Dips, Memphis Rogues Detroit Express, Calgary Boomers & NASL league T-shirts with promo code savings from our friends at OldSchoolShirts.com (code GOODSEATS)! + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "F*in' Hell It's Paul Cannell": https://amzn.to/4mxEOzC

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

The story of women’s basketball in the United States is one of grit, activism, and transformation. From barnstorming road shows to the bright lights of the WNBA, the game has mirrored — and often propelled — larger social changes in American life.

We journey through that history with the help of Pamela Grundy and Susan Shackelford, authors of the newly expanded edition of "Shattering the Glass: The Remarkable History of Women’s Basketball." Drawing on years of research and oral histories, they guide us through some the game’s pivotal chapters:

• Barnstorming pioneers: How teams like the All-American Redheads and Hazel Walker’s Arkansas Travellers brought women’s basketball to audiences across the country when mainstream platforms were closed to them.
• College roots: The rise of organized play on campuses and the role of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women in carving out space for female athletes.
• The 1970s: The seismic impact of Title IX, the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, and the first women’s Olympic basketball tournament in 1976.
• Coming of age: The ambitions and struggles of the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL: 1978–81), and the eventual NCAA takeover of women’s college championships in 1982.
• The 1990s: How 1996 Olympics success inspired the launches of both the American Basketball League (ABL) and the NBA-backed WNBA - to rejuvenate the professional landscape, and set the stage for the modern era.

Grundy and Shackelford help us frame women’s basketball not only as sport, but as a cultural battleground where issues of equity, representation, and identity have played out for generations - where women players, coaches, and advocates continually broke barriers in the process.

PLUS: Get your women's throwback game on with promo code savings from our friends at OldSchoolShirts.com (WBL & ABL: code GOODSEATS) and Royal Retros (early-years WNBA: code SEATS)! + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Shattering the Glass: The Remarkable History of Women’s Basketball": https://amzn.to/415S3Pm

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Baseball's Danny Gardella was no ordinary ballplayer. A compact powerhouse — “not much taller than a fire hydrant,” yet a left-handed pull hitter with undeniable talent — he hit .267 with 24 homers and 85 RBIs in just 169 Major League Baseball games. That blazing two-year stretch with the New York Giants in 1944–45 proved his major-league mettle.

But Gardella’s story didn’t end in the box score. Humble and working-class, he was a true Renaissance man — writing poetry, quoting Shakespeare, Freud, and Dewey, singing opera and vaudeville, boxing Golden Gloves, and defying gravity with acrobatic stunts in the clubhouse and on the field.

When many veterans returned after World War II, Gardella’s once-promising career faltered. Faced with limited opportunities and bound by baseball's reserve clause, he made a bold move — “jumping” to the Mexican League's Azules de Veracruz in 1946. That leap didn’t just cost him his place in Organized Baseball — it catalyzed his fight for justice.

In "Dangerous Danny Gardella: Baseball's Neglected Trailblazer for Today's Millionaire Athletes," author Rob Elias recounts how this “little-known but remarkable ballplayer” took the sport's reserve clause to court, sparking a legal battle that would echo through decades. Gardella’s act of defiance set the stage in later years for Curt Flood, Marvin Miller, and the struggle for free agency — and ultimately helped birth the modern MLB Players Association.

It's a compelling blend of baseball lore, legal drama, and the human story of a forgotten pioneer who dared to challenge the game — and, eventually, changed it forever.

PLUS: "Gardella Gardens" - the upper left-field balcony section of the old Polo Grounds, where ardent Giants fans cheered on their favorite player - affectionately nicknamed "Gardenia". + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Dangerous Danny Gardella: Baseball's Neglected Trailblazer for Today's Millionaire Athletes": https://amzn.to/4m7tklY

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

This week, we revisit one of the most politically charged (and frequently forgotten) Olympic Games - the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow - with sports historian/author Tommy Phillips ("The 1980 Moscow Olympics: A Day-by-Day History").

While a much-debated US-led boycott - sparked by the Soviet Union’s brazen invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979 - kept dozens of countries away and fundamentally reshaped the competition, Phillips takes us on the inside to discuss what actually happened once the torch was lit and the athletes took to competition.

We explore standout performances from Soviet gymnasts, doping-aided East German swimmers, a rogue Austrian equestrian dressage competitor, Great Britain's dueling track duo (Sebastian Coe & Steve Ovett) - and lesser-known athletes from around the globe who seized their moment in the absence of many Western rivals. Phillips also walks us through controversies and logistical missteps that plagued the Games, including judging disputes, wind-aided performances and technical problems, all unfolding within the sleek but tightly controlled confines of the Soviet-run Olympic venues.

Along the way, Phillips shares some of the stranger, more human stories that emerged from his deep dive into archival material. Among them: a massive food fight in the Olympic Village kitchen, pirate TV signals illegally rebroadcasting the Games to viewers in Florida, and the arrest of Rollen Stewart - the eccentric, rainbow-wig-wearing “John 3:16” superfan—who managed to insert himself into the tightly guarded Soviet spectacle. These moments reveal a side of the Games that didn’t make headlines but speak volumes about the surreal atmosphere surrounding them.

PLUS: Our salute to late jazz flugelhorn master Chuck Mangione - and his ABC Sports-commissioned theme for the 1980 Winter Olympic Games earlier that year in Lake Placid, NY! + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "The 1980 Moscow Olympics: A Day-by-Day History": https://amzn.to/4olbM7A

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

In 1898, a 16-year-old dreamer named Leo Lyons was tossing a football around a Rochester, NY sandlot. Within two years, he wasn’t just playing—he was managing, coaching, and bankrolling a team that would become an National Football League charter member: the Rochester Jeffersons.

This week, we sit down with authors Jeffrey Miller and John Steffenhagen to explore their powerful new book, "Leo Lyons, the Rochester Jeffersons and the Birth of the NFL" - the unbelievable-but-true story of how one man’s relentless vision helped shape pro football’s earliest days.

From challenging Jim Thorpe’s Canton Bulldogs and signing Black players decades before integration, to mortgaging his house and offering Red Grange $5,000 per game, Lyons’ tale is one of grit, guts, and heartbreak.

With exclusive access to the Leo Lyons Collection, Miller and Steffenhagen uncover the backroom deals, sandlot beginnings, and forgotten heroes behind the NFL's formation.

It’s a story of ambition, obsession — and a dream that changed American sports forever.

PLUS: Tim devises a strategy to definitively get Leo Lyons into the Pro Football Hall of Fame!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Leo Lyons, the Rochester Jeffersons and the Birth of the NFL": https://amzn.to/45qcisr

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

It's another pit stop into the rich history of NASCAR racing this week, with a look back at the circuit's greatest rivalry — the legendary driving battle between Richard Petty and David Pearson that shaped the sport forever. With the help of veteran motorsports journalist Mike Hembree's new book, "Petty vs. Pearson: The Rivalry That Shaped NASCAR," we explore how these two titans transformed racing from a regional spectacle into an American sports passion during the late 1960s and the bulk of the 1970s. Discover the contrasting styles that made their frequent track duels electric: "The King's" relentless aggression versus "The Silver Fox's" calculated patience. We'll revisit their most jaw-dropping moments, including the wild finish at the 1976 Daytona 500 where both drivers crashed on the final lap, and examine how their incredible 63 head-to-head 1st/2nd-place finishes created the stuff of true NASCAR legend.

Learn how Petty's record-breaking 200 wins and seven championships stacked up against Pearson's incredible 18.3% winning percentage in just 574 starts.

And, beyond the statistics, we explore Petty's and Pearson's mutual respect for each other and the friendship that transcended their fierce competition on the track — a rivalry that elevated NASCAR during its most transformative, increasingly televised era.

Plus: Mike and Tim reminisce about the once-essential Winston Cup Scene weekly magazine!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Petty vs. Pearson: The Rivalry That Shaped NASCAR": https://amzn.to/3GXrl4p

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Substack: COMING SOON * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Our summer roadtrip rolls on this week with a deep dive into one of the Queen City's most overlooked sports stories with baseball author Al Lautenslager - whose new book "Cincinnati Soul" explores the remarkable but brief legacy of the Cincinnati Tigers, the city's first official Negro Leagues baseball team.

Discover how DeHart Hubbard, America's first Black Olympic gold medalist, founded the Tigers as a dual-circuit minor league (Indiana-Ohio League & Negro Southern League) outfit in 1934 - eventually joining as a charter member of the 1937 Negro American League - now an officially recognized as "major league" by Major League Baseball.

Lautenslager shares fascinating details about the team's home at Crosley Field, where they wore hand-me-down Cincinnati Reds uniforms and drew crowds that sometimes exceeded that of their benefactors.

Also:

• The Tigers' historic 44-36 record and second-place finish in 1937
• Five All-Star selections including legendary manager Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe
• Key players like submarine pitcher Porter Moss and future Brooklyn Dodgers MLB signee Roy Partlow
• The team's cultural impact on Cincinnati's African American community during segregation

• Why the franchise folded despite on-field success and community support

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Cincinnati Soul": https://amzn.to/3TVtQXI

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

It's a Wisconsin road trip this week for a sit down with Jordan Treske, author of "Building the Milwaukee Bucks: Kareem Abdul‑Jabbar, Oscar Robertson and the Rapid Rise of an NBA Franchise," to explore one of the most astonishing turnarounds in modern American pro sports history.

Treske walks us through how Milwaukee rebounded from the loss of the MLB Braves to become an NBA basketball powerhouse in just three seasons — thanks to savvy ownership, an historic draft coin flip, and the ultimate pairing of two all-time greats: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (née Lew Alcindor) and Oscar Robertson. We’ll also unpack the racial and cultural tensions of the era, the ABA bidding war, and the community’s unique investment in the team.

Whether you're a Bucks fan or a basketball history buff, this conversation offers fresh insight into how a franchise — and a city — found its "big league" identity through the game.

PLUS: From 1977, the Milwaukee Bucks theme song "Green And Growing (The Bucks Don't Stop Here)!"

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Building the Milwaukee Bucks: Kareem Abdul‑Jabbar, Oscar Robertson and the Rapid Rise of an NBA Franchise": https://amzn.to/3TVtQXI

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

In this special episode, we sit down with King David Haynes, son of American Football League legend and civil rights trailblazer Abner Haynes, to discuss his newly released biography "Abner Haynes: An American Hero."

Abner Haynes was far more than just a football star — he was a barrier-breaking athlete, community leader, and a courageous voice for racial justice. From integrating Texas college football in the 1950s to becoming the league's first MVP in 1960 to standing at the forefront of athlete activism during the 1965 AFL All-Star Game boycott, his story is as American as it is heroic.

King David shares deeply personal stories about his father’s triumphs and struggles — on the field, in the locker room, and in segregated America — and reflects on how Abner’s legacy continues to resonate today. We talk about what it was like to grow up as the son of a sports pioneer, what inspired the book, and how the family continues to honor Abner’s legacy in the modern era.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Abner Haynes: An American Hero": https://amzn.to/44iXLPX

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

It's our 400th, so we’re going big with a guest who’s called it all, seen it all, and somehow lived to laugh about it.

Steve Albert ("A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Broadcast Booth") -- Hall of Fame broadcaster and proud member of the legendary Albert sportscasting family (including nephew/Episode 320 guest Kenny) -- joins us for a deep dive into his one-of-a-kind, 45-year ride through the wilds of professional sports. From vanished leagues to unforgettable fights, from Brooklyn bedrooms-turned-broadcast-booths to center stage at Showtime Championship Boxing, Albert's stories are equal parts history and hilarity.

In this special milestone episode, we retrace Albert’s journey through memorable stops like:

• The WHA’s Cleveland Crusaders, where his broadcast partner was the coach’s elbow-needling wife;
• The MISL’s New York Arrows, where goal-scoring was nonstop and whiplash an occupational hazard;
• The final ABA game ever played, which he and his older brother Al called from opposing sides;
• 30+ years across the NBA, including 19 seasons with the New York and New Jersey versions of the Nets, and a career-capping, Emmy-winning turn with the Phoenix Suns;
• Local New York TV sports anchor stints, where juggling 6 o’clock newscasts and rush-hour traffic to call evening games became an art;
• And, of course, his nearly quarter-century ringside seat with Showtime Championship Boxing -- including the infamous Tyson–Holyfield (II) “Bite Fight”

We also talk about growing up in a house where three brothers fought over the mic instead of the remote, how a botched bathroom door nearly derailed a broadcast, and why the strangest moments in sports often happen outside the lines of the game.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Broadcast Booth": https://amzn.to/4negHqc

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

What do you get when you mix Gen X slacker spirit, a startup sports league on wheels, and a 25-year-old Deadhead-turned-front office exec? Welcome to the wild world of Roller Hockey International (RHI) — and the improbable story of the San Jose Rhinos.

Brad Porteus, former GM of the Rhinos and author of the rollicking new memoir "Roll With It: A Trip Back to the '90s - Gen X Style," joins us to unpack one of the most absurd, glorious, and ultimately short-lived chapters in modern American pro sports history.

RHI burst onto the scene in the early 1990s during the inline skating craze, promising a legit summer hockey league full of high-speed thrills and low-rent spectacle. What it delivered was equal parts innovation and chaos.

Porteus was there from the beginning — drafting players who could barely skate; marketing a new team, league and sport on a shoestring budget; and helping San Jose win an unlikely Murphy Cup championship in only its second season (1995).

But Roll With It is about more than sports. It’s also a love letter to the analog '90s, a memoir of coming of age in an ascendant Silicon Valley, and a tribute to the resilient, underdog ethos of Generation X. Porteus brings us into a time before social media, when careers were launched on little more than a mixtape, a road map, and the blind faith that you could figure it out.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Roll With It: A Trip Back to the '90s - Gen X Style": https://amzn.to/4kEUKyT

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Before the Kraken. Before the Canucks. Before the NHL crossed the 49th parallel, there was the Seattle Metropolitans -- the first American team ever to win the Stanley Cup, in 1917.

This week, we uncover the forgotten saga of the Metropolitans, a team built on innovation, grit, and West Coast ambition. They played fast, they played smart -- and led by brilliant young coach Pete Muldoon, they made hockey history in a city barely known for winter sports.

But as author/guest Kevin Ticen chronicles in his acclaimed book "When It Mattered Most: The Forgotten Story of America's First Stanley Cup Champions, and the War to End All Wars," their Stanley Cup story wasn’t just about sports -- it was about a country on the edge of entering World War I, about patriotism and sacrifice, and about what happens when the games we play intersect with global events we can’t control.

We discuss the heroics of Bernie Morris, who scored a staggering 14 goals in the 1917 Stanley Cup Final -- and whose life took a dark turn when he was arrested for alleged draft evasion two years later. We revisit the tragic 1919 Final -- canceled due to the Spanish flu pandemic -- and the heartbreaking death of the Montreal Canadiens' Joe Hall.

And we explore how the Seattle Kraken have embraced the legacy of the Metropolitans, from commemorative banners and tribute jerseys to the modern-day Pete Muldoon Award, given annually to the current-day team's MVP.

From hockey glory to global catastrophe, this is the incredible, nearly forgotten tale of how Seattle once conquered the hockey world -- "when it mattered most."

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "When It Mattered Most: The Forgotten Story of America's First Stanley Cup Champions, and the War to End All Wars": https://amzn.to/3SGCc52

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

We use up our remaining MTA MetroCard credit this week for a sit-down with baseball author/historian Chris Donnelly — whose new book "Get Your Tokens Ready: The Late 1990s Road to the Subway Series" represents the final installment of his intriguing trilogy charting the divergent, yet intertwined sagas of the Mets and Yankees from the mid-1980s through 2000's historic “Subway Series.”

Donnelly’s previous works — "Doc, Donnie, the Kid, and Billy Brawl: How the 1985 Mets and Yankees Fought for New York's Baseball Soul" and "Road to Nowhere: The Early 1990s Collapse and Rebuild of New York City Baseball" — set the stage.

But now, with “Tokens,” he delivers the most in-depth look ever at how the late-1990s Yankees rose to dynasty status while the Mets clawed their way back from irrelevance — culminating in a tightly contested World Series showdown that defined a generation of New York baseball fans.

We explore how the Yankees became the undisputed kings of New York, the Mets’ dramatic resurgence, and what the 2000 cross-town showdown meant for the city’s baseball soul -- some four decades after the Giants and Dodgers abandoned Gotham for the California coast.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Get Your Tokens Ready: The Late 1990s Road to the Subway Series": https://amzn.to/3HBihSD * "Road to Nowhere: The Early 1990s Collapse and Rebuild of New York City Baseball": https://amzn.to/4koT4cR * "Doc, Donnie, the Kid, and Billy Brawl: How the 1985 Mets and Yankees Fought for New York's Baseball Soul": https://amzn.to/3StBKan

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

We welcome to our microphones award-winning author, cultural critic and Washington University in St. Louis professor Gerald Early, whose new book "Play Harder: The Triumph of Black Baseball in America" is a sweeping chronicle of Black Americans’ extraordinary influence on the game of baseball — from the sport’s formative days in the wake of the Civil War, through the heyday of the Negro Leagues, to the modern era.

A leading voice in the conversation about race, sports, and American identity, Early also served as an advisor to the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s landmark new exhibit, Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball. Together, the book and exhibit offer a timely and powerful retelling of baseball’s past — one that acknowledges long-overlooked figures like Moses Fleetwood Walker, Rube Foster, and Cool Papa Bell, and reexamines well-known legends like Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds through a deeper historical lens.

We discuss how Play Harder arrives at a moment of renewed focus on the Negro Leagues, as Major League Baseball officially recognizes them as major leagues and integrates their stats into the game’s official record.

Early explains why this recognition matters, how the Negro Leagues shaped Black identity and community, and what the story of Black baseball says about America itself.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Play Harder: The Triumph of Black Baseball in America": https://amzn.to/4dzBmRj

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Lacrosse is more than just a sport; it’s a mirror — one that reflects the history, tensions, and contradictions of America itself. So posits acclaimed sports journalist/renowned Sports Illustrated Senior Writer S.L. Price on this week's episode, as we explore his impressive new book "The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse" — a sweeping chronicle of the Indigenous origins, elite entrenchment, and modern upheaval of America's truest "oldest sport.”

From its sacred beginnings among the Native American (and First Nations) Haudenosaune — where the “Creator’s Game” served as both spiritual expression and a form of conflict resolution — to its adoption and reshaping by white elites in Ivy League corridors, lacrosse has long occupied a complicated cultural space. Price brings us inside this uniquely American paradox: a sport that’s simultaneously expanding at lightning speed, yet reckoning with the deep scars of exclusion, privilege, and violence.

We dive into lacrosse's turbulent professional history, including the shaky rise and fall of multiple pro leagues, the game’s fraught image in the wake of high-profile scandals, and the symbolic power of the Iroquois Nationals playing as a sovereign team on the world stage. Along the way, Price shares stories of legendary figures like Jim Brown, Kyle Harrison, Lyle Thompson, and Oren Lyons — voices who have reshaped what lacrosse means, and who it belongs to.

This isn’t just a conversation about sports — it’s about race, class, identity, and what it means to belong in America. If you think you know lacrosse, think again.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3 * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

Though it seems like only yesterday, this season marks the 40th anniversary of one of baseball's most misunderstood and overshadowed Fall Classics - the surprisingly competitive seven-game 1985 World Series.

While most remember the all-Missouri "Show-Me Series" for umpire Don Denkinger's blown call at first base in Game 6, baseball historian Marshall Garvey joins us to discuss why that single moment, while a significant turning point, shouldn't define what was otherwise a colorfully spirited battle between two well-matched in-state rivals.

In his new book, "Interstate ’85: The Kansas City Royals, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Show-Me Showdown That Rewrote Baseball History," Garvey peels back four decades of myth and oversight to uncover the full, rich tapestry of the "I-70 Series" — a provincial, emotionally charged showdown between two teams forever linked by more than just geography.

Through more than two dozen exclusive interviews with key figures like George Brett, Ozzie Smith, Bud Black, and even Don Denkinger himself, Garvey explores the human stories, cultural context, and remarkable on-field drama that have long deserved more attention.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3 * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

View Details

In a surprise move that instantly reshapes the league’s historical narrative, the National Football League last month announced it will now officially incorporate statistics from the upstart All-America Football Conference (AAFC), the short-lived but impactful rival professional football league that operated from 1946 to 1949.

The decision brings long-overdue recognition to the achievements of several prominent players from the mid-20th century and results in the revision of several long-standing records in the NFL’s official record books.

Renowned early pro football historian Ken Crippen ("The All-America Football Conference: Players, Coaches, Records, Games and Awards" and "The Original Buffalo Bills: A History of the All-America Football Conference Team") returns to the show (after a seven-year absence) to help us break down the NFL owners' decision to finally recognize the AAFC, as well as the historical significance of the move - which further burnishes the statistical legacies of star players like Y.A. Tittle (Baltimore Colts), Mac Speedie and Otto Graham (Cleveland Browns); Cleveland's iconic Paul Brown; and, most obviously the original Browns franchise - the only league champion the AAFC ever knew.

Plus, the bizarre story of how the original AAFC statistical records were providentially rescued from a New York City dumpster shortly after the announcement of the merger with the NFL in 1949!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

This week, we're thrilled to welcome a true legend of grit and perseverance — former NFL quarterback Dan Pastorini ("Taking Flak: Life In The Fast Lane").

Born and raised in the Bay Area, Pastorini made his mark early at Bellarmine College Prep before starring at nearby Santa Clara University, where he etched his name into the school’s record books and shined as the Most Outstanding Player of the 1971 East-West Shrine Game.

Drafted third overall by the Houston Oilers during the famed "Year of the Quarterback" in 1971, Pastorini became a symbol of toughness and innovation — famously pioneering the use of the flak jacket to play through brutal injuries. During his nine seasons with the Oilers, Pastorini led the team through the beloved "Luv Ya Blue" era under coach Bum Phillips, playing alongside greats like Earl Campbell and Elvin Bethea. His leadership helped fuel dramatic playoff victories and brought Houston to the brink of Super Bowl glory in both 1978 and 1979.

It's a revealing conversation, which includes Pastorini thoughts about:

• His upbringing, early sports dreams, and why he chose football over a potential MLB career after being drafted by the New York Mets.
• Life in the NFL trenches: the hits he took, the historic games he played, and the deep bond he formed with the city of Houston.
• The controversial 1979 AFC Championship loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers — and the call that still sparks debate.
• His transition to Top Fuel drag racing, where he broke barriers once again by winning major NHRA events and clocking speeds over 270 mph, AND
• His passion for giving back through the Be An Angel Foundation and reflections on a life lived at full throttle.

From quarterback to drag racer, businessman to philanthropist, Dan Pastorini's story is one of resilience, reinvention, and heart.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

GRILL LIKE A PRO: * Dan Pastorini's Texas Style BBQ Rubs & Spices: https://dpqualityfoods.com/

GIVE UNTIL IT HURTS: * Be An Angel Fund: https://beanangel.org/

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

Live and direct from Pottsdam, it's the one-and-only Karl-Heinz Granitza — the prolific German striker who became the face of the North American Soccer League's iconic Chicago Sting -- and a transformative figure in American soccer during his seven outdoor seasons across the late 1970s & early 1980s.

A 2003 National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee and one of the NASL's all-time leading scorers, Granitza opens up about his remarkable journey from West Berlin to the Windy City -- where his powerful left foot, fiery personality, and unshakable will to win helped ignite a soccer revolution in the US.

Granitza shares the challenges of joining the Sting in 1978, a year that began with a record-setting 10-game losing streak, only to pivot dramatically under mid-season replacement coach Willy Roy. With a new influx of German talent and a renewed sense of purpose, Granitza led a cultural and competitive shift that culminated in one of the most exciting eras in Chicago pro sports history.

Among the stops: the tension-filled triumph of the NASL's 1981 Soccer Bowl championship match, where the Sting edged the star-studded New York Cosmos in a nail-biting, scoreless encounter that culminated in a dramatic tie-breaking shootout. Granitza recounts the euphoric aftermath: Chicago’s first major pro sports championship in nearly two decades, a ticker-tape parade attended by over 100,000 fans, and the moment he realized that soccer had finally taken root in America’s heartland.

We dive into Granitza’s reputation as both a clutch performer and a demanding teammate; with humor and honesty, he reflects on his passionate leadership style — his perfectionism, on-field outbursts, and deep loyalty to teammates like Arno Steffenhagen, Ingo Peter, and Pato Margetic.

We also explore Granitza’s dominance in the 1980s indoor game (for both the NASL and MISL versions of the Sting, as well as the American Indoor Soccer Association's Chicago Power), his record-setting scoring streaks, and his perspective on the bittersweet demise of the NASL -- especially the (often overlooked) legacy it still provides today's American soccer landscape.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

It's a bucket-list conversation this week with legendary sports broadcaster Jim Lampley as he shares insights and anecdotes from his new memoir, "It Happened!: A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television."

With a career spanning five decades, Lampley takes us behind the scenes of some of the most indelible moments in modern-day sports broadcasting, offering a first-person, blow-by-blow account of history-making assignments, iconic calls, and never-before-told stories - including:

• Becoming the first live sideline reporter for a nationally televised college football game;
• Rising to ABC Sports heir apparency behind legends like Jim McKay and Howard Cosell;
• Covering an astonishing 14 Olympic Games across multiple networks, including ABC, NBC, and Turner; AND
• Hosting HBO’s Wimbledon telecasts and reaching Hall of Fame status as the 30-year voice of HBO World Championship Boxing (including his unforgettable call during George Foreman’s miraculous victory over Michael Moorer)

BUT, OF COURSE, we naturally drag "Lamps" back to some of his more “forgotten” stops made along the way, including:

• Play-by-play and studio host for the original USFL;
• First-ever host at ground-breaking all-sports radio station WFAN/New York; AND

• Local news anchor at CBS's Los Angeles O&O flagship KCBS-TV

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "It Happened!: A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television.": https://amzn.to/42ecyKF

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

It's our long-overdue dive into one of the most controversial stories in National Football League history — the tale of the Pottsville Maroons and its stolen 1925 championship — with ESPN journalist and author David Fleming, whose acclaimed 2007 book "Breaker Boys: The NFL's Greatest Team and the Stolen 1925 Championship" is newly apropos on the 100th anniversary of what many consider to be pro football's most egregious historical blunder.

Fleming guides us through the dramatic rise and fall of the Maroons — an Eastern Pennsylvania coal-country semi-pro team born of grit, visionary coaching, and the raw determination of hard-working, hardscrabble working-class miners/players/characters, like Tony 'The Human Howitzer' Latone.

We'll trace how this unlikely squad stormed into the NFL in 1925, defeated its powerhouse Chicago Cardinals in the ostensible title game, and then toppled a heavily-favored University of Notre Dame "Four Horsemen" squad in a much-hyped exhibition match.

But their moment of triumph became their undoing. The NFL suspended the team for allegedly violating territorial rights for the game — a charge hotly contested to this day — and stripped them of the title. Instead, the Cardinals were awarded the championship, and Pottsville was left with nothing but heartbreak.

Hear how the Maroons’ win over the Fighting Irish actually helped legitimize a still-fledgling NFL — and how the league "repaid" them with what many call the worst injustice in pro football history. We'll explore the political maneuvering behind the decision, the 100-year fight for redemption, and what it reveals about the NFL's ownership power dynamics, both then and now.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Breaker Boys: The NFL's Greatest Team and the Stolen 1925 Championship": https://amzn.to/43C5atA

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

We boot up our trusty Flux Capacitor this week for a trip back to 1978 -- a year when baseball provided a much-needed escape for a nation in flux. We sit down with David Krell, author of "1978: Baseball and America in the Disco Era," to relive one of Major League Baseball’s most unforgettable seasons — one filled with historic milestones, dramatic showdowns, and larger-than-life personalities.

From Bucky Dent’s legendary home run that crushed Red Sox fans’ hearts to Reggie Jackson’s World Series heroics, 1978 was a year of baseball drama at its finest. We discuss Ron Guidry’s dominance (25-3, 1.74 ERA), Pete Rose’s 44-game hit streak, Tom Seaver’s one-and-only no-hitter, and Willie McCovey’s 500th home run — all set against the cultural backdrop of disco fever, bell-bottoms, gas-guzzling cars, and Hollywood 1950s-era escapist nostalgia.

Beyond the ballpark, America found itself beset with post-Watergate political disillusionment, confronted with rapidly rising economic inflation, and mired in a stubbornly persistent energy crisis. Krell takes us on a deep dive into how baseball intertwined with the era’s biggest moments, making 1978 not just a great season, but a reflection of the times.

So, dust off your turntable, crank up some Bee Gees, and join us for a conversation that captures the magic, madness, and milestones of 1978 — both on and off the field.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "1978: Baseball and America in the Disco Era": https://amzn.to/43z1yIW

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

Sports historian Josh Elias stops by for a deep unraveling of the often misunderstood story behind the 1949 merger that created the National Basketball Association (NBA) as we know it today.

Drawing from his historically essential 2024 book The Birth of the Modern NBA: Pro Basketball in the Year of the Merger, 1949-1950, Elias takes us back to the pivotal moment when the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL) merged, uniting disparate big-city teams with small-town clubs - and setting the stage for professional basketball’s future in the US.

We dive into the tensions between East Coast metropolises and Midwestern industrial towns; the unexpected power struggles between the last BAA champion (and superstar George Mikan-led) Minneapolis Lakers and the final NBL winning Anderson (Indiana) Packers; and the NBA's early challenges with segregation, cultural divides, and an uncertain post-WWII American economy.

Elias also shares some of the wildest and most fascinating anecdotes from his research, including mob-connected team owners, bizarre halftime performances, airport mishaps, and brushes with history-making figures like Jackie Robinson, Chuck Connors, and even a young pre-politics Gerald R. Ford.

Step back in time to revisit the NBA’s chaotic, colorful, and often overlooked first season - one that shaped the league for generations to come.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * 417 Helmets (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "The Birth of the Modern NBA: Pro Basketball in the Year of the Merger, 1949-1950" : https://amzn.to/41PRnx6

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

We go North of the border this week for the curious story of the dramatic and chaotic origins of the National Hockey League with hockey historian and long-time Windsor Star sports columnist Bob Duff ("The First Season: 1917-18 and the Birth of the NHL").

While today’s NHL is a global powerhouse celebrating over a century of hockey history, its very first season (1917-18) was a near disaster. Born out of a backroom maneuver to oust controversial Toronto owner Eddie Livingstone, the league’s inaugural outing was anything but smooth.

From a player shortage caused by World War I conscription, to the sudden collapse of the four-team-league's Montreal Wanderers after their arena burned down, to competition from the rival Pacific Coast Hockey Association, to various threats of revenge from Livingstone - the NHL teetered on the edge of failure. And yet, against all odds, it survived.

"The Duffer" walks us through that unlikely initial NHL season, the struggles that nearly ended it before it truly began, and the league's first-ever Stanley Cup championship - as the "Toronto Hockey Club" (or was it "Arenas" or "Torontos"?) bested the PCHA's Vancouver Millionaires in a best-of-five final.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "The First Season: 1917-18 and the Birth of the NHL": https://amzn.to/3XQ1bFR

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

America’s pastime has long been more than just a game - it’s a reflection of the country itself. But what happens when the heart and soul of small-town baseball is threatened by the forces of modern sports economics?

We sit down with New York Times-bestselling author ("The Prisoner in His Palace") and former Army Ranger Will Bardenwerper to discuss his new book "Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America" - a poignant memoir that explores the fate of minor league baseball in Batavia, New York, and what it reveals about the state of America today.

Bardenwerper takes us behind the scenes of a declining Rust Belt town’s fight to keep its baseball tradition alive after Major League Baseball's contraction of Batavia's beloved Muckdogs (née Clippers, Pirates, Trojans & Indians) - along with its history-laden circuit, the Class-A New York-Penn League - in 2020.

Through rich storytelling and a cast of unforgettable characters, Bardenwerper paints a picture of resilience, community, and the enduring magic of the game. As Batavia fights to keep baseball alive, Homestand captures not just the town’s defiance in the face of MLB’s power grab, but also the broader struggles of small-town America against economic forces beyond its control. We also explore Bardenwerper’s unique perspective as a veteran, journalist, and author - connecting themes of war, political division, and the still uniquely unifying power of a simple summer night at the ballpark. + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America": https://amzn.to/4iCbYeQ

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

Strap in and try to keep up, as we attempt to follow the peripatetic 58-year journey of one of the NBA's most wandering franchises - with New York-area sports beat reporter Rick Laughland ("A History of the Nets: From Teaneck to Brooklyn").

Today's Brooklyn Nets club began its life in 1967 as the New Jersey Americans - a charter member of the American Basketball Association, playing at the Teaneck Armory. A year later, they moved to Long Island (LI Arena, then Island Garden, then Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum) to become the New York Nets, winning two ABA championships (1974, 1976) behind superstar Julius Erving.

Absorbed into the NBA in 1976, the team struggled financially and was forced to sell Erving, leading to early-season struggles. In 1977, they relocated to the Garden State as the New Jersey Nets, playing at Rutgers Athletic Center (now Jersey Mike's Arena) before moving to Brendan Byrne (aka Meadowlands) Arena in 1981.

After almost becoming the "Swamp Dragons" in 1994, the early 2000s saw breakthrough success with Jason Kidd, Kenyon Martin, and Richard Jefferson - making back-to-back NBA Finals runs in 2002 and 2003.

Before a brief move to Newark's Prudential Center (2010–12), the team relocated to Brooklyn's purpose-built Barclays Center, with a complete franchise name, logo and color-scheme rebrand. Initially building around Deron Williams, they later pursued star power with Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, followed by Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden in 2019–2021.

Still bereft of an elusive NBA title, will the Nets continue to ply their trade in Brooklyn - or will they eventually return to their nomadic ways?

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * " A History of the Nets: From Teaneck to Brooklyn": https://amzn.to/41oxSev

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

We're positively kvelling over the brand new anthology from this week's guest Eric Gouldsberry - "Our Life and Times with the Earthquakes" - which vividly (and lovingly) portrays the thrilling early days of the original San Jose Earthquakes franchise (1974-84) of the old North American Soccer League, and the transformative impact it brought to the Bay Area's fast-growing Santa Clara Valley.

Through his personal journey as a devoted fan and with never-before-seen images captured by his father - "official unofficial" team photographer Ray Gouldsberry - Eric brings to life the magic of a team that ignited an untapped soccer fan base in the South Bay and helped define the 1970s-era pro version of the "beautiful game" in America.

We explore the club's ingenious marketing tactics, pioneering players, eclectic fans, and the various highs and lows of the original Earthquakes both on and off the field - all set against the meteoric rise and ultimate collapse of the enigmatic NASL.

It's all here: cozy Spartan Stadium, its painted field, cheer instigator (and Episode 7 guest) "Krazy" George, the "Shakers," indoors at the Cow Palace - plus, the little-known origin story of 1978's expansion Oakland Stompers and the intense-but-brief rivalry that time forgot!

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Our Life and Times With the Earthquakes: Images and Memories from the Glory Days of San Jose's Original Pro Soccer Team": https://amzn.to/4i2YVmI

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

After a decidedly meh NBA All-Star Weekend, we rewind back to one of the league's most influential historical tributaries - the American Basketball Association (1967-76) - and the criminally little-known story of how its demise left a generation of pioneering pro players out in the cold.

Michael Husain is the writer, director, and co-producer of the groundbreaking documentary The Waiting Game - which spotlights the relentless efforts of the determined non-profit Dropping Dimes, as it fights to help reclaim the overdue benefits and back pay the forgotten star athletes of the ABA were promised as part of their absorption into the NBA in 1976.

It's a story of players who helped shape the style, pace and culture of modern basketball, but now struggle to afford life-saving medications, avoid eviction, and secure basic financial stability - even as the NBA rakes in over $10 billion annually.

Husain shares exclusive insights into the making of the film, the enduring legacy of the ABA, and the still-ongoing battle for justice and recognition for its players, and their contributions to the evolution of the game.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

SEE THE MOVIE: * "The Waiting Game": https://www.thewaitinggamemovie.com/

SUPPORT THE CAUSE: * Dropping Dimes Foundation: https://droppingdimes.org/

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

We hearken back to baseball's humble beginnings this week, as author/historian Jeff Orens ("Selling Baseball: How Superstars George Wright and Albert Spalding Impacted Sports in America") takes us on a journey through the late 19th century, when the game was rapidly evolving from a casual pastime to America's national sport - with two larger-than-life figures at the center of its transformation.

In Orens' telling, players-turned-sports-businessmen George Wright (Cincinnati Red Stockings, Boston Red Stockings, Boston Red Caps, Providence Grays, and later, Wright & Ditson Co.), and Albert Spalding (Rockford Forest Citys, Boston Red Stockings, Chicago White Stockings, and his eponymous sporting goods company still in business today) were the first superstars of "professional" baseball - driven by a competitive rivalry on the field and complementary marketing skills off it, helping modernize the game/industry we know today.

And our conversation doesn't shy away from controversy, either. We'll delve into Wright's and Spalding's roles in perpetuating the infamous "Doubleday myth," which erroneously credited Civil War hero Abner Doubleday with inventing baseball. Orens provides insight into how these influential figures helped legitimize this false narrative, shaping/tainting baseball's origin story for generations to come.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Selling Baseball: How Superstars George Wright and Albert Spalding Impacted Sports in America": https://amzn.to/4jTm7VW

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

Ain't no stoppin' us now this week as we lay down the indoor soccer turf and roll out the red carpet for one of the Major Indoor Soccer League's steeliest defenders and long-time St. Louis Steamers fan favorite Carl Rose.

Known best for his seven stellar seasons (1979-86) with the MISL's most commercially successful franchise, Rose actually began his pro indoor career along with the debut of the league itself (1978-79) as a member of the inaugural title-winning New York Arrows.

A two-time indoor All-Star, Rose earlier plied his soccer trade outdoors with the Canadian National Soccer League's Toronto Emerald - including call ups for the nation's 1975 Pan-American and 1976 Olympic squads, alongside future NASL & MISL teammates Jack Brand, Bob Bolitho, Peter Roe, Tino Lettieri, Wes McLeod, and Jimmy McLoughlin.

We tackle all of that and lots more - including Rose's challenges overcoming a serious career-ending injury and becoming a standout youth coach in St. Louis - as well as his hot takes on the state of the game in the US.

His new memoir "A Resilient Spirit" is a great read, and is available wherever good books are found (or the link below!).

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "A Resilient Spirit" (2024): https://amzn.to/4guvJDI

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

View Details

We throw another Duraflame into the hot stove this week for a look back at the sterling, but oddly overlooked career of one of baseball’s greatest "golden age" hitters.

Biographer Jerry Grillo ("Big Cat: The Life of Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Mize") helps us sort out the intriguing story of batting titan Johnny Mize - whose 15-year major league journey playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, the New York version of the Giants and five World Series-winning seasons (1949-53) with the New York Yankees - generated ten All-Star Game appearances, and a plethora of National League titles in home runs (4x), RBIs (3x) and hitting (1939) - despite missing three full seasons (1943-45) for wartime service with the US Navy.

Widely considered a cinch for the Hall of Fame upon his retirement in 1953, Mize's path to Cooperstown instead took 28 years until a Veterans Committee vote in 1981 finally brought him into the pantheon of the sport's greats.

Find out why the pride of Demorest, Georgia's road to baseball immortality took so long, why one of the sport's greatest underappreciated hitters unquestionably belongs in the Hall - and how the "Big Cat" unwittingly helped influence today's billion-dollar trading card industry!

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Big Cat: The Life of Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Mize" (2024): https://amzn.to/3CeKNrb

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[While Tim gets off the mat after a bout with a vaccine-resistant strain of the flu this week, we go back to April 2018 for this classic ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE with the pied piper of classic football history!]

Upton Bell grew up at the knee of the National Football League’s second-ever commissioner – his father, the legendary Bert Bell – who not only saved professional football from financial ruin in the aftermath of World War II, but also became one of its greatest innovators. Originator of the iconic phrase “on any given Sunday,” the senior Bell created lasting contributions to the NFL, such as the first pro football draft, scheduling parity, television revenue-sharing, and sudden-death overtime.

For the junior Upton, it was a priceless childhood amidst pro football’s formative years – begun while watching his father draw up the league schedule each year using dominoes at the kitchen table – steeped in the personalities, lore, and economic pragmatism of a game that would ultimately dominate the American professional sports landscape like no other.

In a seemingly preordained career, Upton Bell (Present at the Creation: My Life in the NFL and the Rise of America’s Game) has been an owner (the wacky World Football League’s Charlotte Hornets), a general manager (the NFL’s New England [née AFL Boston] Patriots), a player personnel director (the 1960s NFL-dominant Baltimore Colts), and long-time sports commentator/talk radio host – remaining a true and insightful “football guy” throughout.

In this very revealing conversation, Bell joins Tim Hanlon to discuss his personal and professional journey through the sport he loves; the lessons learned and insights gleaned from his unique purview into the pro game’s coming-of-age era; the current state of the NFL and where it might be headed; and heretofore untold stories about the stranger-than-fiction WFL.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Present at the Creation: My Life in the NFL and the Rise of America's Game (2017): https://amzn.to/40FW7Ww

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Spurred on by a hugely intriguing article in The Athletic penned last November by Episode 274 guest Pablo Maurer (as well as another by Guardian soccer writer Jack Williams back in 2016), we delve into the fascinating story of the visionary, yet controversial 1990s American pro soccer league that never was - League 1 America - with its mastermind Jim Paglia. Born in the wake of the 1989 awarding of the 1994 FIFA World Cup to the United States, League 1 America was an ambitious attempt to reimagine a post-Cup pro soccer league for an American audience that gravitated toward fast-paced, high-scoring sports like football and basketball. Paglia’s vision centered on blending traditional soccer elements with entertainment-focused innovations and dedicated mall-like facilities, aiming to build a league that prioritized marketability and fan engagement above all else.

The league’s format featured radical rule changes, including shootouts to resolve ties, shortened match durations, and scoring modifications to encourage more goals and continuous action. Paglia also planned to lean heavily on corporate sponsorships, creating a business model that integrated entertainment and commercial viability, with aspirations of competing against America’s major sports leagues for both fans and television audiences.

Despite its innovative ideas, League 1 America never materialized. The league faced a skeptical sporting landscape, with the demise of the North American Soccer League in the mid-1980s still fresh in the public’s memory and doubts about soccer’s viability as a mainstream American sport. Financial hurdles, coupled with resistance from soccer traditionalists and a lack of institutional support, doomed the project before it could get off the ground. Critics dismissed Paglia’s vision as an overly commercialized distortion of soccer’s essence, while fans of the global game balked at the Americanized rule changes.

Yet, the story of League 1 America remains a fascinating “what if” in the history of U.S. soccer. A number of its ideas - especially the building of experience-driven soccer-specific stadiums - can be seen in today's Major League Soccer. Paglia’s efforts highlighted both the challenges and opportunities of growing soccer in the U.S., underscoring the tension between preserving the sport’s global traditions and adapting it to local tastes. Today, as soccer continues its steady rise in America, League 1 America serves as a reminder of the bold experimentation and resilience that helped lay the groundwork for the sport’s future.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Renowned Presidential speechwriter-turned-sports-historian Curt Smith joins the podcast this week for an erudite look at the not-so-obvious concentricity between the story of baseball in America with both the growth of broadcasting and the evolution of electoral politics. Drawing from some of his most seminal works on baseball history - most notably 1987's iconic Voices of the Game, the anthological Memories from the Microphone, and the newly updated-in-paperback The Presidents and the Pastime - Smith helps put the game into richer cultural perspective, with astute observations of its unmistakable intertwinement with media and government. + + +

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

BUY THE BOOKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Voices of the Game: The Acclaimed Chronicle of Baseball Radio and Television Broadcasting - from 1921 to the Present (1992): https://amzn.to/4gYnvV0 * Memories from the Microphone: A Century of Baseball Broadcasting (2021): https://amzn.to/4h6cVvr * The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House (2024): https://amzn.to/4gTMQ2E

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

It's our year-end Holiday Roundtable Spectacular - featuring a look back at the year's newest additions to "what used-to-be" in professional sports (RIP MLB's "Oakland" Athletics & the NHL's Arizona Coyotes), and a predictive glimpse into what might be in store for 2025 - with two of our favorite fellow defunct sports enthusiasts: Steve Holroyd (Crossecheck, Philly Classics & Episodes 92, 109, 149, 188 & 248); and Paul Reeths (OurSportsCentral.com, StatsCrew.com & Episode 46). Buckle up for our yearly mélange of amusement and bemusement at the fringes of the pro sports establishment, as we simultaneously marvel at and lament some of the most curious events of the past year, debate who and what might be next to stumble into oblivion, and conjecture about future scenarios for the next generation of defunct and otherwise forgotten pro sports teams and leagues - including:

• Spring football's unified UFL
• Arena Football League 2.0 RIP (and Arena Football One 2025)
• MLB's now-Sacramento-and-someday-Las Vegas (maybe) Athletics
• The NHL's Utah Hockey Club (fka Arizona [née Phoenix] Coyotes, via the WHA's original Winnipeg Jets)
• Major League Cricket
• Baseball's genre-bending Savannah Bananas - and its soon-to-launch Banana Ball Championship League
• Indoor soccer's new Baller League
• Premier League Lacrosse's pivot to city teams and a new women's division
• The new League One Volleyball (LOVB) takes on the 2nd-year Pro Volleyball Federation (PVF)
• NWSL soccer
• PWHL hockey

PLUS: Can Diamond Baseball Holdings (41 MiLB teams and counting!) be stopped?

AND: Will Michael Jordan, et al. break up the NASCAR stock car monopoly?

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

It's a holiday gift-wrapped conversation with American soccer pioneer and US National Soccer Hall of Famer Johnny Moore - whose professional career as a player and coach across the original versions of both the North American Soccer League (San Jose Earthquakes, Oakland Stompers), and Major Indoor Soccer League (Detroit Lightning, San Francisco Fog, Phoenix Inferno & a one-game/one-goal stint with the Kansas City Comets), and as General Manager of the original Major League Soccer incarnation of the 'Quakes (formerly Clash, now Houston Dynamo) - is the stuff of legend.

Also: the "outlaw" 1969 Oakland/California Clippers; San Francisco's infamous Cow Palace; the mid-70s US Men's National Team; the real origin story of the NASL 35-yard line (and Shootout); and how Mexico's Club America almost became another Chivas USA.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Soccer Fever: A Year With the San Jose Earthquakes" (1977): https://amzn.to/3BTrNy1

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We welcome pro football historian (and Buffalo Bills memorabilia patron) Greg Tranter ("The Providence Steam Roller: New England's First NFL Team") to our microphones this week for a look back at the oft-forgotten Providence Steam Roller - which competed in the early-days National Football League from 1925-31.

Based in Providence, RI, the Steam Roller holds a unique place in gridiron history as the first and only team from the Ocean State to win an NFL championship. The team's unusual name reflected the industrial character of the region and was derived from a local steamroller manufacturer.

The Steam Roller played their home games primarily at the Cycledrome, an outdoor stadium primarily designed for bicycle races, which provided a distinctive playing venue. In inclement weather, the team occasionally used the Providence Auditorium, making them one of the few teams to ever host an indoor NFL game.

The club was renowned for its tough, physical play -especially in 1928 when, under the leadership of player/coach Jimmy Conzelman, the Steam Roller achieved its greatest success by winning a closely contested (and ultimately board room-decided) NFL title over the Frankford (PA) Yellow Jackets.

Despite their championship success, the Steam Roller struggled with the financial challenges common to early NFL teams, particularly during the Great Depression. In 1931, the franchise folded due to declining attendance and steepening losses at gate.

Though short-lived, the Providence Steam Roller left a lasting legacy as a reminder of the NFL's early days, when the league was still establishing itself in small and mid-sized cities across the United States.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "The Providence Steam Roller: New England's First NFL Team" (2024): https://amzn.to/3ZVBTb9

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We jump aboard this NFL season's biggest bandwagon with a look back at one of the league's most enduring, yet historically mediocre franchises - and the only club operational for the entirety of the post-AFL era to never appear in the Super Bowl.

Bill Morris ("The Lions Finally Roar: The Ford Family. The Detroit Lions, And The Road To Redemption In The NFL") joins the podcast to help us wallow in the colorful, but supremely confounding history of pro football's Detroit Lions - especially during the last 60+ years of family majority ownership begun in earnest by William Clay Ford Sr. back in 1963.

From the "Curse of Bobby Layne" to Billy Sims, from Barry Sanders to Matt Millen, and from the Pontiac Silverdome to 2008's historic 0-16 season - it's all here!

Plus, we speculate whether this year will finally see the Lions return to NFL championship glory.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "The Lions Finally Roar: The Ford Family. The Detroit Lions, And The Road To Redemption In The NFL" (2024): https://amzn.to/3ZJmVES

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Former NBA All-Star Michael Ray Richardson and his co-author Jacob Uitti (Banned: How I Squandered an All-Star NBA Career Before Finding My Redemption) join the show to discuss Richardson's riveting new memoir that chronicles his extraordinary journey on and off the basketball court.

Hailed as “the next Walt Frazier” coming out of the University of Montana as a first-round pick (fourth overall) in the 1978 NBA Draft, "Sugar" was a force to be reckoned with, leading the league in both assists and steals in just his second season - still New York Knicks team records to this day - and earning four All-Star appearances and two All-Defensive team honors. But behind the scenes, his career was overshadowed by personal struggles with drugs and alcohol, leading to a historic lifetime ban from the NBA in 1986 while a member of the New Jersey Nets.

Richardson shares how he rebounded from that moment, finding redemption through subsequent stints as a player and coach in places like the CBA (Albany Patroons, Oklahoma Cavalry); USBL (Long Island Knights); Premiere Basketball League; and a prolific 14-year professional league run in Europe, where he guided teams to championships and redefined his legacy.

Now running youth basketball clinics and reflecting on his journey, Richardson proves that resilience and accountability can turn even the darkest chapters into a comeback story.

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Banned: How I Squandered an All-Star NBA Career Before Finding My Redemption" (2024): https://amzn.to/3B2Knn7

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Baseball history writer Scott Longert ("Love and Loss: The Short Life of Ray Chapman"), joins the show for an in-depth look at the life and legacy of Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman (1891-1920) whose tragic story continues to resonate more than a century later.

Chapman rose from humble beginnings to become one of the American League’s top shortstops of the 1910s. His exceptional talent on the field, coupled with his marriage to heiress Kathleen Daly, positioned him for a life of privilege and success. Yet, his promising future was cruelly cut short during the 1920 pennant race when a high fastball from Yankees pitcher Carl Mays tragically ended his life.

Longert goes beyond the familiar narrative of Chapman’s untimely death to paint a broader picture of his remarkable yet brief life, from his rise as a baseball star to his pivotal role in what would ultimately become the Indians' first-ever World Series championship season. Longert also explores the heartbreaking ripple effects of the tragedy, including the devastating toll on his widow and young daughter.

Join us as we delve into Chapman’s enduring legacy as a Cleveland icon, the chilling events of that fateful game, and his lasting impact on baseball and its history.

• • +

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Love and Loss: The Short Life of Ray Chapman" (2024): https://amzn.to/4eMGCA7

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Author/biographer Debbie Sorensen (Beyond the Jump Shot: The Elevated Life of Kenny Sailors) delves into the story of basketball pioneer Kenny Sailors (1921–2016), one of the most unheralded influencers in both the collegiate and pro game.

Widely credited with popularizing the modern-day jump shot, Sailors first stunned audiences in the early 1940s when he elevated mid-air to shoot over taller defenders - a revolutionary move in an era dominated by set shots. His innovation not only expanded offensive possibilities but also became a fundamental skill in basketball at all levels.

As a standout player for the University of Wyoming, Sailors led his team to the NCAA Championship in 1943, earning Most Outstanding Player honors. His game-changing jump shot helped transform basketball into the fast-paced, dynamic sport we recognize today. After serving in World War II, Sailors had a successful professional career in the ascendant Basketball Association of America (BAA) - most notably with the Cleveland Rebels and Providence Steamrollers - as well as in the first two years of the NBA (the original NBL-absorbed Denver Nuggets, and BAA-originated Boston Celtics & Baltimore Bullets).

Beyond his contributions on the court, Sailors was an advocate for youth sports and the importance of education, spending decades mentoring young athletes. His legacy is celebrated not only for his role in evolving the sport but also for his character and sportsmanship. Inducted into the National Collegiate Hall of Fame in 2012, Kenny Sailors remains a towering figure in basketball history - though, criminally, still not in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

• • +

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Beyond the Jump Shot: The Elevated Life of Kenny Sailors" (2024): https://amzn.to/3Vko1ob

STREAM THE DOCUMENTARY (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Jump Shot: The Kenny Sailors Story" (2022): https://amzn.to/40TFtmO

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We gear up for the impending launch of the new six-team Women's Pro Baseball League (set to debut in summer of 2026) with another look back at the original All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (1943-54) with sports history writer Jim Sargent.

In "We Were the All-American Girls" (2013), Sargent culled insights from over three dozen interviews with former AAGPBL players, detailing the league’s evolution from underhand pitching with a 12-inch ball in 1943 to overhand pitching and a standard baseball by 1954, its final year. Conducted between 1995 and 2012, these interviews captured memorable games, career highlights, and the deep bonds among players, opponents, and fans. Many players also reflected on how the 1992 film A League of Their Own revived the league's legacy, reigniting public interest nearly 40 years after its last game.

In "The South Bend Blue Sox: A History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Team and Its Players" (2011), Sargent describes the league through the eyes of the players and management of the South Bend Blue Sox - one of only two teams to play all 12 seasons of the league's existence, including two titles (1951 & 1952).

• • +

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

BUY THE BOOKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "We Were the All-American Girls: Interviews with Players of the AAGPBL" (2013): https://amzn.to/3ADXc79 * "The South Bend Blue Sox: A History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Team and Its Players" (2011): https://amzn.to/4fCBy1Q

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstill.bsky.social * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

With apologies to ice hockey's legendary Lord Stanley, no sport is more synonymous with the awarding of championship cups than soccer.

Long ingrained in the international culture of the sport, the hardware that overwhelmingly awaits the various victors of league titles (e.g., Italy's Serie A Coppa Campioni d'Italia or North America's MLS Cup); major club tournaments (like England's FA Cup or the US' Open Cup); and important international competitions (such as CONCACAF's gaudy Gold Cup and the planet's ultimate prize, the FIFA World Cup) is an often-iconic "cup" - even if the form factor doesn't even resemble one.

We go in the opposite direction this week with soccer author Simon Turner ("Tinpot: Football's Forgotten Tournaments") as we celebrate some of the lesser-known and now-defunct soccer cups of the past - including three with intriguing American connections: the 1976 Bicentennial Cup; the 1990s US Cup; and England's rollicking MISL-inspired "Soccer Six" indoor tournament.

• • +

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Tinpot: Football's Forgotten Tournaments " (2024): https://amzn.to/3UA3pYu

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Voice of America news editor and Pittsburgh native Dan Joseph ("Behind the Yoi: The Life of Myron Cope, Legendary Pittsburgh Steelers Broadcaster") joins the podcast this week for a deep dive into the legacy of one of pro football's most unique broadcast voices.

Myron Cope (1929-2008) served as the radio color commentator for the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers from 1970 to 2005, becoming an irreplaceable voice in NFL broadcasting. Known for his distinctive, gravelly tone and catchphrases like “Yoi!” and “Okle-dokle,” Cope's excitement and unapologetic support for the Steelers led fans to mute their TVs and tune into his radio broadcasts. His career extended beyond game days, with his pioneering evening talk show dominating Pittsburgh’s airwaves for over two decades and earning him the honor of being the first pro football announcer inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.

Born and raised in Pittsburgh to Lithuanian Jewish parents, Cope initially pursued journalism, writing for publications such as Sports Illustrated. But it was through the airwaves that he truly captured fans’ hearts. In 1975, Cope created the "Terrible Towel" - a gold towel Steelers fans waved in support of their team - which became a powerful emblem of Steelers Nation. His contributions to the team’s lore also include co-naming 1972's “Immaculate Reception,” forever tying him to one of the NFL’s most iconic plays.

Beyond broadcasting, Cope’s legacy reflects his dedication to his family and community. He donated all Terrible Towel royalties to the care facility where his son, born with brain damage, still resides. Over his lifetime, Cope raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for children with disabilities, underscoring the kindness and loyalty that endeared him to Pittsburgh and solidified his place in sports history.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Yinzylvania (20% off promo code: GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE): https://yinzylvania.com/GOODSEATSSTILLAVAILABLE * Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Behind the Yoi: The Life of Myron Cope, Legendary Pittsburgh Steelers Broadcaster" (2024): https://amzn.to/3O2CbWZ

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

John Madden (1936-2021) was more than a football icon - he embodied the sport itself. As the unmistakable voice of the NFL for nearly 30 years, he brought America’s game into TV living rooms across the country. His name became synonymous with football, not just through his legendary broadcast career, but also as the face of his eponymous "Madden" video game franchise. On the field, he was a coaching mastermind, holding the highest career winning percentage of any NFL coach - achieved exclusively with one club, the AFL-then-NFL Oakland Raiders (1969-78). Madden’s influence reshaped how fans experienced football, both on screen and in person.

But there was another side to Madden, known only to those in the San Francisco Bay Area - where he not only grew up and resided, but also where he shared a daily ritual for nearly four decades - a morning chat with his local radio station. To the nation's fans, Madden was the booming voice of Sunday pro football, but to Bay Area listeners, he was also their neighbor, engaging in lighthearted, often profound conversations about life beyond the gridiron. These radio segments offered him a break from the spotlight, where he revealed a more personal and down-to-earth side to his personality.

In "Mornings with Madden: My Radio Life With An American Legend," former KCBS-AM/FM morning news anchor Stan Bunger—the radio host who spent over fifteen years in daily conversation with Madden - presents a rare, intimate look at the man behind the legend. Drawing from thousands of recordings and personal memories, Bunger reveals a different Madden: a devoted father, loving husband, bad golfer, dog owner, and fan of roadside diners. Off-screen, Madden pondered life’s simple joys and frustrations with the same humor and passion that captivated millions on TV.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Mornings with Madden: My Radio Life With An American Legend" (2024): https://amzn.to/3UhWG5l

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Legendary sports broadcaster Tom Hammond ("Races, Games, and Olympic Dreams: A Sportscaster's Life") joins host Tim Hanlon for a myriad of career memories from his nearly 35-year journey calling top-tier league packages and prime events for NBC Sports.

Plucked from regional sportscasting obscurity in 1984 for a one-time stall reporting gig as part of the network's telecast of the inaugural Breeders' Cup, Hammond performed so well that an NBC executive offered him a chance to call Sunday NFL/AFC football games on the spot.

The broadcast launched Hammond's multi-decade career with NBC Sports and a pathway to the top levels of American television sportscasting -including other major properties like the NBA, Notre Dame football, horse racing's Triple Crown, and perhaps most memorably, an astounding 13 different Olympic Games (summer and winter) calling marquee events such as gymnastics, track and field, and figure skating.

But of course, we can't let Hammond forget his time as the lead voice for the network's curious, but ultimately ill-fated AFL on NBC arena football adventure from 2003-06!

• • • SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats
• Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "Races, Games, and Olympic Dreams: A Sportscaster's Life" (2024): https://amzn.to/3NqmzMm

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Baltimore-based music historian and unwitting baseball biographer Tim Newby ("The Original Louisville Slugger: The Life and Times of Forgotten Baseball Legend Pete Browning") joins the show to delve deep into the story of one of the most formidable baseball players of the 19th century, whose mastery with a bat is still paying dividends today.

Over his 13-year career (including now-defunct stops like the American Association's Louisville Eclipse/Colonels and the Players' League's Cleveland Infants), inveterate power-hitter Pete Browning claimed three batting titles and consistently ranked among the top hitters of his time - immortalized as the namesake and inspiration for the iconic Louisville Slugger bat, which was first custom-made for him by the Hillerich & Bradsby Company.

Known as "The Gladiator," Browning was famous not only for his batting skills but for his unusual habits - refusing to slide, balancing on one leg, drinking tabasco sauce, and naming his bats after biblical figures - all in pursuit of improving his game. Behind the theatrics, though, lay a more tragic reality. Browning suffered from mastoiditis, a painful condition that gradually took his hearing and hindered his education and career, ultimately leading him to self-medicate with alcohol. His larger-than-life personality, coupled with embellished newspaper accounts, only added to the myth surrounding him.

Newby helps us dance around the thin line between fact and fiction of Browning's life - including why the "Louisville Slugger" is not (yet?) in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. + + + SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): * "The Original Louisville Slugger: The Life and Times of Forgotten Baseball Legend Pete Browning" (2024): https://amzn.to/3NbdIyd

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Despite their name, the Harlem Globetrotters weren’t originally from New York's Harlem neighborhood, nor did they start out as true world travellers. This all-Black basketball team, founded by Jewish immigrant Abe Saperstein, originated on Chicago’s South Side and began touring the Midwest rather humbly in Saperstein’s unheated Ford Model T. With his sharp promotional skills and the players’ incredible talent, the Globetrotters quickly grew into an international sensation.

Author-brothers Mark & Matt Jacob ("Globetrotter: How Abe Saperstein Shook Up the World of Sports") step into the box office this week to discuss their definitive new biography of Saperstein, a diminutive visionary whose outsized innovations made a profound impact on basketball - and beyond. Starting in the 1920s, the Globetrotters battled everything from harsh weather to rampant racism, all while building an iconic reputation for excellence and comedy that would captivate audiences worldwide.

But Saperstein's influence stretched far beyond the Globetrotters. He helped keep baseball’s Negro Leagues alive, was a force in getting pitching great Satchel Paige his shot at the majors, and befriended Olympic star Jesse Owens when he fell on hard times. When Saperstein was denied an opportunity to own an NBA franchise, he started the rival American Basketball League, where he helped pioneer the three-point shot, now a staple of the modern game.

• • • SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats
• Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

READ EARLY AND OFTEN: * "Globetrotter: How Abe Saperstein Shook Up the World of Sports" (2024): https://amzn.to/3TNDFaM

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

With the Mets th-i-i-i-i-s close to a rare MLB playoff berth this season, we do our best not to jinx their chances with a look back at the local New York post-game TV show synonymous with the club's first 32 years in Gotham with sports reporter/author Mark Rosenman ("Down on the Korner: Ralph Kiner and Kiner's Korner"). "Kiner's Korner" was a beloved postgame interview show that became a staple of New York Mets broadcasts from the team's inception in 1962 through the 1990s. Hosted by Hall of Fame player and broadcaster Ralph Kiner, the show aired on WOR-TV (now WWOR-TV) after Mets games and occasionally before them. Known for its relaxed and casual style, "Kiner’s Korner" gave fans a behind-the-scenes look at their favorite players, with Kiner interviewing the star of the game, reviewing key highlights, and updating scores from other games. The show was both informative and lighthearted, often showcasing Kiner’s warmth, humor, and legendary on-air in-game malapropisms.

The name "Kiner's Korner" was a nod to the left-field seats at Forbes Field, where Kiner hit many of his home runs during his Hall of Fame career with the Pittsburgh Pirates. These seats, once known as "Greenberg's Gardens" for Kiner's predecessor Hank Greenberg, were renamed "Kiner's Korner" after Kiner's meteoric rise in baseball. The show maintained a simple, intimate format, with players reflecting on their performances, sharing stories, and connecting with fans on a personal level, which helped strengthen Kiner’s bond with baseball enthusiasts across generations.

Despite its low-key production, the show became a cherished part of Mets culture, especially as it captured memorable moments from New York baseball history.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Kiner's Korner.com T-Shirt (from TeePublic): https://bit.ly/3ZRZo5l
• Kiner's Korner - Unisex T-Shirt (from 1986d): https://bit.ly/4gAFDF5
• "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch (from TeePublic): http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

READ EARLY AND OFTEN: * "Down on the Korner: Ralph Kiner and Kiner's Korner" (2016): https://amzn.to/3MUcszb

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

From the tough streets of Louisville's Smoketown to corporate success, former college hoops standout and American Basketball Association pro George Tinsley's life is a testament to resilience and opportunity. In his inspiring new memoir "Catch as Catch Can: Building a Legacy by Finding Opportunity in Every Obstacle," Tinsley shares his journey from poverty in the racially divided South to three-time (1966, '68 & '69) NCAA champion (Division II Kentucky Wesleyan Panthers), ABA player (Washington Caps, Kentucky Colonels & The Floridians), and successful business owner. After transitioning from basketball, Tinsley built a restaurant empire from humble corporate training beginnings at Kentucky Fried Chicken (including regular promotional work with founder Colonel Halrland Sanders himself), overcoming setbacks like a devastating fire. Beyond business, Tinsley reflects on family, faith, and personal loss, offering a powerful message of determination and the ability to turn obstacles into opportunities. + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

READ EARLY AND OFTEN: * Catch as Catch Can: Building a Legacy by Finding Opportunity in Every Obstacle (2024): https://amzn.to/3B64yQK

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Metroplex restauranteur and armchair football historian Mike Cobern (Wards of the League: The Untold Story of the First NFL Team in Dallas) joins for a deep dive into the mostly forgotten saga of the 1952 Dallas Texans, the one-year wonder that has nearly vanished from the annals of National Football League history. Before the Cowboys became "America's Team," the NFL's Dallas Texans were nobody's team! + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

READ EARLY AND OFTEN: * Wards of the League: The Untold Story of the First NFL Team in Dallas (2024): https://amzn.to/3XA3u03

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Syracuse University communications professor and former Emmy award-winning ESPN producer Dennis Deninger ("The Football Game That Changed America: How the NFL Created a National Holiday") joins the show to take us through the origin story and unlikely sociological trajectory of the Super Bowl - pro football's annual championship extravaganza that morphed from uncertain beginnings during the late 1960s AFL-NFL merger into one of America's dominant cultural touchstones. From the book's dust jacket: The Super Bowl has changed what was just another wintry Sunday into America’s unofficial holiday. It’s the biggest entertainment event of the year. It’s the most important advertising event of the year. It is the biggest gambling event of the year. More Americans watch this game than vote in presidential elections.

How did this all happen? In "The Football Game That Changed America," Dennis Deninger reveals how the Super Bowl went from almost being canceled after its first two years to becoming an ingrained part of American life. He tells the story of how this colossal event came to be—including the challenges, stumbles, and amusing surprises along the way—and details the game’s incredible impact well beyond the sports world, touching virtually every facet of life in the United States.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

READ EARLY AND OFTEN: * The Football Game That Changed America: How the NFL Created a National Holiday (2024): https://amzn.to/4cRKGhn

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

The date: June 14, 1974 The place: Cleveland's venerable Municipal Stadium The event: an evening regular-season game between MLB's Cleveland Indians & Texas Rangers The added attraction: "Ten Cent Beer Night" The result: one of baseball history's (and American sports') most notorious promotional fiascos Cleveland native Scott Jarrett ("Ten Cent Beer Night: The Complete Guide to the Riot That Helped Save Baseball in Cleveland") joins the show this week to go deep into the night that changed baseball in The Forest City forever - and is still vividly remembered 50 years afterward with equal parts revulsion and amusement by those who were there (and many more who were not!). + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

READ EARLY AND OFTEN: * Ten Cent Beer Night: The Complete Guide to the Riot That Helped Save Baseball in Cleveland (2024): https://amzn.to/3MntQw5

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We raise our sports history IQ a few points this week with an enlightening conversation around the broader cultural importance and underlying social significance of the very venues in which our favorite games are played - with Columbia University professor Frank Guridy ("The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play"). The book's promotional intro sets it up best: "What comes to mind when we think of stadiums in the United States? For most of us, it’s entertainment: football games, Taylor Swift concerts, monster truck rallies, and rodeos. But as historian Frank Guridy reveals in The Stadium, over the past 150 years, they have also been where people gather to wrestle over defining the soul of America. "From the wooden ballparks of the 19th century to today’s glass and steel mega-stadiums, these buildings have been the public squares where Americans push and pull over issues of race, class, gender, and sexual inequalities. In The Stadium, Guridy writes of its remarkable role as a space of protest and politics—not just play—and tells the dramatic people’s history of American life." This discussion will make you think differently about the places where big time sports are played - both in terms of what they have represented in the past, as well as what they may portend for the future. + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

READ EARLY AND OFTEN: * The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play (2024): https://amzn.to/3YTdBOH

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Buckle up for a wild ride through some of the most forgotten franchises in recent minor league hockey history - with a colorful lifer who literally fought his way to becoming the NHL's oldest (32) opening-day rookie (with the Boston Bruins), only to see it all fall apart to a concussion after just three games. This is the raw and savage story of Bobby Robins ("Sex, Drugs, Pucks, and Souls: A Savage Memoir"), whose decade-long odyssey across minor league outposts in places like Binghamton, NY (AHL Senators); Jesenice, Slovenia (HK Acroni); Bakersfield, CA (ECHL Condors); Hoffman Estates, IL (ECHL Chicago Express); and most notably, the Bruins' AHL affiliate in Providence - reveals a troubled, often tortured, personal journey that threatened to derail not only a promising career on the ice, but also his life off of it. + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

READ EARLY AND OFTEN: * Sex, Drugs, Pucks, and Souls: A Savage Memoir (2024): https://amzn.to/3WZ6lPP

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We head back to the diamond this week for a look into the "extraordinarily ordinary" baseball life of 1950s-era infielder Danny O'Connell with biographer Steve Wiegand ("The Uncommon Life of Danny O'Connell: A Tale of Baseball Cards, "Average Players," and the True Value of America's Game"). Wiegand's story is a rich exploration of a player often overlooked in history due to his status as a "common" card in the world of sports memorabilia. However, the book delves far deeper than his on-field statistics, offering a comprehensive look at his life and contributions.

O'Connell's story spans from his upbringing in Paterson, NJ, through his professional baseball career during the sport's "Golden Era" - including notable stops with forgotten franchises like the Milwaukee version of the Braves, the New York Giants (including the franchise's move to San Francisco in 1958), the first two seasons of the second version of the Washington Senators (now today's Texas Rangers), and even a 1963 managerial stint with the long-forgotten minor league York (PA) White Roses - to his varied endeavors beyond the field, including singing, shuffleboard, and public speaking. Wiegand paints a vivid picture of O'Connell's life, contextualizing it within the broader landscape of post-war America and the evolution of baseball card collecting.

The narrative challenges the notion of what it means to be "average" - highlighting O'Connell's "ordinary" baseball achievements and the human spirit embodied in his journey. It critiques the reduction of lives to mere statistics or collectible items and celebrates the overlooked heroes of baseball, urging readers to reevaluate what makes a life truly extraordinary​.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY
• Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

READ EARLY AND OFTEN: * The Uncommon Life of Danny O'Connell: A Tale of Baseball Cards, "Average Players," and the True Value of America's Game (2024): https://amzn.to/3WNrtIO

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

New York sports broadcast veterans Scott Orgera and Howie Karpin ("976-1313: How Sports Phone Launched Careers and Broke New Ground") join to help us wax nostalgic about the ground-breaking 1970s telephone service Sports Phone. From the dust jacket of "976-1313": "Sports Phone set out to change the way scores and breaking news were consumed, and in turn ended up setting the tone for the up-to-the-second updates we take for granted today. Found among those who called the service home are some of the most well-known broadcasters, reporters, public address announcers, and other prominent media figures — as well as several who’ve been successful in Hollywood and the music industry. A veritable breeding ground for these now-polished professionals, the dial-up platform that once handled 50 million calls in a year churned out talent at a level likely not seen before or since.

"Brought to you by media veterans Scott Orgera and Sports Phone alum Howie Karpin, "976-1313: How Sports Phone Launched Careers and Broke New Ground" features never-before-told tales of triumph and tragedy, a mix of hilarity, inspiration, and regret from the broadcasting hopefuls and sports junkies that comprised the brains and voices behind the pioneering operation. If you were assembling an All-Star team of media personnel, you’d only have to look as far as Sports Phone’s ranks.

"As colorful as that cast of characters was, those who dialed 976-1313 regularly had their own yarns to spin. They form a tapestry of hardcore fans, award-winning actors, well-known comedians, impulsive gamblers, Broadway singers, and infamous mobsters, each with captivating stories told within these pages."

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY
• Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

READ EARLY AND OFTEN: * 976-1313: How Sports Phone Launched Careers and Broke New Ground (2024): https://amzn.to/4dlrtp6

FIND AND FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[One last dip into the vault before a flood of new episodes beginning next week; from 2020, our revealing conversation with a pro hockey great - and Atlanta Flames original!}

For 1970s-era NHL hockey fans who remember the eight-year adventure known as the Atlanta Flames, few are likely to forget Dan Bouchard. A tenacious, slightly eccentric and occasionally fight-prone French-Canadian goalie, “Bouch” was an immediate standout between the pipes for the NHL’s first-ever Deep South franchise (platooning with fellow Quebecois & expansion draftee Phil Myre during the club’s first five seasons) – and a survivor in a league where hard-nosed hockey was the norm and where good goalies were at a premium.

Bouchard’s big-league call-up to the Flames in 1972 came amidst a frantic period of NHL franchise expansion and relocation driven in large part by the arrival of the challenger World Hockey Association – which debuted alongside Atlanta (and the NY Islanders) that season.

And while the collective memory of the original Flames remains muddied by a woeful post-season record (reliably exiting the playoffs in the first round, despite qualifying six out of their eight seasons), as well as a then (and still?) persistent narrative of Southerners’ native distaste for ice hockey – Bouchard and Atlanta were actually more competitive and popular than many of the NHL’s other 1970s forays in places like Kansas City, Oakland, Denver, and Cleveland.

When Nelson Skalbania bought the Flames and moved them to Calgary in 1980, most in Atlanta and around the league assumed that the well-publicized financial struggles of the team and owner Tom Cousins (who also controlled the Omni arena and the NBA Hawks) were to blame.

But as Bouchard outlines in this revealing conversation, an explosive league-wide issue was festering behind the scenes – of which he was uniquely aware and determined to address – regardless of the potential consequences to his playing career.

Bouch walks us through an eye-opening story that wends its way through the defunct Quebec Nordiques (including the infamous “Good Friday Massacre” vs. the Montreal Canadiens in 1984), the original Winnipeg Jets, the scandalous downfall of a pro hockey Hall of Famer, and fighting for legendary player/coach Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion both on – and off – the ice.

• • +

SUPPORT THE SHOW * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS

• Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2
• Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND & FOLLOW * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[By popular request, an archive re-release from August 2018, featuring our extraordinary conversation with one of the central figures of the original North American Soccer League - from its chaotic formation in 1968 to its untimely demise in 1985.]

+ + +

Soccer America columnist (and Episode #6 guest) Paul Gardner summed up this week's National Soccer Hall of Fame guest in his May 2015 commentary:

“The debt owed by American soccer to Clive Toye is a vast one. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say, flatly, that without Toye’s blind faith in the sport in the 1970s, pro soccer in the USA would have withered and died. Yes, Phil Woosnam and Lamar Hunt and Bob Hermann were there too. But in those unpromising years it was Toye’s voice -- it came in a steady flow of ridiculously optimistic press releases and grandiose plans for a future that few others even dared to ponder -- that called loudest.

“The New York Cosmos general manager credited with turning that league’s fortunes around when he signed Pele to a contract in 1975. Toye, who was born in England and came to the United States in 1967 at the age of 33, was president of three North American Soccer League teams – the Cosmos, Chicago Sting and Toronto Blizzard – and general manager of the [original National Professional Soccer League and subsequent NASL] Baltimore Bays. [He] was an official of the NASL in helping it through its crisis year of 1969 and in its final months in 1985 – and helped to found the third American Soccer League in 1988.

“There has always been the spirit of a showman in Toye, and surely it was that spirit that enabled Toye to overlook the virtual collapse of the old North American Soccer League and to see instead a glittering future for the sport in the USA, even to declare to anyone who was listening -- and not many were in those days -- the preposterous notion that the USA should begin preparing to stage the World Cup.

“And when the NASL, by the skin of its teeth and by the mad devotion of Toye et al., did survive, it was Toye who gave the reborn league its glittering image with his invention of the Cosmos, with his canny maneuvering and dealing, who brought Pele and Beckenbauer to New York. Showmanship indeed.”

Toye (A Kick in the Grass: The Slow Rise and Quick Demise of the NASL; Anywhere in the World) joins host Tim Hanlon for a lyrical and anecdote-filled journey through the pro league that he helped create, later put to rest, and which ultimately shored up the long-term foundation of the “beautiful game” in America.

• • +

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN:

• A Kick in the Grass: The Slow Rise and Quick Demise of the NASL (2006): https://amzn.to/3Ln1KAt
• Anywhere in the World (2015): https://amzn.to/3Y3TD3A

SPONSOR THANKS:

• Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2
• Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[An archive re-release favorite from September 2017, featuring one of professional baseball's most enigmatic leagues!]

Inc. Editor-at-Large David Whitford (Extra Innings: A Season in the Senior League) joins host Tim Hanlon to retrace his journalistic odyssey covering the inaugural season of the short-lived, Florida-based Senior Professional Baseball Association (SPBA) in the winter of 1989-90.

Whitford recalls the early-career events leading up to his plum writing assignment, and the process by which he went about chronicling this unique, but ultimately ill-fated eight-team circuit for former pro players over the age of 35 (32 for catchers).

Despite half the franchises folding after the first 72-game season (and the rest of the league mid-way through the second), the Senior League afforded dozens of former big-league players and managers what Whitford dubbed a "life-after-death fantasy" – one that attracted both stars and journeymen alike for a chance to either stay fresh for one last shot in the Show, recapture past on-field glories, or simply earn some needed money. Whitford highlights a wide array of characters he met while covering the SBPA, including:

• Founder Jim Morley, the thirty-something hustler who erroneously believed a senior league could generate cash flow sufficient to sustain his debt-ridden real-estate empire;
• Commissioner Curt Flood, the indefatigable player’s union representative who broke Major League Baseball’s reserve clause, but sacrificed his career in the process;
• Pitcher Wayne Garland, the former Cleveland ace and early free-agent beneficiary who risked permanent shoulder damage by coming back to play pro ball after a five-year layoff;
• Ex-Padres/Astros fastballer (and pioneer descendant) Danny Boone, who reinvented himself into a knuckleball specialist, and improbably made it back to the bigs with Baltimore in 1990 following the SPBA season; AND
• A veritable who’s who of former big-name major league stars – each with their own personal reasons for returning to the diamonds: Bobby Bonds, Joaquin Andujar, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, Ferguson Jenkins, Dave Kingman, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, Graig Nettles, Mickey Rivers, and even manager Earl Weaver – just to name a few.

View Details

Most US and Canadian domestic soccer fans are certain that the second incarnation of the North American Soccer League (2011-17) officially met its untimely demise in early 2018, just a few months after the first-year San Francisco Deltas beat the New York Cosmos in the 2017 Soccer Bowl - and amidst a seemingly desperate/last-minute antitrust lawsuit alleging collusion between US Soccer and Major League Soccer to keep the league down. While the NASL hasn't played another game since, the lawsuit - largely ideated and funded by spurned billionaire/Cosmos owner Rocco Commisso - is still very much alive, and now officially headed to trial beginning January 6th of next year. At issue: whether the governing body of soccer in the US and/or its officially designated top-tier professional league conspired to exclude the NASL from Division I-sanctioned play, and schemed to monopolize the market for men’s pro soccer. At stake: the future direction, competitive landscape and legal structure of American professional soccer. We get a full primer on the history, rationale and likely outcomes of this stealthily persistent case, with UCLA law school professor, sports/soccer legal expert (and 1970s-era ASL Cleveland Cobras fan) Steven Bank - whose influential Twitter/X feed is an essential follow on all things law + soccer. + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We celebrate the legendary career and outsized influence of one of baseball's most recognized voices, with veteran LA sportswriter Tom Hoffarth (Perfect Eloquence: An Appreciation of Vin Scully). From the "Early Days" dustjacket: "When Vin Scully passed away in 2022, the city of Los Angeles lost its soundtrack. If you were able to deliver a eulogy for him, what might it include? What impact did he have on you? What do you carry forward from his legacy? "Sixty-seven essayists—one representing each season of his career calling games for the Los Angeles Dodgers, from 1950 through 2016—reflect on the ways his professional and private life influenced them. The contributions include a range of stories and remembrances from those who knew and followed him. The consensus of the contributions is that Scully’s actions spoke louder than his well-recognized words. "This collection includes fellow broadcasters as well as historians, players, journalists, celebrities, and others connected to the game of baseball, with each piece introduced by sports journalist Tom Hoffarth. Readers can consider Scully’s life through common themes: his sincerity, his humility, his professionalism, his passion for his faith, his devotion to his family, his insistence on remembering and giving context to important moments in the history of not just the game but the world in general, all wrapped up in a gift for weaving storytelling with accurate reporting, fellowship with performance art, humor, and connection." [P.S. - As mentioned in this week's episode, check out this amazing 2016 conversation between Scully and the late Willie Mays, who passed away last week at the age of 93.] + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Perfect Eloquence: An Appreciation of Vin Scully (2024): https://amzn.to/4cfkRbs

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

It's time to fire up the old Jerrold cable box for a trip back to the pre-launch and early first on-air days of cable TV's pioneering Entertainment and Sports Programming Network - better known as ESPN - with founding producer and channel memoirist Peter Fox ("The Early Days of ESPN: 300 Daydreams and Nightmares"). From the "Early Days" dustjacket:

"The tales of early ESPN people who gambled their careers while critics carped that “all-sports television will never work” are full of guile, luck, fear, fun, and unbridled optimism. As ESPN’s founding executive producer, Peter Fox was privy to some spectacular professional efforts by a cadre of Connecticut locals who made the dream real.

"The first 300 days of the fledgling network were filled with mayhem, on-air gaffes, and the slowest instant replay in television. What started as a humble idea in the late spring of 1978 to capitalize on the brand-new mania for UConn men’s basketball soon morphed into ESPN and a plan to begin airing a series of “test broadcasts” in the fall.

"This is the story of the early days at ESPN, told by one on the network's launching pad, and how a conversation over a couple of martinis in 1978 led to the creation of a broadcast juggernaut.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY
• Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The Early Days of ESPN: 300 Daydreams and Nightmares (2024): https://amzn.to/3xalQdX

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

First-time sports historians Tom Delise and Jay Seaborg ("Foxy Ned Hanlon: The Baseball Life of a Hall of Fame Manager") join the podcast for a biographical look at one of baseball's most innovative managerial minds - and who just may be related to your humble host!

"Foxy" Ned Hanlon was one of the major leagues' earliest tactical visionaries, who recognized the value of speed and strategy in generating runs long before the term “small ball” became popular. Starting as a fine outfielder, Hanlon played 13 professional seasons with the Cleveland Blues, Detroit Wolverines, the Federal League's one-year Pittsburgh Burghers, Pittsburgh Pirates (neé Alleghenys), and (original American Association-then-National League) Baltimore Orioles - stealing 329 bases after stolen bases were first recorded in 1886. Despite a modest .260 batting average, Hanlon was renowned for his speed and daring on the bases, as well as his defensive prowess, leading the National League in putouts in 1882 and 1884.

Hanlon’s managerial career began after participating in A.G. Spalding’s “Around The World Baseball Tour” in the winter of 1888. He became the player-manager of the Pittsburgh Alleghenys in 1889 and supported the short-lived Players’ League in 1890, where he posted a .383 on-base percentage. Returning to the Alleghenys, Hanlon inadvertently contributed to the team’s name change to Pirates due to his aggressive player acquisition tactics.

In 1892, Hanlon took over the Baltimore Orioles and revolutionized the game with his “Inside Baseball” philosophy. He emphasized teamwork, speed, and innovative plays like the hit-and-run, sacrifice bunt, and double steal. Hanlon also introduced the "Baltimore Chop" and was among the first to use a platoon system based on pitcher handedness. Under his leadership, the Orioles transformed from cellar dwellers to dominant forces, capturing five NL pennants from 1894 to 1900.

Hanlon’s strategic genius earned him accolades from peers and successors. Hall of Fame manager Connie Mack regarded Hanlon as the greatest leader in baseball history, and in 1937, The Sporting News dubbed him “The Father of Modern Baseball.” Ned Hanlon passed away on April 14, 1937, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1996, cementing his legacy as a pioneer of the sport.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * "Good Seats" Show & Defunct Team Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY
• Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Foxy Ned Hanlon: The Baseball Life of a Hall of Fame Manager (2024): https://amzn.to/3Vyge6v

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Cultural historian and best-selling British author Kassia St. Clair ("The Secret Lives of Color"; "The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History") joins the podcast for a look back at the fascinating, improbable and culturally paradigm-shifting 1907 Peking-to-Paris Motor Challenge - as featured in her new book "The Race to the Future: 8,000 Miles to Paris - The Adventure That Accelerated the Twentieth Century": From the "Race to the Future" dust jacket: "The rise of the automobile as told through its Rubicon moment―a sensational, high-risk race across two continents on the verge of revolution. "The racers―an Italian prince and his chauffeur, a French racing driver, a con man, and several rival journalists―battle over steep inclines, through narrow mountain passages, and across the arid Gobi Desert. Competitors endure torrential rain and choking dust. There are barely any roads, and petrol is almost impossible to find. A global audience of millions follows each twist and turn, devouring reports telegraphed from the course.

"More than its many adventures, the Peking-to-Paris Motor Challenge took place on the precipice of a new world. As the twentieth century dawned, imperial regimes in China and Russia were crumbling, paving the way for the rise of communist ones. The electric telegraph was rapidly transforming modern communication, and with it, the news media, commerce, and politics. Suspended between the old and the new, the Peking-to-Paris, as best-selling historian Kassia St. Clair writes, became a critical tipping point.

"A gripping, immersive narrative of the race, The Race to the Future sets the drivers’ derring-do (and occasional cheating) against the backdrop of a larger geopolitical and technological race to the future. Interweaving events from the fall of the Qing dynasty to the departure of the horse economy and the rise of gendered marketing, St. Clair shows how the Peking-to-Paris provided an impetus for profound social, cultural, and industrial change, while masterfully capturing the mounting tensions between nations and empires―all building up to the cataclysmic event that changed everything: the First World War."

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Show Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY
• Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The Race to the Future: 8,000 Miles to Paris - The Adventure That Accelerated the Twentieth Century (2024): https://amzn.to/3VoxYB7

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[An essential fan favorite from 2018 - with the dean of "forgotten sports" promotion!]

If someone ever decides to build an American sports promotion Hall of Fame, the inaugural class will undoubtedly be led by this week’s special guest, Doug Verb. In a career spanning more than 40 years in professional sports management, Verb’s remarkable career has included spearheading marketing, promotion, publicity, and television for some of the most innovative and memorable leagues and franchises of the modern era.

One of the founding executives of both the pioneering Major Indoor Soccer League (along with sports entrepreneurs Earl Foreman, Ed Tepper, and previous podcast guest Dr. Joe Machnik), and the frenetic Arena Football League (with the sport’s inventor [and past two-part guest] Jim Foster), Verb additionally served as president of pro soccer’s legendary Chicago Sting from 1982-86 – which, incredibly, drifted between playing in two separate leagues during his tenure (for one year, simultaneously) – the outdoor North American Soccer League and the indoor MISL.

In our longest and more anecdote-filled episode to date, Verb vividly recounts the highs and lows of launching new teams, leagues and even sports themselves from whole cloth – with nary an operational blueprint or career roadmap to be found. Buckle up for a wild ride through the woeful 1976 NASL Philadelphia Atoms, the “Rocket Red” pinball-like MISL, soccer for all seasons in the Windy City, and birthing indoor football.

PLUS: Kiddie City to the rescue; Earl Foreman’s “Brother-in-Law Effect;” getting paid in soybeans; and the curious one-game history of the Liberty Basketball Association!

View Details

Baseball historian and Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) contributor Eric Vickrey ("Season of Shattered Dreams: Postwar Baseball, the Spokane Indians, and a Tragic Bus Crash That Changed Everything") joins the podcast for a look back at one of the worst tragedies in the history of US pro sports. From the dust jacket of Vickrey's new book: "On June 24, 1946, a bus carrying the Spokane Indians baseball team crashed to the bottom of a deep ravine in Washington state’s Cascade mountains, killing nine players. To this day, it remains the deadliest accident in the history of American professional sports.

"In Season of Shattered Dreams: Postwar Baseball, the Spokane Indians, and a Tragic Bus Crash That Changed Everything, Eric Vickrey details the series of events that occurred before, during, and after the heartbreaking accident. Vickrey chronicles the often-overlooked impact that the end of World War II had on the major and minor leagues, now crowded with players returning from military service. The Spokane Indians were no exception, with several top prospects and former big leaguers arriving that season. The journeys of three Spokane players in particular - Vic Picetti, Ben Geraghty, and Jack Lohrke - reveal the impact of the war on players’ lives, the struggles of a minor-league career, and the devastating impact of that catastrophic crash.

"The Spokane Indians were not your average minor-league team, and though their story has been largely forgotten with time, it is one that deserves to be told. Featuring original interviews, as well as letters and photos from the personal collections of players and their families, Season of Shattered Dreams offers incredible insight into one of the most singular seasons in professional baseball."

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Season of Shattered Dreams: Postwar Baseball, the Spokane Indians, and a Tragic Bus Crash That Changed Everything (2024): https://amzn.to/4bMLDar

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We celebrate the 94th birthday of legendary Soccer America columnist Paul Gardner (The Simplest Game: The Intelligent Fan's Guide to the World of Soccer; Soccer Talk: Paul Gardner on Soccer) with this special archive re-release (and our 6th-ever episode!) from 2017.

The universally acknowledged "dean" of American soccer writers waxes nostalgic on his unlikely journey from fledgling British pharmacist to the States' most persistently influential commentator on the "beautiful game."

Gardner:

• Recounts the chaotic formation of the modern professional game in the U.S. during the 1960s;
• Recalls how ambitious sports entrepreneurs like the International Soccer League’s Bill Cox, and greedy corporate owners like the United Soccer Association’s Madison Square Garden were quickly chagrined by the machinations of soccer’s international governing body;
• Describes how a complex Welsh-born, player-turned-NASL-commissioner curiously nudged him into national TV game commentating;
• Remembers when he first recognized pro soccer had finally “arrived” in America (ironically, while out of the country); and

• Suggests that a revised U.S. corporate tax code may have helped hasten the demise of an already-wobbly NASL as the 1980s beckoned.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The Simplest Game: The Intelligent Fan's Guide to the World of Soccer (1996): https://amzn.to/3yhjJFc * Soccer Talk: Paul Gardner on Soccer (1999): https://amzn.to/44AoHsV

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

During the late 1960s, Dean Tolson ("Power Forward: My Journey from Illiterate NBA Player to a Magna Cum Laude Master's Degree") emerged as a standout prep basketball talent during his junior and senior years at Central High School in Kansas City, Missouri. His prowess on the court attracted the attention of a bevy of college recruiters, leading him to accept a full scholarship offer from the nearby University of Arkansas. Despite literally not knowing how to read or write, Tolson defied significant odds, and became one of the most renowned players in Razorbacks history. In 1974, Tolson was drafted by both the NBA's Seattle Supersonics and the ABA's New York Nets - eventually joining the Sonics to play under the tutelage of the legendary Bill Russell in Seattle, and showcasing his talent on a national stage. An 11-year journeyman career followed, with stops in the Eastern Basketball Association (Hazleton Bullets), the CBA (including a 1980 league championship with the Anchorage Northern Knights), and pro leagues in both Greece and the Philippines.

After retiring from basketball, Tolson made the courageous decision to re-enroll at the University of Arkansas, determined to pursue his education authentically - repeating all four years of college and finally obtaining his degree through legitimate means. Remarkably, he returned to the university once again at age 52, earning a master's degree with magna cum laude honors.

Tolson's journey, from his challenging upbringing in an orphanage to his remarkable academic achievements, serves as a powerful indictment of a system that often prioritizes athletic talent over educational accountability. His story sheds light on the pervasive issue of athletes being "passed along" without facing the academic rigor expected of their peers. Yet, amidst these challenges, Tolson's story is a beacon of inspiration - showcasing resilience and determination to overcome formidable odds to (eventually) achieve success.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Power Forward: My Journey from Illiterate NBA Player to a Magna Cum Laude Master's Degree (2023): https://amzn.to/4btrTJ7

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

It's our first journey into the chaotically exciting history of "professional" roller derby with former skater and long-time keeper-of-the-flame Scott Stephens ("Rolling Thunder: The Golden Age of Roller Derby & the Rise and Fall of the L.A. T-Birds"). From the moment he laced up his first pair of roller skates at age six in mid-1960s Los Angeles, roller derby became more than just a sport to Stephens – it became his passion. In the midst of the craze sweeping through the city, Stephens found himself captivated by the electrifying energy of the Los Angeles Thunderbirds, whose thrilling matches were locally (and nationally) televised, and whose star performers rivaled the fame of players on established sports teams like the Dodgers, Rams and Lakers.

As he honed his skills at the T-Bird Rollerdrome in Pico Rivera, Stephens' love for skating soon transformed into an unexpected opportunity as he discovered the team's urgent need for new talent. From 1978-81, Stephens dove headfirst into the exhilarating world of Roller Games, immersing himself in every aspect of the sport – from the adrenaline-fueled races around the track to the underground culture teeming with colorful characters and unconventional lifestyles.

Stephens takes us on a nostalgic exploration of some of roller derby's storied past, as well as the outsized role of its most iconic team.

• • • SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable
• "Good Seats" Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2 * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Rolling Thunder: The Golden Age of Roller Derby & the Rise and Fall of the L.A. T-Birds (2019): https://amzn.to/3y0y0Go

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

It's a special mea culpa episode this week, as we welcome back Szczecin University (Poland) history professor and Episode 289 guest Łukasz Muniowski (Turnpike Team: A History of the New Jersey Nets 1977-2012) for a deep dive into the drama of the NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies move to Memphis in 2001 - and an assessment of the winners and losers some 23+ years since. While Muniowski's current title on the topic (The Grizzlies Migrate to Memphis: From Vancouver Failure to Southern Success) has been out since October, your humble host not only lost track of the book's publishing date, but also the entire audio file of our conversation (originally recorded back in August 2023) - until a recent cloud backup surfaced a redundant version. It's worth the wait, as we tackle the origin story of the Grizzlies' move from Vancouver's GM Place (now Rogers Arena) to Memphis' Pyramid (and eventually FedEx Forum), the numerous other destination cities rumored in the process, the outsized personalities involved, the motivations behind such a hasty move only six seasons after becoming an expansion franchise, and the aftermath - including whether the Memphis version of the club can be labeled a "success," despite winning only two division titles since bringing pro hoops to Beale Street. + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Newspapers.com (promo code: GSA20): https://newspapers.com * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The Grizzlies Migrate to Memphis: From Vancouver Failure to Southern Success (2023): https://amzn.to/3xNvWBr

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[A dip into the archives for a one of our first-ever episodes from 2017 - by request!]

Author Matt Algeo (Last Team Standing: How the Steelers and the Eagles – "The Steagles" – Saved Pro Football During World War II) joins Tim Hanlon all the way from Maputo, Mozambique to discuss the marriage of convenience that literally saved the National Football League from collapse in 1943.

Algeo describes how a desperate Art Rooney scrambled to save his Pittsburgh Steelers franchise, depleted by wartime military call-ups; how a hastily assembled squad of ragtag draft rejects practiced football at night while maintaining defense jobs by day (including one player who worked on the eventual war-ending Manhattan Project); why the "Phil-Pitt Combine" wore Eagles colors and played more home games in Philadelphia than in Pittsburgh; and, in a PODCAST EXCLUSIVE, why the story of the Steagles just might soon be coming to a theater near you.

View Details

Former ESPN ad researcher, and current Elon University professor of communications and sport management David Bockino (Game On: How Sports Media Grew Up, Sold Out, and Got Personal with Billions of Fans) helps us trace the evolution of the sports media industry - with historical points of interest both obvious (e.g., the 1958 NFL Championship Game; "Sports Illustrated" magazine; ABC's "Monday Night Football;" the 1979 launch of cable's ESPN); and subtle (1967's live multinational "Our World" TV broadcast; World Series Cricket; 1981's short-lived Enterprise Radio Network; AudioNet/Broadcast.com; and virtual graphics pioneer SportVision). + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Newspapers.com (promo code: GSA20): https://newspapers.com * Old School Shirts.com (promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Game On: How Sports Media Grew Up, Sold Out, and Got Personal with Billions of Fans (2024): https://amzn.to/49AopDi

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We reach back into the vaunted Good Seats library stacks this week for a deep dive into one of Tim's favorite sports reference books - Roadside Baseball: The Locations of America's Baseball Landmarks - with its (prodigious non-fiction) author Chris Epting. Now in its third edition, Roadside is everything you'd imagine from the title: a detailed, geographic cataloging of over 500 important events in North American baseball history, including historical data, trivia, photographs, and lore - highlighting birthplaces of baseball legends, ballparks, museums and halls of fame, final resting places, and dozens of former locations no longer standing. Join us for an aural road trip across some of baseball's most recognizable landmarks and forgotten out-of-the-way points of interest! + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY

SPONSOR THANKS: * Newspapers.com (promo code: GSA20): https://newspapers.com

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Roadside Baseball: The Locations of America's Baseball Landmarks - Third Edition (2010): https://amzn.to/3PItVwv

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Sharing something special, an episode of the new podcast "Ways to Win" - where coaches Craig Robinson and John Calipari use their on-court wisdom to solve off-court problems.

In this first episode (recorded before the start of the NCAA basketball tournament!), there's no better way to kick off March Madness than with President Barack Obama (and Craig’s favorite brother-in-law), who drops by to break down his bracket. Find out who’s in his Final Four and how far he thinks Coach Cal’s Wildcats will go (even if Cal doesn't want to know).

Plus, the guys chat about how Cal's preparing his players for the first round of the tournament and what it takes to lead teams under pressure.

You can listen to more episodes of Ways to Win here!

View Details

We bust some brackets this week in honor of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, with a look back at the old East Coast Athletic Conference and the coaching cradle of city of Boston - with return (Episode 237) guest Clayton Trutor ("Boston Ball: Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams, and the Forgotten Cradle of Basketball Coaches"). Before the formation of the original Big East Conference in 1979, much of DI college basketball in the US Northeast and Mid-Atlantic was part of a loose patchwork of small conferences and independents that collectively fed into the not-really-a-conference ECAC umbrella for post-season playoffs, helping winnow at-large bids for a still-small NCAA tournament. Trutor helps set the stage through the early-career Boston exploits of three eventual Hall of Fame coaches: "Before Pitino became the face of the Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville programs, before Calhoun turned UConn into a national power, and before Williams brought Maryland to its first national championship, all three of these coaches cut their teeth in front of modest-sized crowds in the crumbling college gymnasiums of Boston during the 1970s and early 1980s. "'Boston Ball' charts how this trio of coaches, seemingly out of nowhere, started a basketball revolution: Pitino at Boston University, Calhoun at Northeastern University, and Williams at Boston College. Toiling in relative obscurity, they ignited a renaissance of the “city game,” a style of play built on fast-breaking up-tempo offense, pressure defense, and board crashing. Pitino, Calhoun, and Williams took advantage of the ample coaching opportunities in 'America’s College Town' to craft their respective blueprints for building a winning program and turn their schools into regional powers, and these early coaching years served as their respective springboards to big-time college basketball." + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable * "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/good-seats-still-avalable?ref_id=35106

SPONSOR THANKS: * Newspapers.com (promo code: GSA20): https://newspapers.com

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Boston Ball: Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams, and the Forgotten Cradle of Basketball Coaches (2023): https://amzn.to/3vtBrUX

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We squint hard this week for a look into the story of American "professional" wrestling's formative years - with pop culture writer Jon Langmead (Ballyhoo! The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling). Langmead takes us inside the raucous period roughly between the mid-1870s to the early-1940s - where genuine competitive wrestlers and opportunistic amusement-minded promoters (both heavily influenced by the country's booming carnival circuit) together codified the now modern-day conventions that transformed a legitimate, physically demanding sport into melodramatic mass entertainment. Central to Langmead's narrative is the life and career of Jack Curley - a fledgling turn-of-the-century boxing promoter whose fortunes turned when he began touting wrestling matches in big US cities like Chicago and New York - where by the late-1910s, his monthly shows regularly sold out Madison Square Garden. Join us for a look back at the foundational years of "professional" wrestling, - before Vince McMahon and the WWE, and even prior to the "golden era" of the National Wrestling Alliance on early television - where colorful athletes like “Strangler” Ed Lewis, Frank Gotch, the “Masked Marvel,” Jim Londos, “Gorgeous George” Wagner, “Farmer” Martin Burns, and “Dynamite” Gus Sonnenberg ruled the day - and defined the "sport." + + + SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS: * Newspapers.com (promo code: GSA20): https://newspapers.com

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Ballyhoo! The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling(2024): https://amzn.to/49ZofGy

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Harper's Contributing Editor and novelist/historian extraordinaire Kevin Baker ("The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City") brings his blended affection for (and evocative portrayals of) both "The Big Apple" and the "National Pastime" - to make a compelling case for New York City as the rightful center of the baseball universe. From Alan Moores' review in Booklist: "Baseball fans beyond Gotham’s gravitational pull might bristle at the notion that New York was the epicenter of the creation and growth of the game. But Baker’s raucous, revelatory, lovingly detailed account will win them over from the first pitch. Baker lays out the early history of the game in the city, then seamlessly weaves together the vibrant origin stories of the New York Yankees, New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers, and the city’s Cuban and African American teams, right up to the eve of Jackie Robinson’s 1945 signing with the Dodgers. "He vividly recreates the recklessly ambitious, breathtakingly corrupt, alcohol-fueled world of Tammany Hall politics—which were followed by the reforms of Fiorello La Guardia—that steered, and were sometimes even steered by, the game. Dozens of near-mythic and also too-human figures parade through the pages, from John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Fred Merkle, Carl Hubbell, Mel Ott, Leo Durocher, Casey Stengel, Red Barber, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Branch Rickey, to an array of crime bosses, team owners, and mayors. "Then there was Babe Ruth, whose gaudy statistics, irrepressible personality, and seismic impact on the game, the city, and the entire nation outshone even his legend, as Baker convincingly argues here. A spellbinding history of a game and the city where it found itself." SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS: * Newspapers.com (promo code: GSA20): https://newspapers.com

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City (2024): https://amzn.to/3TvWgsf

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

It's a celebration of women's hoops this week, as we look back at the "early days" of the Women's National Basketball Association - including stops with the oft-forgotten Utah Starzz and San Antonio Silver Stars - with three-time league all-star Marie Ferdinand-Harris (Transformed: The Winning Side of Losing). A first-round pick in the WNBA's fifth-ever draft in 2001, Ferdinand was a dominant shooting guard at LSU prior to her 8th-overall selection by Utah - a formidable presence inside the paint and outside the arc, skills honed from leading title-winning teams at Edison High School, in the heart of Miami's historically poor "Little Haiti" neighborhood. After a stellar 11-year pro career (including turns with the league-original LA Sparks and Phoenix Mercury), Ferdinand-Harris is one of the unsung pioneers of the WNBA, part of a first generation of players that helped solidify the foundation for an organization whose success was not guaranteed at the time - but now is firmly rooted in the American pro sports infrastructure. + + +

SUPPORT THE SHOW: * Buy Us a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/goodseatsstillavailable * Donate via Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Transformed: The Winning Side of Losing (2024): https://amzn.to/4bWEQvZ

GIVE UNTIL IT HURTS: * Be Like CJ Foundation: https://www.belikecj.org/

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

It's a "retcon" special this week, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the most colorful and persistent franchises in American pro soccer history - with a return visit from Episode 40 guest Gary Singh (The Unforgettable San Jose Earthquakes: Momentous Stories On & Off the Field).

As one of four West Coast expansion teams (along with the Los Angeles Aztecs, Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps) added for the North American Soccer League’s breakthrough 1974 season, the original San Jose Earthquakes were an immediate hit both on the field (finishing second in an all-new Western Division, led by league-leading scorer [and Episode 35 guest] Paul Child) - and in the stands, where they averaged 15,000+ fans a game to a less-than-modern Spartan Stadium, more than double the league average at the time.

Though never regular championship contenders, the ‘Quakes cultivated a rabidly loyal fan base that became the envy of clubs across the league – until the NASL’s ultimate demise ten years later.

Fragments of the club soldiered on semi-professionally in the following years, but the appellation (along with some of the previous cast) returned in earnest in 1999, when the management of San Jose’s struggling (and unpopularly named) Major League Soccer “Clash” sought to rekindle some of the original NASL team's magic; by 2001, the second iteration of the Earthquakes were contending for and winning MLS Cup and Supporters’ Shield titles.

However, stymied by an inability to construct a soccer-specific stadium in the area, owner-operator Anschutz Entertainment Group pulled up stakes and relocated the club to Houston (Dynamo) for 2006 – taking further championships with them.

Nonplussed San Jose fans revolted – and a new “expansion” franchise was quickly announced by MLS officials, with plenty of structural caveats that ensure today’s now-third incarnation of the ‘Quakes rightfully retains all of its accumulated heritage and rich legacy.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The Unforgettable San Jose Earthquakes: Momentous Stories On & Off the Field (2024): https://amzn.to/48oMwEc * The San Jose Earthquakes: A Seismic Soccer Legacy (2015): https://amzn.to/42ZNkOL

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Veteran Minnesota sportswriter Kevin Allenspach (Mirage of Destiny: The Story of the 1990-91 Minnesota North Stars) takes to the ice with us this week, as we look back at one of the most improbable playoff runs in NHL history - one that came the closest to giving the self-professed "State of Hockey" its first Stanley Cup championship - a title that still eludes the region to this day.

Throughout much of the 1990-91 season, the Minnesota North Stars were among the worst-performing clubs in the National Hockey League - and dead last at the box office. Rumors of the team's possible sale to new owners of the team were swirling, and the threat of relocation was real.

Distractions notwithstanding, the North Stars gritted their way into the playoffs, winning only 27 of 80 regular-season games. And against all odds, they upset both the Presidents' Trophy-winning Chicago Blackhawks and the regular season's second-best St. Louis Blues in the first two rounds - followed by a dispatching of the defending Stanley Cup Champion Edmonton Oilers in the Campbell Conference Finals.

Despite ultimately losing the Stanley Cup Finals to the Pittsburgh Penguins, the underdog North Stars managed to capture the imagination of Twin Cities hockey fans (not to mention a certain club public relations intern) during their unexpected postseason run - enough to spark renewed hope for the franchise's future.

Allenspach, of course, tells us otherwise - culminating in the team's relocation to Dallas in 1993.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Mirage of Destiny: The Story of the 1990-91 Minnesota North Stars (2024): https://amzn.to/48pbyTw

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We celebrate the launch of the new "MISL 1980s: The Story of Indoor Soccer" Substack series with its author and return (Episode 31) guest Tim O'Bryhim ("Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings" & "God Save the Wings").

O'Bryhim's long-form pieces promise to bring to light myriad stories from the legendary original Major Indoor Soccer League - a pioneering pro soccer circuit that remains surprisingly under-chronicled, despite its outsized influence on the game's history in the US, including its role in helping mainstream the art of entertainment-flavored presentation now commonplace in big-time sports.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

SUBSCRIBE/BUY/READ/WATCH EARLY & OFTEN: * MISL 1980s: The Story of Indoor Soccer (Substack; free subscription: https://misl1980s.substack.com/ * Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings (2014): https://amzn.to/4bKaUDg * God Save the Wings (2020): https://amzn.to/48bNTGb

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Iowa baseball chronologist Steve Dunn ("'Pug,' 'Fireball,' and Company: 116 Years of Professional Baseball in Des Moines, Iowa") joins for a surprisingly rich journey into the history of professional baseball in the Hawkeye State's largest city - currently home to the Diamond Baseball Holdings-owned Triple-A affiliate of the National League's Chicago Cubs.

Besides today's Iowa Cubs, the city of Des Moines has been home to minor league baseball in various forms since 1887 - featuring a long list of stars that have played or managed clubs there, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Feller, Satchel Paige, Red Faber, Buck O'Neil, Ryne Sandberg, Tony LaRussa, Charlie Grimm, and Stan Hack.

Dunn walks us through some of Des Moines baseball's most noteworthy ballparks (such as Western League Park, home of the first night game featuring a permanent lighting system on 5/2/1930); circuits (like the long-forgotten Three–I [Class B] League featuring the reborn 1959-61 Des Moines Demons); barnstormers (the Negro League "All Nations" club); and eyebrow-raising team names - from Midgets to Prohibitionists to Undertakers.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * 'Pug,' 'Fireball,' and Company: 116 Years of Professional Baseball in Des Moines, Iowa (2023): https://amzn.to/4bqMApS

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[A dip into the archives for a fan favorite from 2019 - featuring a show-closing ode to the late, great 70s' TV game show "Celebrity Bowling"!]

• • +

We hit the lanes this week to delve into the fascinating story of the nation’s first and only attempt at a professional team bowling league – a seemingly anachronistic idea by today’s standards, but a concept that made total sense in the early 1960s when pro bowling was in ascendance and the sport was seemingly everywhere on television.

Bowlers Journal columnist and historian J.R. “Dr. Jake” Schmidt (The Bowling Chronicles: Collected Writings of Dr. Jake) joins the podcast to lay out the curious backstory, short-lived season(s) and unwitting legacy of the National Bowling League (1960-62) – an ambitious, but altogether logical attempt to professionalize bowling in the style of America’s other major team sports, and capitalize on the big money purses beginning to fuel national TV competitions during the late 1950s.

Amidst a bevy of popular made-for-TV competitions that featured various takes on head-to-head play – like NBC’s weekly Championship Bowling, and primetime’s Make That Spare (ABC) and Jackpot Bowling (NBC) – the coast-to-coast NBL hoped to offer bowling professionals a city-based team format, replete with purposely-designed television-friendly arenas and boisterous fans.

Despite investment from deep-pocketed funders like AFL founder Lamar Hunt and oilman/Cotton Bowl creator J. Curtis Sanford (whose Dallas-based 72-lane Bronco Bowl set the standard for NBL facilities); a well-publicized draft (with then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson in attendance); and a novel scoring system that featured situational bonus points and wild-card substitutions, the NBL stumbled out of the gate devoid of the very thing it needed most to succeed – a national television contract.

Outfoxed by the nascent Pro Bowlers Association – which was simultaneously pioneering a laddered individual vs. individual national tour format with a similarly fledgling ABC-TV – the NBL had to rely solely on individual gates while trying to convince other networks to take notice. Early crowds were sparse to virtually non-existent, and most pros found the money, light workload and broad television exposure of the PBA’s “Pro Bowlers’ Tour” to be the better path to ply their wares.

It’s a tale of what might have been – and we “spare” no question in our pursuit of the story of this most intriguing of forgotten pro leagues!

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The Bowling Chronicles: Collected Writings of Dr. Jake (2017): https://amzn.to/3Ogt6Kj

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Valdosta State University history professor (and Episode 244 guest) Tom Aiello ("Dixieball: Race and Professional Basketball in the Deep South") returns after a two-year absence - for an enlightening look at the curious cultural history of the city of Atlanta's awkward relationship with professional hockey.

In his new book "White Ice: Race and the Making of Atlanta Hockey," Aiello interestingly juxtaposes the National Hockey League's aggressive expansion in the late 1960s/early 1970s (including a new WHA-hastened Flames franchise in 1972), against the city's de facto status as the "capital of the Deep South" - and its population's rapidly changing racial and socio-economic contours.

To wit:

For its own part, Atlanta had been watching as White residents left the city for the suburbs over the course of the 1960s. As the turn of the decade approached, city leadership was searching for ways to mitigate white flight and bring residents of the surrounding suburbs back to the city center. So when a stereotypically White sport came to the Deep South in 1971 in the form of the Flames, ownership saw a new opportunity to appeal to White audiences. But the challenge would be selling a game that was foreign to most of Atlanta’s longtime sports fans. Against that backdrop, of course, the Flames (1972-80) lasted but only eight seasons - and its NHL successor Atlanta Thrashers (1999-2011) did not fare much better in the face of similar and arguably even more pronounced circumstances. And yet, the "dream" of another franchise lives on. Might Atlanta get a third chance to finally make pro hockey stick? What's changed (and hasn't) in the region's demographic landscape and economic calculus? Listen in and find out! + + +

SPONSOR THANKS: * Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * White Ice: Race and the Making of Atlanta Hockey (2024): https://amzn.to/3vFQw5z

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We buckle up this week for a wild and revelatory ride across 50+ years of big-time soccer in the United States with one of the biggest unsung heroes of the American game - and unquestionably, one of its most prominent "keepers of the flame."

The professional and personal life journey of "Soccer Tom" Mulroy ("90 Minutes with the King: How Soccer Saved My Life") virtually parallels the 1970s-to-1990s boom-bust-and-boom-again roller coaster of soccer's early modern history in the US - and today thrives in tandem with the sport's long-overdue cultural acceptance.

In a pro career spanning five leagues and nearly a dozen franchises (including Good Seats bucket-list stops with the MISL Hartford Hellions, ASL Cleveland Cobras, NASL Miami Toros & 1986-87 AISA champion Louisville Thunder) Mulroy's on-field exploits mirrored the chaotic nature of a game still struggling to find its footing among North America's competitive sports landscape.

After his playing days, Mulroy evolved into the sport's indefatigable go-to goodwill ambassador, bringing Pied Piper-like enthusiasm to the domestic masses yearning for soccer literacy in the wake of breakthrough milestones like World Cup '94, the launch of MLS, and the international success of both the US Women's & Men's National teams.

To understand the life of Tommy Mulroy is to understand the growth of US soccer itself!

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * 90 Minutes with the King: How Soccer Saved My Life (2023): https://amzn.to/3U2lfnG

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We turn back the clock 48 years ago this week for a revisit of one of the most consequential contests in the history of the National Hockey League - with sports historian Ed Gruver ("The Game That Saved the NHL: The Broad Street Bullies. the Soviet Red Machine, and Super Series '76").

The dust jacket of Gruver's new book sums it up thusly:

"In late 1975 and early 1976, at the height of the Cold War, two of the Soviet Union’s long-dominant national hockey teams traveled to North America to play an eight-game series against the best teams in the National Hockey League. The culmination of the “Super Series” was reigning Soviet League champion HC CSKA Moscow’s face-off against the defending NHL champion Flyers in Philadelphia on January 11, 1976. Known as the “Red Army Club,” HC CSKA hadn’t lost a game in the series. Known as the “Broad Street Bullies,” the Flyers were determined to bring the Red Army team’s winning streak to an end with their trademark aggressive style of play.

"Based largely on interviews, Ed Gruver’s book tells the story of this epic game and series as it lays out the stakes involved: nothing less than the credibility of the NHL. If the Red Army team had completed its series sweep by defeating the two-time Stanley Cup champion Flyers, the NHL would no longer have been able to claim primacy of place in professional-level hockey. The Stanley Cup, the most famous trophy in sports, would be devalued if the Flyers fell to the Soviets. Gruver also describes how the game and series affected the styles of both Russian and NHL teams. The Soviets adopted a more physical brand of hockey, while the NHL increasingly focused on passing and speed."

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The Game That Saved the NHL: The Broad Street Bullies. the Soviet Red Machine, and Super Series '76(2024): https://amzn.to/48Mg6UT

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

It's the adventure-filled story of how a late-60s-era Scottish top-league footballer helped start the first-ever professional soccer circuit in the then-British colony of Hong Kong - punctuated by an unexpected off-season loan to one of the most forgotten franchises in North American Soccer League history.

Derek Currie ("When 'Jesus' Came to Hong Kong: The Remarkable Story of the First European Football Star in Asia") joins us live and direct from his home in Bangkok,Thailand for an anecdote-rich romp through the international pro soccer scene of the 1970s/early 1980s - including his memorable Texas summer of 1976 wearing the "Stars and Stripes" for the NASL's oft-overlooked San Antonio Thunder!

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * When 'Jesus' Came to Hong Kong: The Remarkable Story of the First European Football Star in Asia (2023): https://amzn.to/3H0snJm

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We press the rewind button on a most interesting 2023, and peer ahead into the uncharted waters of 2024 with our fourth-annual(-ish) Holiday Roundtable Spectacular - featuring three of our favorite fellow defunct sports enthusiasts: Andy Crossley (Fun While It Lasted & Episode 2); Paul Reeths (StatsCrew.com, OurSportsCentral.com & Episode 46); and Steve Holroyd (Crossecheck, Philly Classics & Episodes 92, 109, 149, 188 & 248).

Takes of varying temperatures fly as we review some of the most inspiring and curious events of the past year, debate who and what might be next to wobble into obscurity, and conjecture about future scenarios for the next generation of defunct and otherwise forgotten pro sports teams and leagues - including:

• USFL 2.0 + XFL 3.0 = TBD 2024
• Oakland A's to Las Vegas (maybe)
• Major League Cricket
• MiLB ownership consolidation
• The Savannah Bananas
• Premier Lacrosse League: from tour to teams
• Professional Box Lacrosse Association (RIP)
• Women's pro volleyball
• MLS vs. US Soccer
• NBA, NHL & MLB expansion/relocation rumors
• NWSL expansion & TV deal
• Women's hockey 3.0: PWHL

PLUS, we speculate on the dubious third reincarnation of the Arena Football League!

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America (2023): https://amzn.to/3LYAQ2H

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

After last week's ugly, team-record 63-21 drubbing by the Las Vegas Raiders, and the subsequent dismissal of its head coach and general manager - it's been a (yet another) rough season for the NFL's Los Angeles Chargers.

While family owner/scion Dean Spanos tries (again) to plot a plan forward, we look nostalgically back to the franchise's early years in San Diego as one of the charter entries in the iconoclastic American Football League - an era that produced the club's (still) one-and-only championship in 1963.

AFL history chronicler Dave Steidel ("The Uncrowned Champs: How the 1963 San Diego Chargers Would Have Won the Super Bowl") helps us zero in on the story behind that AFL title-winning season - with an in-depth revisit of iconic coach Sid Gilman's blockbuster squad, featuring revered Charger greats like Tobin Rote, John Hadl, Paul Lowe, Keith Lincoln, Chuck Allen, and future Pro Football Hall of Famers Lance Allworth and Ron Mix.

Plus: we debate whether the '63 Chargers could have truly beaten the NFL champion Chicago Bears that season for a definitive (albeit mythical) pre-merger American pro football title.

• • • SPONSOR THANKS: * 417 Helmets (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * "The Uncrowned Champs: How the 1963 San Diego Chargers Would Have Won the Super Bowl" (2015) * "Remember the AFL: The Ultimate Fan's Guide to the American Football League" (2008) * "AFL Trivia and Tales: The Ultimate American Football League Trivia Book" (2023)

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We adjust our TV antenna rabbit ears back to the late 1970s for the origin story of one of the most influential firms in modern-day sports media - with Rick and Dee Ray, the founders of televised college sports juggernaut Raycom Sports.

In their new George Hirthler-penned memoir "Unstoppable: A Story of Love, Faith and the Power Couple Who Ignited the College Sports Broadcasting Boom," the Rays rewind the videotape to a time when a new technology called "cable" was still in its infancy, and the American television landscape was largely defined by a web of powerful broadcast network-affiliated stations - save for a handful of scrappy alternative "independent" signals in each market.

While pro sports filled plenty of prime/weekend network TV windows, and individual teams provided a steady slate of in-season games to local indie station audiences - regularly scheduled D-I college sports was virtually non-existent outside of limited national broadcasts featuring only big-name schools.

It was against this backdrop that an entrepreneurially minded local station programmer and a never-say-no ad executive saw an opening for regularly scheduled regional broadcasts of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball that not only delighted rabid fans throughout the Southeast, but also laid the groundwork for a sports syndication force that would eventually rewrite the rules for college sports media - and beyond.

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * "Unstoppable: A Story of Love, Faith and the Power Couple Who Ignited the College Sports Broadcasting Boom" (2023)

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

The 1960s were a tumultuous, but crucial period in the development of professional soccer in the United States and Canada - with teams from Scotland, of all places, playing a particularly interesting role.

The dividing line for the modern North American pro game, of course, was the breakthrough, near-live (two-hour-delayed) NBC-TV network telecast of the 1966 World Cup final between eventual champion England and West Germany - the first-ever national standalone broadcast of the sport.

Prior to that watershed, it was sports entrepreneur Bill Cox's International Soccer League that imported full major European & South American teams to play in a senior-level competition in largely East Coast urban centers and first-generation immigrant communities. Among the ISL's regulars were three Scottish sides - including Kilmarnock FC, which played four seasons and made the 1960 final.

Immediately after the World Cup, no fewer than three groups of eager sports owners sought to launch a full-fledged domestic North American league; by 1967, two competing circuits bowed - including a hastily-assembled United Soccer Association, featuring full-team ISL-like imports - but under noms de plume of North American cities. Front and center were Scottish stalwarts Aberdeen FC - masquerading as the District of Columbia's "Washington Whips."

UK football writer Mark Poole ("99 Iconic Moments in Scottish Football: From the Famous to the Obscure, Scotland’s Glorious, Unusual and Cult Games, Players and Events") tells us the stories behind these two curious Scottish contributions to US pro soccer history.

SPONSOR THANKS: * DraftKings Sportsbook (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://myaccount.draftkings.com/login

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * "99 Iconic Moments in Scottish Football: From the Famous to the Obscure, Scotland’s Glorious, Unusual and Cult Games, Players and Events" (2023)

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[By popular demand, an archive re-release of Episode 321 guest and "The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America" author Michael MacCambridge - from his first appearance on the show from March 2017!]

Sports author/historian Michael MacCambridge ("Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports") joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the legacy of Lamar Hunt – the most unlikely of sports executive pioneers – and the outsized role he played in modernizing 1960s pro football into the enduring American sports juggernaut it is today.

MacCambridge recounts how a strong rebuff from the stodgy 1950s NFL establishment galvanized Hunt’s determination to disrupt the football status quo, how the AFL’s “Foolish Club” of owners persevered through staggering financial losses, how Kansas City mayor Harold Roe “Chief” Bartle wooed Hunt and his flailing Dallas Texans franchise to the City of Fountains, and the karmic irony of the AFL Chiefs’ victory over Max Winter’s NFL Minnesota Vikings in the final AFL-NFL Super Bowl (IV) in 1970.

SPONSOR THANKS:

• Royal Retros (promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?aff=2

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports (2012): https://amzn.to/3T0FL7G

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

11-year pro football offensive lineman and budding Renaissance man Steve Wright ("Aggressively Human: Discovering Humanity in the NFL, Reality TV, and Life") helps us check off a few new boxes in our obsessive quest for forgotten sports franchise completism.

Before his post-career exploits as the 10th-place finisher in the 22nd season of the CBS reality competition series "Survivor" ("Survivor: Redemption Island"), and as the inventor of pioneering sideline cooling-mist tech firms Cloudburst and Mist & Cool, Wright blocked and tackled for some of the game's most exciting teams during the 80s and early 90s - including the Dallas Cowboys, the Baltimore and Indianapolis versions of the Colts, the Los Angeles incarnation of the Raiders, and the 1985 USFL Championship Game finalist Oakland Invaders.

SPONSOR THANKS: * DraftKings Sportsbook (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://myaccount.draftkings.com/login

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * "Aggressively Human: Discovering Humanity in the NFL, Reality TV, and Life" (2023)

BUY/WATCH EARLY & OFTEN: * "Survivor: Redemption Island" (DVD: 2011): https://amzn.to/47AaWKM * "Survivor: Redemption Island" (Prime Video): https://amzn.to/40ICA6h

FIND & FOLLOW: * Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill * Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Veteran Tennis.com writer, Racquet Magazine columnist & "Three - A Tennis Show" podcast host Joel Drucker ("Jimmy Connors Saved My Life") stops by to drop some serious knowledge on how the decade of the 1970s transformed the sport of professional tennis into the global juggernaut it is today - including pivotal turning points such as:

• The groundbreaking World Championship Tennis (WCT) and Virginia Slims Circuit tours that brought standardized scheduling, big-time media exposure and unprecedented prize money to both the men's and women's pro games for the first time'
• 1973's paradigm-shifting intergender "Battle of the Sexes" competition between inveterate hustler Bobby Riggs and female icon Billie Jean King - an international spectacle whose result both transcended tennis and changed the face of American sports; and

• World Team Tennis - the innovative, ahead-of-its-time rethink of how the pro game could be played - featuring city-domiciled, co-ed, team-oriented match play on colorful playing surfaces in front of raucous crowds in major indoor arenas from coast to coast.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS:

• 417 Helmets (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Jimmy Connors Saved My Life: A Personal Biography (2004): https://amzn.to/46cdPQQ

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Football biographer Mike Richman ("George Allen: A Football Life") joins us for a decades-long journey back into the old-school NFL (and USFL) exploits of one of pro football's most intense and enigmatic sideline characters.

From the dust-jacket of "A Football Life":

"George Allen was a fascinating and eccentric figure in the world of football coaching. His remarkable career spanned six decades, from the late 1940s until his sudden death in 1990 at the age of seventy-three. Although he never won a Super Bowl, he never had a losing season as an NFL head coach and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2002. "In 'George Allen: A Football Life', Mike Richman captures the life and accomplishments of one of the most successful NFL coaches of all time and one of the greatest innovators in the game. A player’s coach, Allen was a tremendous motivator and game strategist, as well as a defensive mastermind, and is credited with making special teams a critical focus in an era in which they were an afterthought. He had a keen eye for talent and pulled off masterful trades, often for veteran players who were viewed to be past their prime, who then had great seasons and made his teams much better. "In addition to his coaching feats, Allen had an idiosyncratic and controversial personality. His life revolved around football 24/7. One of his quirks was to minimize chewing time by consuming soft foods, giving himself more time to prepare for games and study opponents. He lived and breathed football; he compared losing to death. Allen had contentious relationships with the owners of the two NFL teams for which he was the head coach, the Washington Redskins and Los Angeles Rams. Richman explores why he was fired by those teams and whether he was blackballed from coaching again in the NFL." + + + SPONSOR THANKS: * 417 Helmets (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * George Allen: A Football Life (2023): https://amzn.to/460ezbO

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

It's an episode that's hopefully as "Good! Like Nedicks!" - as we take a biographical look back at the rich and influential life of pioneering New York City sports broadcaster Marty Glickman - with biographer/Yeshiva University history professor Jeffrey Gurock ("Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend").

From the "Marty Glickman" dustjacket:

"For close to half a century after World War II, Marty Glickman was the voice of New York sports. His distinctive style of broadcasting, on television and especially on the radio, garnered for him legions of fans who would not miss his play-by-play accounts. From the 1940s through the 1990s, he was as iconic a sports figure in town as the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, the Knicks’ Walt Frazier, or the Jets’ Joe Namath. His vocabulary and method of broadcasting left an indelible mark on the industry, and many of today’s most famous sportscasters were Glickman disciples. To this very day, many fans who grew up listening to his coverage of Knicks basketball and Giants football games, among the myriad of events that Glickman covered, recall fondly, and can still recite, his descriptions of actions in arenas and stadiums.

"In addition to the stories of how he became a master of American sports airwaves, Marty Glickman has also been remembered as a Jewish athlete who, a decade before he sat in front of a microphone, was cynically barred from running in a signature track event in the 1936 Olympics by anti-Semitic American Olympic officials. This lively biography details this traumatic event and explores not only how he coped for decades with that painful rejection but also examines how he dealt with other anti-Semitic and cultural obstacles that threatened to stymie his career. Glickman’s story underscores the complexities that faced his generation of American Jews as these children of immigrants emerged from their ethnic cocoons and strove to succeed in America amid challenges to their professional and social advancement."

• • • SPONSOR THANKS: * 417 Helmets (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://417helmets.com/?wpam_id=3
• DraftKings Sportsbook (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://myaccount.draftkings.com/login

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend (2023): https://amzn.to/3FyuVOe

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Veteran New York-based sports writer/public relations pro Charles Cuttone has seen just about everything in his nearly 50 years of promoting professional sports across the Gotham sports scene - dating all the way back to 1974 as a fresh-faced elementary school intern with the World Football League's ill-fated New York Stars.

While the WFL gig (and team, for that matter) didn't last long, it was his next experience that following spring - with a rag-tag but ambitious pro soccer outfit called the New York Cosmos - that both solidified a budding career interest in sports PR, and yielded a ring-side seat to one of the most indelible stories in 1970s sports history.

In his new book "Pelé, His North American Years: A Tribute" - visually co-created with the exquisite imagery of legendary sports photographer George Tiedemann - Cuttone recounts the three-season, two-and-a-half-year phenomenon known as Pelé - and how the world's then-greatest player (and arguably, most famous athlete) transformed not only a earnest club and its backwater league, but also a "foreign" game into the mainstream consciousness of American sports.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats * DraftKings Sportsbook (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://myaccount.draftkings.com/login

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Pelé, His North American Years: A Tribute (2023): https://amzn.to/3tLxmKD

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

After an absence of over six years and more than 300+ episodes, sportswriter extraordinaire Michael MacCambridge ("Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports"; "America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation"; "Chuck Noll: His Life's Work") makes his triumphant return to the podcast - this time to celebrate the release of his brand new, instant sports history classic, "The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America."

It's just about everything you'd expect from the author of what is arguably the most definitive look yet at the decade that undeniably shaped the modern trajectory of sports in America - including (of course) a bevy of challenger leagues, defunct teams, one-of-a-kind events that only the Seventies could produce! + + +

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America (2023): https://amzn.to/3LYAQ2H

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Veteran Fox Sports and MSG Networks play-by-play man Kenny Albert ("A Mic for All Seasons") joins host Tim Hanlon for a cornucopia of career memories from his 30+ year journey in sports broadcasting – including, of course, obligatory stops along the way for various "forgotten" teams, events and even TV networks of yore.

Now celebrating his third decade with Fox, the Emmy Award-winning Albert has regularly called Sunday games for every season of the network's NFL coverage - as well as for its telecasts of Major League Baseball, college football, thoroughbred horse racing, boxing, and (between 1995-99) NHL hockey.

Simultaneously, the versatile Albert has been a fixture in New York local sports broadcasting as a regular TV and radio voice for the NHL Rangers and the NBA Knicks for MSG Networks - and is the lead play-by-play hockey announcer for TNT's national NHL broadcast package.

If that weren't enough, Albert has been a regular broadcast presence for NBC's network coverage of the Winter (since 2002) and Summer (since 2016) Olympics, and, since 2010, lead-announces Washington Commanders preseason NFL games on local DC television.

Despite all of those marquee assignments, we (naturally) obsess over some of Albert’s more memorable “forgotten” gigs along the way, including: * College moonlighting with the United States Basketball League's (USBL) Staten Island Stallions; * Fight song memories of the American Hockey League's Baltimore Skipjacks; * His first "blazer" with DC's original regional sports network, Home Team Sports; * Following the NHL national broadcast puck across a litany of now-defunct TV networks like Outdoor Life Network, Versus & NBC Sports Network; AND * The national record for live play-by-play sportscasts in 3-D!

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * A Mic for All Seasons: My Three Decades Announcing the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, and Olympics (2023): https://amzn.to/3ZNZ8Cb

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We explore the traumatic events of Major League Baseball's notorious 1994-95 players' strike - with Chico State history professor Bob Cottrell ("The Year Without a World Series: Major League Baseball and the Road to the 1994 Players' Strike").

More than 900 regular season games, the entirety of the playoffs, and, for the first time in 90 years, the sport's signature World Series - were all lost to the work stoppage, which began on August 12, 1994.

The strike ended late into the 1995 preseason, when then-US District Court judge Sonia Sotomayor granted an injunction sought by the players' association to prevent club owners from using replacement players. The ruling forced both sides to come to an agreement, and regular-season play resumed with a delayed and truncated 144-game schedule at the end of April. (Ironically, MLB umpires decided to go on strike just as the two sides settled their dispute, so the 1995 season opened with regular players - but replacement umpires!)

Among the strike's biggest victims (besides the fans!):

• The Montreal Expos had the best record in baseball when the strike was called in 1994. They were forced to dismantle their expensive squad in a fire sale before the 1995 season, a decision that ultimately led to the franchise's relocation within a decade.
• Tony Gwynn missed his best chance to achieve a .400 batting average in 1994. He was hitting .394 for the season and had maintained a .417 pace in the 25 games leading up to the suspension of play.
• Matt Williams had a legitimate opportunity to break Roger Maris' single-season home run record of 61 in 1994. Williams had hit 43 home runs when the strike halted the season, ending his pursuit of the record.
• The Colorado Rockies, in their final season at Mile High Stadium in 1994, were drawing impressive crowds, averaging 57,570 fans per game. They were on track to potentially break baseball's attendance record of 4.48 million, set by the team the previous year.
• Michael Jordan, known for his basketball career, was playing for the Double-A affiliate Birmingham Barons when the MLB strike began in 1994. There was speculation that he might have been given the opportunity to play for the Chicago White Sox, his major league parent team, that September if the strike had not occurred.

The strike also marked the end of the "independent Commissioner" era, as the owners, hesitant to contend with an arbiter who might challenge their unwavering stances, opted to appoint one of their own, Bud Selig, as acting Commissioner. + + +

SPONSOR THANKS: * Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The Year Without a World Series: Major League Baseball and the Road to the 1994 Players' Strike (2023): https://amzn.to/3rsfPXc

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We head "True North" to the Canadian province of Manitoba this week in search of heretofore undiscovered historical nuggets from the WHA and original NHL versions of hockey's Winnipeg Jets - with veteran journalist/author Geoff Kirbyson.

Kirbyson's accounts of the Jets' early years in the revolutionary World Hockey Association from 1972-79 ("The Hot Line: How the Legendary Trio of Hull, Hedberg and Nilsson Transformed Hockey and Led the Winnipeg Jets to Greatness"), and the club's original 17 seasons in the National Hockey League from 1979-96 ("Broken Ribs and Popcorn: How the Winnipeg Jets became the best team in the NHL's most offensive era to not win the Stanley Cup"), are must-reads for fans of either incarnation of the original team - and even for curious Arizona Coyotes or current-generation Jets (née Atlanta Thrashers) followers befuddled by the NHL's "official" history.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS: * DraftKings Sportsbook (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://myaccount.draftkings.com/login

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The Hot Line: How the Legendary Trio of Hul, Hedberg and Nilsson Transformed Hockey and Led the Winnipeg Jets to Greatness (2016): https://amzn.to/3tbR5me * Broken Ribs and Popcorn: How the Winnipeg Jets became the best team in the NHL's most offensive era to not win the Stanley Cup (2021): https://www.amazon.ca/Broken-Ribs-Popcorn-Winnipeg-offensive/dp/1772803219/

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[A scheduling snafu this week gives us a perfect excuse to re-release this hidden gem from November 2019 - enjoy!]

You can be forgiven if you never heard of the International Volleyball Association – the mid-1970s co-ed pro circuit that aimed to draft off the rising popularity of Olympic and beach volleyball during America’s wildest sports decade – but the high-wattage media and entertainment moguls behind its creation at the time certainly cannot.

The IVA was the brainchild of prolific Hollywood television and film producer David Wolper ("Roots," "The Thorn Birds" and "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" to name a mere few) – who became smitten with the sport while filming documentary footage of the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Wolper quickly recruited a who’s who of well-connected LA-based investors – including ABC-TV (later Paramount and Fox) chief Barry Diller, as well as Motown music studio founder/movie producer aspirant Berry Gordy – and by 1975, a five-team California and Southwest-centric league bowed before modest, but enthusiastic crowds.

Ironically, with nary a television contract in sight (despite players Mary Jo Peppler and Linda Fernandez appearing on ABC’s "Superstars" competition, and coverage of 1977’s IVA All-Star Game on CBS’ "Sports Spectacular"), most of the big-name investors had pulled out by 1976.

Volleyball magazine publisher Jim Bartlett stepped in to quietly stabilize the league, with legendary basketball big man and beach enthusiast Wilt Chamberlain joining for various roles as player, coach, commissioner, and publicity magnet. But neither could ultimately overcome the PR disaster of a 1979 mid-match police bust of Denver Comets owner-brothers Robert and David Casey (for drug trafficking), nor the promotion-deflating boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics where the US women’s team was expected to medal.

IVA standout and beach volleyball legend Jay Hanseth joins the podcast to help “dig” into one of pro sports’ most enigmatic and endlessly fascinating leagues.

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

The National Football League is back in full swing, and what better way to celebrate than with a deep dig into the primordial ooze from which it and the broader endeavor of professional football evolved - with Gregg Ficery, author of the new and immediately essential tome "Gridiron Legacy: Pro Football's Missing Origin Story."

From the revelatory new book's dust jacket:

Professional football's backstory was lost, until now. In the beginning, in 1892, pro football was born. Then it effectively died in infamy in 1906. It was resurrected nearly a decade later and soon became the American Professional Football Association in 1920 (renamed the National Football League in 1922). Few are even familiar with the basics of the historical narrative: the star players, the rivalries, and the game's brutality.

After its infancy in Pennsylvania, fanatic passion and media hype started exploding around the country for the greatest teams ever assembled in what became known as the Ohio League. More suddenly, the league died because of a gambling scandal. Nobody has ever been sure who was behind it or who were the heroes who saved the game. Careers and lives were ruined, and the game's legacy was left suspended in time without resolution. As of the NFL's 100th anniversary, nobody knows the true narrative that led up to its founding. Gridiron Legacy brings the story to light for the first time with a treasure trove of new research and never-before-published photographs from the career of one of the game's early champions. It is the greatest sports story never told.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS: * DraftKings Sportsbook (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://myaccount.draftkings.com/login

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Gridiron Legacy: Pro Football's Missing Origin Story (2023): https://amzn.to/3ZeJDTi

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Hollywood history maven Erin Carlson ("No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of "A League of Their Own": Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood") stops by the podcast to help celebrate the 30th anniversary of the iconic motion picture that comically (and lovingly) brought the largely forgotten story of the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League to the big screen - simultaneously preserving and making history in the process.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS: * DraftKings Sportsbook (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://myaccount.draftkings.com/login

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of "A League of Their Own": Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood (2023): https://amzn.to/3EmwvSL

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

While the NCAA is still the predominant pipeline for rookie basketball talent looking to break into pro hoops, the 2023 NBA Draft showed just how far legitimate alternate pathways have come - especially for eager high school players unwilling (or unable) to go the traditional college route.

Three of this year's top-five first-round picks came from two relatively new entities - Overtime Elite (brothers Amen [4th overall, Houston Rockets] & Ausar [5th, Detroit Pistons] Thompson); and NBA G League Ignite (Scoot Henderson [3rd, Portland Trail Blazers]) - with three others from Ignite chosen in Round Two.

Neither is more than three years old, yet their collective impact on professional player development has been immediate and undeniable. But they weren't the first to attempt the model.

Brandon Williams ("The JBA League: A League of Our Own") joins the pod this week to both explain and dissect the inner workings of the true pioneer of the college-alternative route - 2018's Junior Basketball Association - the brainchild of Lonzo/LiAngelo/LaMelo-sired and Big Baller Brand founder/impresario LaVar Ball.

• • +

SPONSOR THANKS: * DraftKings Sportsbook (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://myaccount.draftkings.com/login

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The JBA League: A League of Our Own (2023): https://amzn.to/3KZBfS5

**FIND & FOLLOW:**

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Domestically, American football has never been more popular (or prosperous) than it is today - yet questions continue to circle among the ownership class of the NFL as to how the pro game can continue to grow outside the confines of its current 32-team franchise structure.

While the feasibility of pursuing more club expansion within the US is hotly debated, there is no denying that the true future of the league's fortunes rests on its ability to more reliably tap into the massive fan fervor for pro pigskin building in international markets.

Ben Issacs ("The American Football Revolution: How Britain Fell in Love with the NFL") makes the case that the UK might be one of the most logical regions to put on the league's shortlist - buttressed by a surprisingly strong history of interest in and support for the game - especially in London, where nearly three dozen regular season games have been played since 2007.

In fact, the British Isles have been fascinated with American football for much longer than that - and Isaacs takes us through some of the evidence, including: the NFL's American Bowl pre-season exhibition series during the 1980s; the post-season 1984 USFL Wembley Stadium matchup between the champion Philadelphia Stars and the Burt Reynolds/Tim Bassett-owned Tampa Bay Bandits (for the long-forgotten "Jetsave Challenge Cup"); the ill-fated NFL-sponsored World League of American Football (with the 1991 World Bowl champion London Monarchs); and the reconstituted NFL Europe/Europa and its still-revered Scottish Claymores.

• • +

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * The American Football Revolution: How Britain Fell in Love with the NFL (2023; US pre-order): https://amzn.to/3seLF9D

**FIND & FOLLOW:**

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[We round out our last week of summer vacation with a re-release of this listener-favorite episode from June 2019 - enjoy!]

Author and former SPORT magazine writer David Levine (Life on the Rim: A Year in the Continental Basketball Association) joins the ‘cast to give us our first taste of the quirky minor league basketball circuit that began as a Pennsylvania-based regional outfit in 1946 (predating the NBA’s formation by two months), and meandered through a myriad of death-defying iterations until whimpering into oblivion in 2009.

Often billed throughout its curious history as the "World's Oldest Professional Basketball League," the colorful Continental Basketball Association rocketed into the national sports consciousness during the 1980s – when expansion into non-traditional locales (e.g., Anchorage, AK; Casper, WY; Great Falls, MT; Atlantic City, NJ); innovative rule changes (e.g., sudden-death overtime, no foul-outs, a seven-point game scoring system); and headline-grabbing fan promotions (e.g., “1 Million Dollar Supershot," "Ton-of-Money Free Throw," "CBA Sportscaster Contest") – garnered its first national TV coverage, and even grudging respect from the staid, top-tier NBA.

Levine recounts his time chronicling the 1988-89 season of the CBA’s Albany (NY) Patroons, and the real-world stories of the realities of playing, coaching (including a young and hungry George Karl), traveling, and endlessly hoping in a league that sometimes rewarded its members with opportunities at the next level of pro basketball – but more often, did not.

• • +

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * "Life On the Rim: A Year in the Continental Basketball Association" (1990)

**FIND & FOLLOW:**

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[A summer vacation re-release of a fan favorite episode from March 2019!]

We celebrate our second anniversary with the intriguing background story of the original Major Indoor Soccer League, with the man who started it all – Ed Tepper.

A commercial real estate developer by trade, Tepper actually got his start in pro sports ownership as the owner of the original National Lacrosse League’s Philadelphia Wings – only to switch allegiances to an inchoate indoor offshoot of the world’s most popular sport after a chance exhibition (between the 1973 NASL champion Atoms and the Russian CSKA “Red Army” team) at Philadelphia’s Spectrum on February 11, 1974.

Originally interested in the game’s bespoke Astroturf-covered surface as a potential improvement for his fledgling box lacrosse club, Tepper (along with 11,700+ enthusiastic curiosity-seekers) instead became instantly attracted to the fast-paced action and high scoring of “indoor soccer” – and quickly resolved to make a professional sport out of it.

In this illuminating interview, Tepper recounts some of the notable events and influential people along the journey from concept to the MISL’s official debut kick (by Cincinnati Kids part-owner Pete Rose, no less) on December 22, 1978 at Uniondale, Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum – including:

• Convincing ABA Virginia Squires owner (and eventual MISL commissioner) Earl Foreman of the game’s potential;
• The instant credibility boost of signing American superstar goalkeeper Shep Messing;
• NASL commissioner Phil Woosnam’s on-again, off-again interest in the indoor game;
• How (and why) NFL owners Carroll Rosenbloom and Al Davis wanted in; AND
• The unsung role of TV executive Bob Wussler in garnering attention for the fledgling circuit.

PLUS: The untold tale of Tepper’s very own (barely one-season long) MISL franchise – the New Jersey Rockets!

View Details

[A summer vacation re-release of a fan favorite episode from January 2020!]

The Buffalo Braves were one of three NBA expansion franchises (along with the Portland Trail Blazers and Cleveland Cavaliers) that began play in the 1970–71 season.

Originally owned by a wobbly investment firm with few ties to Buffalo, the Braves eventually found a local backer in Freezer Queen founder Paul Snyder – who, by the end of the first season, had inherited a team that was neither good (penultimate league records of 22-60 in each of its first two seasons), nor easy to schedule (third-choice dates for Buffalo’s venerable Memorial Auditorium behind the also-new NHL hockey Buffalo Sabres, and Canisius Golden Griffins college basketball).

Snyder addressed the Braves’ on-court issues by luring head coach Dr. Jack Ramsey from the Philadelphia 76ers, while drafting key players like high-scoring (and later Naismith Basketball Hall-of-Famer) Bob McAdoo, eventual NBA Rookie of the Year Ernie DiGregorio, and local (via Buffalo State) crowd favorite Randy Smith – yielding three consecutive playoff appearances from 1973-74 to 1975-76.

Off the court, Snyder looked to regionalize the team’s appeal beyond “The Aud” by scheduling select home games in places like Rochester, Syracuse and even Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens – and team attendance, TV ratings and revenues achieved league-average levels.

By the summer of 1976, however, Snyder was facing severe pressure to sell the team and get it out of “The City of Good Neighbors.” Of particular consternation was Canisius president Fr. James Demske, who publicly thwarted the Braves’ attempts at decent home dates – which angered the NBA enough to force the issue with Snyder.

Snyder, who said he was losing money anyway, threatened to move the Braves to suburban Miami’s Hollywood Sportatorium, a deal that collapsed after the city of Buffalo sued and secured a new 15-year Aud lease – with a provision it could be broken if the team didn’t sell 5,000 season tickets in any future season.

Author and Western New York native Tim Wendel (Buffalo, Home of the Braves) joins the pod to discuss the convoluted story of what happened next, including:

• Snyder’s ownership sales to former ABA owner (and eventual Kentucky governor) John Y. Brown and businessman Harry Mangurian;
• The subsequent dismantling of the team and overt attempts to drive down attendance to break the Aud lease;
• The two-season coaching and player carousel that followed – including the curious six-minute career of Moses Malone; AND

• How the Braves’ eventual move in 1978 to become the San Diego Clippers wouldn’t have happened without the Boston Celtics.

• • +

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * "Buffalo, Home of the Braves" (2009)

**FIND & FOLLOW:**

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

[A summer vacation re-release of a fan favorite episode from January 2020!] It's a return to the gridiron, and a revealing behind-the-scenes look at the brash, but ultimately ill-fated United Football League of 2009-12 – with its only commissioner, Michael Huyghue (Behind the Line of Scrimmage: Inside the Front Office of the NFL).

Formed in 2007 out of big-budget dreams to establish a national top-tier, Fall-season minor league pro football circuit by high-wattage investors like San Francisco investment banker Bill Hambrecht, Google executive Tim Armstrong and Dallas Mavericks owner/firebrand Mark Cuban (who later backed out, along with initially-rumored financier T. Boone Pickens) – the UFL was also conveniently timed to capitalize on fallout from any potential labor/owner strife prior to the 2011-12 NFL season, when the league’s collective bargaining agreement with its players expired. The bet backfired when a correctly-anticipated owner lockout of players quickly ended in July of 2011, ensuring no regular season disruption or drama.

Over the course of its history, five teams played in the league: the Las Vegas Locomotives, Hartford Colonials (originally the New York Sentinels), Omaha Nighthawks, Sacramento Mountain Lions (née California Redwoods), and Virginia Destroyers (successors to the Florida Tuskers). The Locomotives were historically the best of the franchises, winning two of the UFL’s three championship games, and possessing an undefeated regular season record when the league suspended operations (ultimately for good) in mid-Fall 2012. Big-name NFL coaches like Jim Haslett, Jay Gruden, Dennis Green, Marty Schottenheimer, and Jim Fassel were featured attractions, as were recognizable pro talent like Simeon Rice, Josh McCown, Daunte Culpepper, and Jeff Garcia – to name just a few.

Huyghue walks host Tim Hanlon through the numerous ups, frequent downs and multiple sideways’ of the UFL’s brief lifespan, including: how early-career front office experiences in the NFL (Lions, Jaguars), WLAF (Birmingham Fire), and NFL Players’ Association uniquely prepared him to the UFL commissioner’s role; league ownership’s original intention to play as a Spring league; the allure of then-untapped pro markets like Omaha, Las Vegas Sacramento; and lessons learned that could have helped last year’s AAF and this year’s soon-to-launch XFL.

• • +

Support the show with Dollar Shave Club’s “Ultimate Shave Starter Set” for just $5!

• • +

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * "Behind the Line of Scrimmage: Inside the Front Office of the NFL" (2018)

**FIND & FOLLOW:**

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

We discover the story of the Twin Cities' forgotten, but undeniably first, NFL franchise(s) with the help of football writer/historian R. C. Christiansen ("Mill City Scrum: The History of Minnesota's First Team in the National Football League").

From the "Mill City Scrum" book jacket:

"In the flour milling city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, a group of first-generation American teenagers team up to play football in the sandlots. They call themselves the Marines, and with no high school or college experience, they learn to dominate their opponents using the same offense as the University of Minnesota Gophers.

"The Marines later emerge as an independent professional team, and they claim city, state, and regional championship titles, but World War I sends Marines players across the globe. When they return, the Marines face player defections, bad publicity, and low fan support.

*"A former player and team captain and the manager of the Marines decides to bet his own fortune and the team’s future on a new National Football League. The Minneapolis Marines, later named the Minneapolis Red Jackets, play six years in the NFL and leave their mark on the history of pro football in Minnesota.

"Long before Minnesota had the Minnesota Vikings, they had the Minneapolis Marines."*

• • +

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN: * Mill City Scrum: The History of Minnesota's First Team in the National Football League (2023) * Border Boys: How Americans from Border Colleges Helped Western Canada Win a Football Championship (2022)

**FIND & FOLLOW:**

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Younger fans of today's Memphis Grizzlies can be forgiven for thinking the NBA franchise has spent the entirety of its 28-year existence playing its still-evolving brand of pro hoops in the FedExForum.

But this week's guest - documentary filmmaker and Vancouver, BC native Kat Jayme ("The Grizzlie Truth;" "Finding Big Country") - is here to remind us that the "Grizz" actually got its start as one of two 1995 Canadian expansion teams (the other: the still-vibrant Toronto Raptors), scratching out its initial six seasons of chaotic existence in Cascadia country.

Despite five coaches, a woeful .219 winning percentage, a raft of questionable draft picks, and an economically challenging US/Canadian exchange rate - Jayme fondly remembers a team from her late 1990s youth which Vancouver embraced with unbridled enthusiasm - yet wonders not only why they left GM Place for Beale Street, but also what might have been had they stayed put in Rain City.

WATCH EARLY & OFTEN: * Finding Big Country (2018) * The Grizzlie Truth (trailer; 2022) * Born Identities (NBA Films short; 2021) * We the West (2020) * I'm Just Here For the Riot (ESPN Films "30 For 30" documentary; not yet released; 2023)

**FIND & FOLLOW:**

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

om groundbreaking trades to team-saving negotiations, Bob Whitsitt ("Game Changer: An Insider's Story of the Sonics’ Resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ Turnaround, and the Deal that Saved the Seahawks") has been in the captain's seat for some of the most pivotal moments in Pacific Northwest pro sports franchise history.

But before helping rebuild Seattle's SuperSonics into an NBA Finals team in the mid-90s, tame the combustible personalities of the late 90s/early 2000s Portland Trail Blazers, and oversee the development of soccer-inclusive Seahawks Stadium (now Lumen Field) - "Trader Bob" cut his professional sports management teeth as an intern-turned-exec with the fledgling post-ABA Indiana Pacers, as well as a stabilizing behind-the-scenes front office force that guided a tenuous Kansas City Kings NBA club to a new home in Sacramento in the mid-80s.

In this first installment of an eventual two-parter, we grill Whitsitt on his early days climbing the sports exec ladder, and set the table for his eventual "game-changing" work in Cascadia country.

PRE-ORDER EARLY & OFTEN: * Game Changer: An Insider's Story of the Sonics’ Resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ Turnaround, and the Deal that Saved the Seahawks (Flashpoint: 2023)

**FIND & FOLLOW:**

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

University of Maryland physical cultural studies professor Michael Friedman ("Mallparks: Baseball Stadiums and the Culture of Consumption") cozies up to the pod machine this week for a thinking man's look into the evolution of the grand old American ballpark - and a provocative thesis of how designers of this generation of baseball stadiums are embracing theme park and shopping mall design to prioritize commerce and consumption over the game played inside them.

• • • BUY EARLY & OFTEN: * Mallparks: Baseball Stadiums and the Culture of Consumption (Cornell University Press: 2023)

  FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

El Paso Chihuahuas Triple-A baseball play-by-play broadcaster Tim Hagerty ("Root for the Home Team: Minor League Baseball's Most Off-the-Wall Team Names and the Stories Behind Them" and "Tales from the Dugout: 1,001 Humorous, Inspirational and Wild Anecdotes from Minor League Baseball") joins the show this week to spotlight some of the most memorable names and events in "forgotten" minor league history.

When Hagerty isn't calling games for the San Diego Padres top minor league affiliate, he can usually be found digging deep down a variety of research rabbit holes, in a never-ending quest to refine his encyclopedic "double-asterisk" knowledge of baseball factoids and historical lore.

For us, it's a callback to minor-league teams of yore like the: Tucson Toros, Huntsville Stars, Mobile (AL) BayBears, Portland Beavers, Hutchinson Salt Packers, Ilion (NY) Typewriters, Montpelier (VT) Goldfish, Kalamazoo Celery Pickers, Saskatoon Berrypickers, Greenville (MS) Cotton Pickers, Porterville (CA) Orange Pickers, New Orleans Baby Cakes, New Orleans Pelicans, Midland (TX) Cubs, Texarkana (TX & AR!) Casket Makers, Agua Prieta (Sonora, MX & Douglas, AZ!) Charros, Corsicana (TX) Oil Citys, Bluefield (WV) Blue Jays, Princeton (WV) Rays, and Pittsfield (MA) Astros - among others.

And, of course, we get Hagerty's take on the current state of MiLB, now that Major League Baseball is fully in charge - and where it's likely headed in the years to come.

BUY EARLY & OFTEN: * Root for the Home Team: Minor League Baseball's Most Off-the-Wall Team Names and the Stories Behind Them (2012 book) * Tales from the Dugout: 1,001 Humorous, Inspirational and Wild Anecdotes from Minor League Baseball (2023 book)

**FIND & FOLLOW:**

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

American followers of the "beautiful game" undoubtedly know the name Thomas Rongen - but can easily be forgiven for not remembering just exactly how.

Of course, there's his current color commentary work for today's Major League Soccer Inter Miami CF - but fans of a certain age will recall the Dutch-born, mop-topped midfielder from his on-field (and in-arena) antics during the halcyon days of the old North American Soccer League alongside international greats like Johan Cruyff, George Best and Alan Willey on clubs like the Los Angeles Aztecs, Washington Diplomats, and two flavors of Strikers - Fort Lauderdale and Minnesota.

Younger aficionados might place their earliest recollections of a fiery presence on the sidelines coaching a wide array of pro clubs ranging from successor ASL/APSL versions of the Strikers in the late 80s/early 90s, to early MLS sides like the 1996 Tampa Bay Mutiny, 1997-98 New England Revolution, 1999-2001 DC United, or even 2005's version of Chivas USA - not to mention his two stints helming the US Men's U-20 National team before and after.

However, most will undoubtedly know Rongen from his memorable turn as the head coach of the American Samoa national team during FIFA World Cup qualifying in 2011 - forever immortalized in the epically joyous 2014 documentary "Next Goal Wins", and soon to be refashioned as a major motion picture drama of the same name this fall - in which he wills one of the world's perennial soccer minnows into surprising respectability.

We cover all of it - and more - with one of the country's most endearing soccer personalities!

BUY EARLY & OFTEN: * Next Goal Wins (2014 DVD)

PREVIEW: * Next Goal Wins (2014 documentary) * Next Goal Wins (2023 dramatic feature)

 **FIND & FOLLOW:**

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

Sports historian Bill Ryczek (Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball's National Association; Crash of the Titans: The Early Years of the New York Jets and the AFL) returns after a five-year absence to help us unpack the intriguing story of 1884 - arguably the wildest season in major league baseball history.

In his latest tome, "Baseball's Wildest Season: Three Leagues, Thirty-Four Teams and the Chaos of 1884," Ryczek details a fragile professional game pioneered by a still-fledgling National League that found itself not only challenged by a two-year-old lower-priced, Sunday-playing, beer-allowing American Association - but also an upstart third circuit called the Union Association whose president just happened to also own its most dominant franchise.

1884 saw the first incarnation of an inter-league "World Series" (the NL Providence Grays defeating the AA New York Metropolitans); the majors' first-ever African-American player (the AA Toledo Blue Stockings' Moses Fleetwood Walker); a (still-standing) record start to a season (the UA's 20-0 St. Louis Maroons) - and more drunken brawls, mid-season team relocations, player league-jumping, and underhand pitching than any time in big league history.

BUY EARLY & OFTEN: * Baseball's Wildest Season: Three Leagues, Thirty-Four Teams and the Chaos of 1884 - by William J. Ryczek * Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball's National Association - by William J. Ryczek * Crash of the Titans: The Early Years of the New York Jets and the AFL - by William J. Ryczek

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

View Details

With the 28th season of Major League Soccer well under way - featuring the debut of the league's 29th franchise (St. Louis CITY SC) and the expansion announcement of its soon-to-be 30th (San Diego) - it's hard to believe that the entirety of MLS was on the verge of collapse after just its sixth campaign in 2001.

Instead of pulling the plug entirely in 2002, two clubs - the charter 1996 Tampa Bay Mutiny and expansion 1998 Miami Fusion - were sacrificed, leaving Florida bereft of top-level pro soccer for the first time in a generation, and a league fighting to stay afloat for at least another season.

We'll tackle the Mutiny story on a future show - but this week, it's all about the surprisingly important four-season life of the Fusion - a team that never played in its namesake hometown, but left an indelible mark in South Florida soccer history.

Joe Shaw, host of the new podcast series "25 for 25: The Story of the Miami Fusion From Those Who Lived It", joins along with former club captain/fan favorite Jim Rooney and team assistant coach John Trask for a taste of what it was like in those exciting, but still-uncertain early years MLS's existence.

If you remember the original NASL's Ft. Lauderdale Strikers, or fancy yourself a fan of today's Inter Miami CF - you will LOVE this conversation!

View Details

If anyone's qualified to weigh in with authority on the current Oakland A's relocation imbroglio, it is our guest this week - long-time professional sports marketing executive and Bay Area-based industry consultant Andy Dolich ("Goodbye, Oakland: Winning, Wanderlust, and A Sports Town's Fight for Survival").

Dolich spent 15+ years in the Athletics' front office from 1980-94 during the Walter Haas era - inheriting the remnants of Charlie Finley's parsimonious ownership, helping usher in "Billy Ball", nurturing a promising farm system, and ultimately, reaping the rewards with a 1989 World Series championship over the market's "other team" - the San Francisco Giants.

But before we get there, we take an important introductory detour into Dolich's other exploits, replete with notable stops of keen interest to a certain little podcast - like the NASL's Washington Diplomats, the original National Lacrosse League's Maryland Arrows, and the NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies.

View Details

We answer some of our voluminous viewer mail this week, as listener Rob Hawksford joins for an intriguing look back at Portland, Oregon's pro soccer scene in the 1990s - when summertime indoor clubs known as the Pride (Continental Indoor Soccer League, 1993-97) and the Pythons (Premier Soccer Alliance, 1998 & World Indoor Soccer League, 1999) kept the sport alive after the collapse of the iconic outdoor NASL/WSA Timbers in 1990.

Starting out as a game-day volunteer for the Pride during the CISL's inaugural 1993 season, Hawksford quickly found himself on the payroll in subsequent summers doing a variety of front office jobs - including General Manager, where he helped the club change venues (from Portland's aging Memorial Stadium to the state-of-the-art Rose Garden in 1996), leagues (bolting with three other teams to form the PSA in 1998), and nicknames (Pythons).

In between, of course, a myriad of memories from one of the most interesting professional circuits in all of North American soccer - and a curious, but oft-forgotten footnote in Portland's long and storied "Soccer City USA" history.

View Details

It's a reassignment back to the minors again this week, as baseball writer Dale Tafoya ("One Season in Rocket City") joins the 'cast for a look back at the unforgettable inaugural 1985 season of the Southern League's Huntsville Stars - the Oakland As' talent-laden, then-Double-A affiliate that took both the city and the sport by storm.

Named after Huntsville’s celebrated space industry, the Stars became one of the biggest attractions in all of Minor League Baseball that season - boasting a dugout full of top Oakland prospects who would ultimately fuel the Athletics' big-league success later in the decade, including a 1989 World Series title sweep of the San Francisco Giants.  Led by hot prospects/future MLB notables like Tim Belcher, Stan Javier, Luis Polonia, Terry Steinbach, and José Canseco, the Stars also featured a solid cast of gutsy minor-league role players who, despite never getting called up to "The Show," proved crucial to the team's championship that magical first season.   Though merely an opening chapter in Huntsville's baseball history now (the Stars moved to Biloxi, MS in 2015 to become the Shuckers; the Southern League's Rocket City Trash Pandas brought minor league ball back to the nearby suburb of Madison in 2020), the team and their story is one worth remembering.

View Details

With the New Jersey Devils still in contention in this year's NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs, we turn the dials on our George Michael Sports Machine back to the late 1970s/early 1980s with hockey historian Greg Enright ("Rocky Hockey: The Short but Wild Ride of the NHL's Colorado Rockies") - for a deep dive into the Newark, NJ-based franchise's tenuous six-year incarnation as Denver's Colorado Rockies (1976-82). It's a story that traverses four separate owners, six different coaches, a constant threat of relocation, a terrible lease arrangement in a state-of the art (McNichols) arena, one meager (1978) playoff appearance (despite finishing 21 games under .500), an iconic logo - and a bombastic (1979-80) season full of sour "Grapes."

If you consider yourself a fan of the Devils or even today's Colorado Avalanche, you'll love Enright's book - and this conversation!

View Details

Long-time Chicago White Sox fan and unwitting basement documentarian Matt Flesch joins the pod this week to discuss the story behind his extraordinary new three-part YouTube documentary "Last Comiskey" - a video love letter to the South Siders' final 1990 season in the venerable park once known as the "Baseball Palace of the World." From Dan Day Jr.'s review on "The Hitless Wonder Movie Blog": "The 1990 Chicago White Sox were not a championship team - they didn't even make the playoffs. But the 1990 season was one of the most notable and dramatic in White Sox history. It was the last season the team would play in venerable Comiskey Park, and it was a season that saw the Sox go beyond low expectations and challenge the defending champion Oakland Athletics for supremacy in the Western Division of the American League. "The scrappy Sox of 1990 didn't have overwhelming stats, or a roster filled with All-Stars--their most famous player was 42 year old veteran catcher Carlton Fisk. The team only hit a total of 106 home runs (their leading power hitter was Fisk, with only 18). But they played a brand of baseball that focused on "Doin' the Little Things" (the team's slogan for that year). The team also had budding young stars Robin Ventura, Jack McDowell, Ozzie Guillen, Sammy Sosa, and Frank Thomas, who made his Major League debut that season.

"The exciting division chase between the White Sox and the Athletics coincided with the season-long celebration of the original Comiskey Park, a legendary ball yard that sadly didn't get its proper respect until it was getting ready to be torn down.

"'Last Comiskey' covers all of this in spectacular and entertaining fashion, by featuring talks with Sox players, team & stadium employees, fans, and local journalists who covered what went on in the 1990 season. The series gives a 'regular guy' view of what happened with the White Sox in 1990, along with recreating the sights, sounds, and ambiance of Old Comiskey Park."

View Details

We celebrate our 300th trip around the track with a special roundtable conversation on the colorful history of NASCAR racing - with award-winning stock car reporter-historians Kelly Crandall, Jimmy Creed, Mike Hembree, and Al Pearce ("NASCAR 75 Years").   In addition to looking back at some of the most iconic moments in the circuit's first 75 years, we also get an inside look at how their new historical opus came together - as well as honest assessments of where NASCAR stands in the American pro sports landscape in 2023, and some hot takes on what's in store for the sport in the years ahead.   Whether you are a NASCAR diehard or a casual fan, you will enjoy this (beautifully designed and extensively illustrated) book - as well as this conversation!

View Details

We point the Good Seats Wayback Machine back a hundred years to the Roaring '20s - for a look at baseball's then-New York Giants and their larger-than-life owner Charles Stoneham - with baseball biographer Rob Garratt ("Jazz Age Giant: Charles A. Stoneham and New York City Baseball in the Roaring Twenties"). From the dust jacket of Jazz Age Giant: "Short, stout, and jowly, Charlie Stoneham embodied a Jazz Age stereotype—a business and sporting man by day, he led another life by night. He threw lavish parties, lived extravagantly, and was often chronicled in the city tabloids. "Little is known about how he came to be one of the most successful investment brokers in what were known as 'bucket shops,' a highly speculative and controversial branch of Wall Street. One thing about Stoneham is clear, however: at the close of World War I he was a wealthy man, with a net worth of more than $10 million. "This wealth made it possible for him to purchase majority control of the Giants, one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. Stoneham, an owner of racehorses, a friend to local politicians and Tammany Hall, a socialite and a man well-placed in New York business and political circles, was also implicated in a number of business scandals and criminal activities. "The Giants’ principal owner had to contend with federal indictments, civil lawsuits, hostile fellow magnates, and troubles with booze, gambling, and women. But during his sixteen-year tenure as club president, the Giants achieved more success than the club had seen under any prior regime."

View Details

ESPN multi-platform writer/reporter/host Ryan McGee ("Welcome to the Circus of Baseball: A Story of the Perfect Summer at the Perfect Ballpark at the Perfect Time") joins us this week to reminisce about his early-career experiences as a $100-a-week intern with 1994's Class A South Atlantic League Asheville Tourists - a proud minor league baseball team in the heart of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Asheville's history with minor league ball dates all the way back to 1897 (think Moonshiners, Redbirds and Mountaineers), and its venerable 99-year-old (and twice-renovated) McCormick Field has seen multiple teams across numerous leagues sport the Tourists nickname - with legendary future Hall of Famers like Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Robinson in the club's rosters at one time or another. In 1994, however, the "Sally League" Tourists were a consolation prize of a job for the newly minted University of Tennessee communications grad McGee, who, after bombing an interview for an entry-level gig with his long-coveted ESPN, instead settled in for a life-altering and lesson-teaching summer of literal "inside baseball" - with often hilarious results. Join us for a look back at a quintessentially classic old-school minor league baseball season - and hear how McGee ultimately parlayed the experience into a second chance at the "Worldwide Leader in Sports" - with very different results.

View Details

It's more International Hockey League (1945-2001) memories this week as Episode 181 guest Eric Weltner returns for a look back at one of minor league hockey's most dominant, yet curiously ephemeral franchises - the Cincinnati Mohawks (1952-58). Not to be confused with the middling AHL team of the same name that pre-dated them by three years, the IHL Mohawks were the class of their circuit during the 1950s - winning an incredible six consecutive regular season crowns and five Turner Cup championships during their brief six-year existence.  No wonder, since the Mohawks constituted the primary farm team of the NHL's then-supreme and talent-overloaded Montreal Canadiens, who themselves were busy monopolizing multi-consecutive Stanley Cups during the decade. Weltner's new film "The Mohawk Monopoly" looks at the curious story of the Mohawks' incredible, yet short-lived run, their revered home ice at the Cincinnati Gardens, and the team's place in a long line of professional hockey franchises that called (and still call) "The 'Nati" home.

View Details

In 1991, twenty-something baseball fanatics Bill Craib and Sue Easler did something no one else had ever done before - they went to a game at all 178 major and minor league baseball parks in one season. Craib and Easler drove nearly 54,000 miles and shot home-movie-style video (remember VHS?) at each stop - selected footage of which was featured on a segment that became known as "Bill & Sue's Excellent Adventure" on ESPN's weekly "Major League Baseball Magazine" program. The couple became celebrities of the moment long before social media - spotlighted in major outlets of the day like ABC's "Good Morning America", Sports Illustrated, CNN, The New York Times - and prominently featured in local media wherever they stopped. 30+ years later, Craib ("In League With America: The Story of an Excellent Adventure") has finally written the book he intended to write then; a story about more than just baseball parks, but a tale about what it's like to chase a dream and have it come true - and, more deeply, a tableau of 1990s America as seen through the lens of its official pastime.

View Details

It's an early Spring Break hiatus for us this week - but not before sitting down for a very fun interview with CFL America blog/podcast publisher and friend-of-the-show Greg James - as a guest on his popular Sports History Network podcast "From the 55 Yard Line."

Tim and Greg go deep into the origin story of Good Seats Still Available, as well as a veritable audio potpourri of hot takes on what we've learned from doing the show over the course of nearly 300 episodes - and where we think pro football (and sports generally) might be headed in the years ahead.

Please enjoy this conversation we recorded a few weeks back - and be sure to check out all the other great podcasts across the Sports History Network!

View Details

We head West this week to pay a visit to the "California Sports Guy" Dan Cisco ("California Sports Astounding: Fun, Unknown, and Surprising Facts from Statehood to Sunday"), and stir up a rich bouillabaisse of little-known factoids about defunct, previously domiciled and otherwise forgotten teams and leagues who once called the Golden State home.   Discover the reason why Oakland was chosen as an inaugural franchise in 1960's American Football League debut - and why its original name was  hastily changed to "Raiders" just weeks before its first game.   Follow the move of the Pacific Coast League's original Hollywood Stars to San Diego in 1936 to become the Padres - and how a talented young player named Ted Williams unceremoniously ended his pitching career there before making it to the bigs.   And learn which legendary NBA basketball helped launch the International Volleyball Association's Irvine-based charter Southern California Bangers franchise in 1975 - and ultimately become the league's commissioner two years later.   PLUS, we make a bevy of unsolicited suggestions for Cisco's inevitable revised edition (and you can too)!

View Details

Legendary Boston sports photographer Steve Babineau ("Behind the Lens: The World Hockey Association 50 Years Later") joins the pod this week to discuss his new, lovingly-curated collection of largely never-before-seen images of the colorful 1970s challenger hockey league that helped kick-start a life-long love for photography - and a 50+ year career behind the lens shooting some of the game's biggest stars. A teenaged "Babs" was there at the old Boston Gardens on October 12, 1972, when the inaugural puck was dropped in the history of the New England Whalers (vs. the Philadelphia Blazers, on the second-ever day of WHA action) - unwittingly capturing some of the very first images of the revolutionary circuit that would ultimately give minor-league journeymen, NHL elder statesmen and even fledgling junior hockey phenoms (like a 17-year-old wunderkind named Wayne Gretzky) a chance to not only play, but creatively thrive. And that guy Gretzky? Well, we'll let Babs tell you that story! + + + RUN (DON'T WALK) TO GET Steve's book (co-authored with Brian Codagnone) "Behind the Lens: The World Hockey Association 50 Years Later" from ECW Press NOW!

View Details

[After an entertaining "inaugural" weekend of the XFL's third incarnation, we dig into the archives for this 2019 conversation with author Brett Forrest - and a rewind to the league's original season back in 2001!]

As another NFL season closes, we shift gears toward the forthcoming Alliance of American Football – the first of two new leagues attempting to again extend the pro game into viable Spring season play – where the USFL, World League of American Football and NFL Europe have famously tried before.

The other – both in 2001 and in a reincarnated form coming next year – was and is the XFL, which we finally sink our teeth into for the first time this week with Wall Street Journal national security reporter Brett Forrest (Long Bomb: How the XFL Became TV's Biggest Fiasco).

We drop this episode on the 18th anniversary of when the audacious joint venture between the Vince McMahon-helmed World Wresting Federation (now WWE) and the Dick Ebersol-captained NBC Sports opened play at a raucous Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas to see the hometown Outlaws battle the already-villainous New York/New Jersey Hitmen in front of a national primetime television audience.

Nearly two decades later, most who witnessed it (not to mention the tumultuous season that followed) still don’t know what to make of it.

Forrest digs into: the process of tackling his then-first-ever book assignment with Long Bomb (including the pre-season magazine article from which it came); some of the curious characters (the seemingly-legitimizing presence of Dick Butkus, the unwitting marketing genius of Rod “He Hate Me” Smart, the hungry group of eager players simply wanting one last shot at playing pro football) he encountered along the way; and the less-than-enthusiastic response of McMahon to the idea of a book about the league in the first place.

Be sure to check out the great XFL shirts and replica jerseys from our friends at 503 Sports!

View Details

On the eve of the most significant changes to Major League Baseball's rules and scheduling, we continue our lament of 2021's radical streamlining of the minor leagues and obsess about the demise of its oldest circuit - the New York-Penn League - with City University of New York history/philosophy/political science professor Michael Sokolow ("Bush League: The Brooklyn Cyclones, Staten Island Yankees, and the New York-Penn League"). A staple of upstate New York and interior Pennsylvania summers dating back to 1939, the Class D-turned-Short-Season-Class-A NYPL represented 82 years of small-market America's pastime in the cradle of its historical birthplace - until MLB's grand realignment plan led to its disbandment in 2020. We talk about the league's history, what led to its ultimate demise, as well as explore two of the NYPL's most curious teams - the New York Mets-owned Brooklyn Cyclones (originally the St. Catherines [ON] Blue Jays, and now part of MiLB's High-A South Atlantic League), and the former Oneonta, NY-relocated Staten Island Yankees (now reincarnated as the independent Atlantic League FerryHawks) - in an attempt to bring the "big time" minor league game to New York City's outer boroughs. + + + PRE-ORDER "Bush League: The Brooklyn Cyclones, Staten Island Yankees, and the New York-Penn League" from SUNY Press/Excelsior NOW!

View Details

We channel our inner yellow tuxedo this week for a revealing conversation with the inimitable minor league baseball impresario Jesse Cole - and a look into the phenomenon behind his ground-breaking Savannah Bananas franchise - as it migrates from its collegiate summer Coastal Plain League roots into an audacious (and already sold-out) cross-country barnstorming tour featuring its own wildly entertaining brand of "Banana Ball."   + + + PRE-ORDER Jesse Cole's new book (with Don Yaeger):​ ​​"​Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas​"​

BUY Jesse's inspirational best-sellers: "​Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience​"​ AND ​"​Find Your Yellow Tux: How to Be Successful by Standing Out​"​ NOW!

View Details

[It's a quick trip to the Bay Area this week for an archive fan favorite from 2017, featuring a true American sports original!]

America’s most famous professional sports cheerleader “Krazy” George Henderson (Still Krazy After All These Cheers) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss some of the wackiest adventures from his 40+ years of live performances – and how a self-described shy, mediocre schoolteacher ultimately followed his passion to a unique and storied career converting passive game-day attendees into cheering fanatics. 

Henderson (along with his signature drum!) recounts how a school field trip to an Oakland Seals NHL hockey game led to his first sustaining professional gig; describes how he and the NASL’s San Jose Earthquakes changed the face of professional soccer in the mid-1970s; recalls how his success with the NFL’s Houston Oilers almost led to banishment from performing at pro football games; and breaks down the chronology of the formative elements of his most famous in-stadium creation – The Wave.

View Details

While American tackle football has long been considered an exclusively male sport, this week's guest Russ Crawford ("Women's American Football: Breaking Barriers On and Off the Gridiron") takes us on an eye-opening journey over the decades that highlights the persistent and still-growing interest of women playing the game - including professionally. Anecdotal evidence abounds of amateur football competitions, collegiate intramural leagues, and even an 1926 NFL halftime exhibition featuring Frankford's "Lady Yellow Jackets" - proving women's intrigue with the sport. The women’s game became more organized in ​1965 with the launch of sports entrepreneur​ ​Sid Friedman's ​aspirational ​Women's Professional Football League​, and later more forcefully in 1974 with the founding of the​ pioneering National Women’s Football League​ ​- ​featuring ​notable teams such as the ​Houston Herricanes, ​Dallas Bluebonnets, Toledo Troopers, Oklahoma City Dolls, and Detroit Demons. ​Today, ​two robust national semi-pro outdoor leagues (the 60+ team Women’s Football Alliance​; ​the 18-club Women’s National Football Conference)​, plus an increasingly evolved/credible indoor "X League" (fka as both the infamous "Lingerie," and later "Legends" Football League)​ - keep the women's gridiron game alive, with undoubtedly more pioneering to come. + + + PURCHASE Russ Crawford's book "Women's American Football: Breaking Barriers On and Off the Gridiron" in either hardcover or Kindle electronic versions NOW!

View Details

We point our GPS towards the Garden State this week, for a return to the days of pro hoops in places like the "RAC" (Piscataway's Rutgers Athletic Center), the "Rock" (Newark's Prudential Center), and the strangely iconic Meadowlands - as we look back at 35 seasons of the oft-forgotten New Jersey incarnation of NBA basketball's peripatetic Nets franchise with sports historian Łukasz Muniowski ("Turnpike Team: A History of the New Jersey Nets, 1977-2012"). Though replete with memorable moments both before (as the inaugural American Basketball Association's New Jersey Americans, and later the twice-champion, Julius Erving-led, Nassau Coliseum-based New York Nets) - and after (as the thoroughly rebranded, Barclays Center-domiciled Brooklyn Nets, since 2012) - it is the club's time as the New Jersey Nets that stands out to fans and scribes alike as the most colorful, bewilderingly forlorn and oddly endearing period of its existence. Join us for memories of players like Bernard "Sky B.B." King, "Super John" Williamson, Buck Williams, Sam Bowie, Derrick Coleman, Stephon Marbury, Jason Kidd, and Vince Carter - and a team that twice came this close to an NBA Finals championship (2001-02; 2002-03), unwittingly solidifying a decades-old inferiority complex that arguably still permeates the franchise today. + + + PURCHASE Łukasz Muniowski's book "Turnpike Team: A History of the New Jersey Nets, 1977-2012" in either paperback or Kindle electronic versions NOW!

View Details

In 2014, Major League Baseball's Official Historian John Thorn and veteran baseball journalist Alan Schwarz published an authoritative and thought-provoking list of "Baseball’s 100 Most Important People​"​ - including more than its fair share of surprisingly influential figures.

Nestled between National Baseball Hall of Famers "Hammerin'" Hank Greenberg and "King" Kelly at number 79 on that list is this week's guest:

"More than anyone, Miles Wolff is responsible for the modern renaissance of minor-league baseball, as it emerged from the lean years of the 1960s and ’70s to the boom of the 1980s and ’90s. Wolff bought the Carolina League’s Durham Bulls for just $2,666 in 1979, nurtured it into a local success, and owned the franchise as it became a national symbol of the minor leagues after the release of the film ​"​Bull Durham​"​ in 1988. He sold the team in 1990 for $4 million just as the minors began to flourish again.

"A baseball purist at heart, Wolff grew frustrated at the money- and marketing-driven approach exhibited by the regular minor leagues, whose clubs were beholden to the major-league organizations to which they fed players. (Communities rarely got to know the best players, because they were promoted to the next level within three or sixth months.) So in 1993, Wolff re-established the Northern League, a circuit in the upper Midwest made up of teams that operated outside the sphere of Organized Baseball. The Northern League’s six clubs signed players — often minor-league veterans on their way down or overlooked collegians — to stock their rosters. The Northern League was an instant success and spawned imitators across the country.

"Wolff’s first baseball job came in 1971 as the general manager of the Double-A Savannah (Georgia) Braves, and he subsequently was a GM in Anderson, South Carolina., and Jacksonville, Florida.

"Wolff also owned Baseball America, the Durham-based magazine of the minor leagues, for most of its lifetime. He bought the magazine from founder Allan Simpson in 1982 and served as president and publisher until selling the company in 2000."

• • +

PRE-ORDER Miles Wolff's soon-to-be-released memoir​ "​There's a Bulldozer on Home Plate: A 50-Year Journey in Minor League Baseball​"​ AND/OR the upcoming final (4th) edition of the indispensable "Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball: A Complete Record of Teams, Leagues and Seasons, 1876-2019​" ​NOW!

View Details

[We celebrate the amazing life of the legendary Pelé with a reissue of our 2018 conversation with the man chiefly responsible for coaxing the "Black Pearl" out of retirement in 1975 to join the NASL's then-fledgling New York Cosmos - Clive Toye!]

+ + +

Soccer America columnist (and Episode #6 interviewee) Paul Gardner summed up this week's Hall of Fame guest in his May 2015 commentary:

“The debt owed by American soccer to Clive Toye is a vast one. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say, flatly, that without Toye’s blind faith in the sport in the 1970s, pro soccer in the USA would have withered and died. Yes, Phil Woosnam and Lamar Hunt and Bob Hermann were there too. But in those unpromising years it was Toye’s voice -- it came in a steady flow of ridiculously optimistic press releases and grandiose plans for a future that few others even dared to ponder -- that called loudest.

“The New York Cosmos general manager credited with turning that league’s fortunes around when he signed Pele to a contract in 1975. Toye, who was born in England and came to the United States in 1967 at the age of 33, was president of three North American Soccer League teams – the Cosmos, Chicago Sting and Toronto Blizzard – and general manager of the [original National Professional Soccer League and subsequent NASL] Baltimore Bays. [He] was an official of the NASL in helping it through its crisis year of 1969 and in its final months in 1985 – and helped to found the third American Soccer League in 1988.

“There has always been the spirit of a showman in Toye, and surely it was that spirit that enabled Toye to overlook the virtual collapse of the old North American Soccer League and to see instead a glittering future for the sport in the USA, even to declare to anyone who was listening -- and not many were in those days -- the preposterous notion that the USA should begin preparing to stage the World Cup.

“And when the NASL, by the skin of its teeth and by the mad devotion of Toye et al., did survive, it was Toye who gave the reborn league its glittering image with his invention of the Cosmos, with his canny maneuvering and dealing, who brought Pele and Beckenbauer to New York. Showmanship indeed.”

Toye (A Kick in the Grass: The Slow Rise and Quick Demise of the NASL; Anywhere in the World) joins host Tim Hanlon for a lyrical and anecdote-filled journey through the pro league that he helped create, later put to rest, and which ultimately shored up the long-term foundation of the “beautiful game” in America.

View Details

[We kick off our holiday break this week with a deep descent into the "Good Seats" archives - and an eyebrow-raising revisit of the enigmatic Continental Indoor Soccer League of the 1990s with former play-by-play broadcaster Kenn Tomasch!]

Former sportscaster and fellow defunct pro sports enthusiast Kenn Tomasch joins host Tim Hanlon to dig deep into the two-season saga of the Indiana (née Indianapolis) Twisters of the Continental Indoor Soccer League – the mid-90s summertime indoor soccer circuit hatched by a collective of team and arena owners from the NBA and NHL to keep their facilities humming during their respective “off”-seasons.

CISL franchises controlled by entities outside the big-league fraternity were also part of the mix (accounting for half of the eventual 18 teams during the league’s five-year run from 1993-97) – including the tumultuously tenuous Twisters, who cycled through two separate ownership groups as well as a temporary spell of league receivership during its brief 21-month existence.

As the radio “Voice of the Twisters,” Tomasch was there for all of it, including:

• A rousing home debut on June 21, 1996 at Indianapolis’ Market Square Arena that saw the club drop an entertaining 7-6 overtime decision to the Washington Warthogs;
• Dwindling announced home-game crowds of barely 2,000+ just months later;
• Co-owner Rodney Goins ceding his role as president mid-season to become an active player on the Twisters roster – debuting as US pro sports’ first-ever player-owner on August 23, 1996;
• Becoming “wards of the league” two weeks later when Goins and his co-owner brother suspend operations – and team radio broadcasts;
• New ownership, team name, logo, colors – and a surprising second-place regular season finish in 1997;
• Losing home-field playoff advantage due to a scheduling conflict, and ultimately an early exit from a potential title run; AND
• The abrupt folding of the venerable San Diego Sockers just days before the 1997 season that foreshadowed the CISL’s demise later in the year.

View Details

​In 1966, when a still-young Dallas Cowboys franchise ended six years of NFL futility with its first winning season and a championship game appearance, the team’s founder/owner Clint Murchison, Jr. was already dreaming bigger. In order to vault his club into the league's elite, Murchison knew he needed a better home situation than as a renter at the aging Cotton Bowl in Dallas’ Fair Park - one where he could eventually generate his own direct revenue streams, while simultaneously elevating fans' game-day experience. Clint, Jr.s' s son Burk Murchison and Dallas Morning News writer Michael Granberry ("Hole in the Roof: The Dallas Cowboys, Clint Murchison Jr., and the Stadium That Changed American Sports Forever") join the podcast this week to help us delve into the history and mythology of Texas Stadium - the Cowboys' groundbreaking suburban Irving, TX home for 38 seasons (1971-2008) that not only fulfilled their owner's ahead-of-its-time vision, but also became the de facto template for modern-day sports facility expectations - for better or worse.

View Details

​We're back from our extended Thanksgiving break with an inside look at the venerable sports venue that single-handedly elevated 1960s-era Atlanta to "major league" status, and cemented its place among the most important American cities.   Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium - known simply as "Atlanta Stadium" when it opened in 1965 - was the long-time home of Major League Baseball's Braves (1966-96), the National Football League's Falcons (1966-91), two incarnations of the North American Soccer League's Atlanta Chiefs, and college football's postseason Peach Bowl (1968-92).   And nobody knew its inner workings better than the facility's hard-working "ground crew" who tended to the whims and vicissitudes of the teams, players, owners, and even fans that called the stadium home for 30+ memorable years.   1970s stadium crew members Harvey Lee Frazier and David Fisher - along with "as-told-to" author Austin Gisriel ("Ground Crew Confidential") - join the podcast to share a bevy of little-known "behind-the scenes" memories of the facility that helped put Atlanta on the map - with the help of influential figures like Hank Aaron, Phil Woosnam, Ted Turner, the Beatles, and even high-wire great Karl Wallenda.

View Details

[We near the end of our Thanksgiving leftovers this week with a June 2018 archive re-release favorite featuring US Soccer Hall of Fame broadcaster JP Dellacamera - currently in Qatar covering this year's FIFA World Cup for Fox Sports!]

Fox Sports soccer play-by-play broadcaster extraordinaire JP Dellacamera joins the podcast this week to discuss a pioneering career in sports announcing spanning over 30 years – including calling this year’s 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia – his ninth consecutive men’s quadrennial assignment since Mexico ’86.

Widely acknowledged as the original voice of US Soccer, Dellacamera’s calls have become synonymous with some of modern-day American soccer’s most indelible moments – including his accounts of the US Women’s National Team’s dramatic penalty kick shootout victory over China in the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and Paul Caligiuri’s historic “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” against Trinidad & Tobago in the final game of 1989 CONCACAF qualifying that punched the US Men’s National Team’s ticket for Italy ’90 – ending a 40-year World Cup finals drought, and reorienting the sport’s trajectory in the ‘States for decades to come.

The road to broadcasting global soccer’s marquee events has by no means been a straight and narrow one, however, and we (of course) chat with Dellacamera about some of the more memorable “forgotten” stops made along the way, including:

• Talking his way into his professional debut calling local TV games for the 1978 NASL expansion Detroit Express;
• Handling radio play-by-play for the American Soccer League’s ALPO dog food-sponsored Pennsylvania Stoners;
• Parlaying years of minor league hockey broadcast experience into lead announcing duties for indoor soccer’s Pittsburgh Spirit of the fledgling MISL;
• Cementing his stature as the voice of US women’s soccer as the play-by-play lead for the 2001 launch of the WUSA; and
• Returning to his first love of pro hockey – finally at the NHL level – with the short-lived Atlanta Thrashers.

View Details

[Our Thanksgiving gift this week is a December 2017 archive re-release favorite with world-renowned singer/entertainer Pat Boone!]

We usher in the holidays and round out our debut season with the inimitable Pat Boone – an American entertainment legend and inveterate business entrepreneur, with a life-long passion for the sport of basketball. In a career spanning over six decades (and counting!), the incomparable Boone has just about done it all in the fields of music, film, television, and stage, as well as the pursuit of a wide variety of business interests – including being the majority owner of the American Basketball Association’s charter Bay Area franchise, the Oakland Oaks.

Denied the ability to play its NBA All-Star marquee signing (and cross-town San Francisco Warriors star) Rick Barry for the inaugural 1967-68 ABA season, Boone’s Oaks endured a league-worst 22-56 record, amid dismally low crowds at the brand-new Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena. Barry’s official arrival the next season (despite a knee injury that curtailed his play after only 35 games), paired with the hiring of two-time NBA champion head coach Alex Hannum, and an influx of future perennial All-Star talent like Doug Moe and Larry Brown, instantly rejuvenated the club’s competitive profile, as the Oaks zoomed to a league-leading 60-18 “worst-to-first” regular season record and a dominating run in the playoffs to capture the 1968-89 league championship.

Despite the reversal of fortune on the hardwood, Boone lost a fortune at the box office (in excess of $2 million in just two seasons), as neither Barry nor a title provided any significant lift in ticket sales – or visible hope of near-term future improvement in the competitive Bay Area market. Former Baltimore Bullets NBA owner (and later Major Indoor Soccer League co-founder) Earl Foreman purchased the franchise (and its debts) from Boone for $2.6 million in August of 1969 and moved them to the Nation’s Capital, where they became the one-year Washington Caps, replete with a reluctant Barry in tow.

In this revealing conversation, Boone recounts: the events that led him to become a pro basketball owner; the tortuous journey of landing Rick Barry; the thrill of winning an ABA championship; the unwitting blank check that kept the Oaks financially afloat, but nearly sank Boone personally and professionally; and why, despite his continued passion for the sport, he never pursued another professional basketball ownership opportunity in the decidedly more stable NBA in later years.

Plus: a ring more expensive Elizabeth Taylor's; dunking over Bill Russell; comparing pro titles with Mark Cuban; and our quest for footage of the 1978 CBS/NBA Three-on-Three Tournament!

View Details

In 1974, a small Midlands underwear firm changed soccer forever when it won the contract as official kit supplier for England's national team - featuring a tradition-busting combination of bright colors, definitional striping, and, uniquely, prominently positioned manufacturer's logos on both shirt and shorts. Admiral Sportswear’s bold designs and distinctive branding - soon outfitting storied club sides like Manchester United, Leicester City, Norwich City, West Ham, and Sheffield United - quickly caught fans' attention with their detailed "replica" versions, which offered the most ardent supporters a novel opportunity to literally dress like their favorite pro players.
Sports documentarian/author Andy Wells ("Get Shirty: The Rise & Fall of Admiral Sportswear") tells us the story of how Admiral unwittingly invented today's now-multi-billion-dollar replica jersey industry - while revolutionizing the worlds of sports commerce and street fashion alike. If you followed any of the franchises from the late 1970s/early 1980s North American Soccer League or Major Indoor Soccer League (or even the American Soccer League's Columbus Magic) - chances are you remember (or even owned) an Admiral shirt!

View Details

An important but surprisingly little-remembered story in the history of pro football - and a turning point in the city of New Orleans' eventually successful pursuit of an NFL franchise - is the subject of this week's hugely intriguing conversation with Erin Grayson Sapp, author of "Moving the Chains: The Civil Rights Protest That Saved the Saints And Transformed New Orleans". From the book's dust-jacket:

We remember the 1966 birth of the New Orleans Saints as a shady quid pro quo between the NFL commissioner and a Louisiana congressman. Moving the Chains is the untold story of the athlete protest that necessitated this backroom deal, as New Orleans scrambled to respond to a very public repudiation of the racist policies that governed the city. In the decade that preceded the 1965 athlete walkout, a reactionary backlash had swept through Louisiana, bringing with it a host of new segregation laws and enough social strong-arming to quash any complaints, even from suffering sports promoters. Nationwide protests had assailed the Tulane Green Wave, the Sugar Bowl, and the AFL’s preseason stop-offs, and only legal loopholes and a lot of luck kept football alive in the city. Still, live it did, and in January 1965, locals believed they were just a week away from landing their own pro franchise. All they had to do was pack Tulane Stadium for the city’s biggest audition yet, the AFL All-Star game. Ultimately, all fifty-eight Black and white teammates walked out of the game to protest the town’s lingering segregation practices and public abuse of Black players. Following that, love of the gridiron prompted and excused something out of sync with the city’s branding: change. In less than two years, the Big Easy made enough progress to pass a blitz inspection by Black and white NFL officials and receive the long-desired expansion team. The story of the athletes whose bravery led to change quickly fell by the wayside. Locals framed desegregation efforts as proof that the town had been progressive and tolerant all along. Furthermore, when a handshake between Pete Rozelle and Hale Boggs gave America its first Super Bowl and New Orleans its own club, the city proudly clung to that version of events, never admitting the cleanup even took place.

View Details

There are few moments in sports more thrilling, compelling, or inspiring than a comeback story. From the resurgence of a sports figure to a team that defies the odds for an unexpected win, to someone who never quite made it, finally getting their shot, these stories are the lifeblood of sports.

Nobody knows this more than former NFL star linebacker, Ryan Shazier who scratched and clawed his way back from paralysis after a devastating on-field hit, to walk back on a football field just a few years later under his own power. It’s the stuff movies are made of -- and now it’s the stuff "Don’t Call It A Comeback" will
bring you each week.

"Don’t Call It A Comeback" will spotlight the biggest sports comeback story of the week and dive deep into every aspect of what makes each tale more incredible than the last.

Hosted by Ryan Shazier and his pal, TV writer, radio personality, and sports superfan, Dave Dameshek, "Don’t Call It A Comeback" will shout out the underdogs, Cinderellas, unlikely heroes, and surprising achievements all across the sports landscape -- and explore the highs, lows and hurdles each subject faced on their triumphant comeback journey.

Listen to "Don’t Call It A Comeback" now wherever you pod!

View Details

As preparations for next month's 2022 FIFA World Cup spectacle in Qatar enter their final stages, we turn our attention back to the pitch for an intriguing look back at a seminal international "friendly" tournament earnestly designed to crown a world club soccer champion - and the unwitting genesis for today's officially-sanctioned FIFA Club World Cup competition. Soccer writer and part-time English lower-division amateur coach Dan Williamson ("When Two Worlds Collide: The Intercontinental Cup Years") takes us on a journey from 1960 to 2004, when the Intercontinental Cup (later known as the one-match "Toyota Cup" from 1980-onward) ambitiously sought to determine the world's best club team by annually pitting the champions of the two historically strongest continents - Europe and South America - against each other in front of an internationally televised audience.
​Although never formally recognized by the sport's governing body at the time, soccer media and fans alike reveled in clashes featuring some of the modern era's most iconic franchises and legendary players - and had no problem acknowledging each year's victors as the not-so-unofficial club champions of the world. We dig into the Cup's controversial (and sometimes violent) clashes of the late 1960s; its decline (including numerous team boycotts) during the 70s; a competition-saving, Japanese-sponsored rebirth in 1980 - and the eventual absorption and expansion of the series into FIFA's formal orbit in the 2000s - replete with the retroactive (and ironic) reclassification of its winners as (now-)"official" world champions. + + + REMEMBER: Get up to $100 in matching deposit credit when you sign up to try PrizePicks - and use promo code GOODSEATS!

View Details

Fans of Americana music may recognize the name Bob Carlin as one of the country's leading practitioners of the classic "clawhammer" style of banjo. His myriad recordings, historical writings and frequent performances across the US and around the world have won him plaudits from old-time banjo scholars and aficionados alike.
But when he's not downpicking in the studio or performing on stage, Carlin is likely to be found elsewhere on the road, obliging one of his life's other passions - chronicling the histories of North American "lost" baseball parks. Carlin's new book, "New York's Great Lost Ballparks," gives us the perfect excuse to delve into both ends of the Empire State's (and the Big Apple's) sizable trove of past professional baseball diamonds - from the iconic and memorable (like the Bronx's original Yankee Stadium, and the four versions of Manhattan's fabled Polo Grounds), to upstate Binghamton's oft-forgotten Johnson Field (RIP: 1968), the decades-long home of the Parlor City's various minor league league teams (e.g., Bingos, Brooms and Triplets). And, of course - everything in between! + + + DON'T FORGET: Get up to $100 in matching deposit credit when you sign up to try PrizePicks - and use promo code GOODSEATS!

View Details

​​Pittsburgh-native sports historian (and previous Episode 242 guest) Dave Finoli ("Where Pittsburgh Played: Oakland’s Historic Sports Venues") returns to the pod for a deep dive into the notable histories of the Steel City's important first generation of modern-day sports venues. We dig into some of the memorable (and many not-so) professional teams and leagues that called the city's Oakland neighborhood home, in places like: Pitt Stadium (NFL football's Steelers); the Duquesne Gardens (the early NHL Pirates & numerous minor-league hockey clubs; the BAA basketball Ironmen); and of course, the legendary Forbes Field - which not only housed baseball's Pirates, but also the same-named (pre-Steelers) sister football franchise, two WWII-era NFL contractions (1943's "Steagles" & 1944's "Card-Pitt"), the Negro Leagues' iconic Homestead Grays, and even the 1967 one-and-only season of the NPSL soccer Phantoms. PLUS: we "send in" a special collegiate nod to the still in-use Fitzgerald Field House ! + + +

AND: Get up to $100 in matching deposit credit when you sign up to try PrizePicks - and use promo code GOODSEATS!

View Details

​The Hartford Whalers were a beloved hockey team from the​ moment of their founding in 1972 as the World Hockey Association's New England Whalers.
Playing in the National Hockey League’s smallest market and arena after the 1979 WHA merger/absorption/expansion, the Whalers struggled in a division that included both the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens - but the club's fans were among the NHL’s most loyal. In 1995, new owners demanded a new arena - and when plans fell through, moved the team to Ralegh, North Carolina - where they became today's Carolina Hurricanes.
Astonishingly, the Whalers remain as popular as ever in their former home town and previous incarnation. Even though more than two decades have passed since Connecticut’s only professional sports team relocated, nobody has truly forgotten the team, its history, or its uniquely memorable (and still highly profitable) logo. And while the NHL continues to thrive without them, the Whalers' impact stretches far beyond the ice and into a still very-much-alive cultural phenomenon.

Boston Globe sportswriter Christopher Price ("Bleeding Green: A History of the Hartford Whalers") grew up in Connecticut as a diehard Whalers fan, experiencing firsthand the team’s bond with the community. Drawing from all aspects of the team’s past, he shares an uncensored history of ​the region’s still-favorite professional sports franchise. PLUS: Listen for your chance to win a free copy of "Bleeding Green"! + + +

​AND: ​Get up to $100 in matching deposit credit when you sign up to try PrizePicks - and use promo code GOODSEATS!

View Details

He's enshrined as a member of the College Football Hall of Fame for his record-breaking, two-time consensus All-American fullback rushing career at Syracuse in the mid-1960s.

He's an inductee of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, most notably for his dominant rushing prowess with the Don Shula-coached Miami Dolphins of the early 1970s - and his leading role in the club's three consecutive Super Bowl appearances, two back-to-back NFL titles, and its unparalleled perfect undefeated season in 1972.

But in our conversation this week with legendary gridiron star Larry Csonka ("Head On: A Memoir"), we digress (and obsess) into some of the lesser-known chapters of an impressively unique career - including his first professional years with Miami as part of the old American Football League in the late 60s; a bombshell move (along with Dolphin teammates Paul Warfield and Jim Kiick) to the upstart World Football League's Memphis Southmen (née Toronto Northmen) in 1974; and front office roles with the original USFL's Jacksonville Bulls (1984-85).

Get up to $100 in matching deposit credit when you sign up to try PrizePicks - and use promo code GOODSEATS!

View Details

We welcome budding sports historian - and previous Episode 190 guest - Alan Bass ("Ed Snider: The Last Sports Mogul") back to our microphones this week, this time to delve into the life and times of modern-day Philadelphia's patron saint of professional sports.

The dustjacket for The Last Sports Mogul makes the case:

"Most sports team owners make their money elsewhere and purchase a team as an extravagant hobby - but that is not the story of Ed Snider. One of the few owners in history to get control of a franchise by mortgaging nearly everything to his name, the longtime Philadelphia Flyers chairman would go on to form the billion-dollar empire of Comcast-Spectacor and cement his standing as one of the most influential businessmen in the city’s history.

"Snider was ambitious and entrepreneurial, though extraordinarily demanding of those who worked for him. He was affectionate with his loved ones, yet often showed a surprising lack of emotional intelligence. His staunch capitalist beliefs contrasted his progressive-minded views on the business of hockey and in sharing his wealth with those in need.

"The Last Sports Mogul embraces all sides of Snider to form a complex portrait of the unparalleled figure once named Philadelphia’s greatest mover and shaker of the millennium."

Get up to $100 in matching deposit credit when you sign up to try PrizePicks - and use promo code GOODSEATS!

View Details

Fans of the original NHL version (1979-96) of the Winnipeg Jets, as well as the first ten seasons (1997-2007) of their subsequent incarnation as the Phoenix Coyotes, will surely remember the dulcet tones of team radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster Curt Keilback (Two Minutes for Talking to Myself: Jets, Coyotes, Tales, Opinions).

For 27 seasons - spanning some 2400+ games - ​Keilback was the signature voice of the since-rebranded Arizona franchise, a seemingly lone constant amidst the club's steady stream of existential change from 1970s World Hockey Association dominance, to NHL small-market competitive frustration, to (supposedly) "greener pastures" in the Valley of the Sun.

Keilback takes us on clear-eyed journey back through some of the more memorable moments of his Jets/Coyotes broadcasting career, including: the original (and much-copied) "Winnipeg White Out;" the ill-fated 1996 "Save the Jets" campaign; how he kept his job despite the Jets' impending move; the not-so-great coaching tenure of "The Great One;" and his call of "The Goal" - then-Washington Capital rookie Alexander Ovechkin's impossible-to-describe, body-prone, behind-the-back score against the Coyotes in 2006.

PLUS: we debate the current wisdom and likely future of the current Arizona-labeled version of the franchise - and whether it will EVER work!

View Details

​Author/team biographer Steve Guinan (We Are the Troopers: The Women of the Winningest Team in Pro Football History) helps us celebrate the return of football this week - with a look back at ​​the unheralded story of the most dominant women's team of the 1970s -the Toledo Troopers.

Winners of seven consecutive championships across two different leagues - Sid Friedman's barnstorming Women’s Professional Football League (1971-72), and the pioneering true-pro successor National Women's Football League (1974-77) - the Troopers compiled an astounding 58-4-1 record over its nine years of life, including six seasons of undefeated play.

Led by the league's most recognizable star Linda Jefferson and overseen by its hard-charging owner/head coach Bill Stout - the Troopers' roster was an unlikely assemblage of housewives, factory workers, hairdressers, former nuns, high school teachers, bartenders, mail carriers, pilots, and would-be drill sergeants - whose combined spirit, tenacity and simple "love for the game" helped create what even the hallowed Pro Football Hall of Fame officially recognizes as the “winningest team in professional football history.”

View Details

As a young girl growing up in tiny, rural Throckmorton, Texas in the mid-1950s, memoirist Addie Beth Denton ("108 Stitches: A Girl Grows Up With Baseball") had only a vague understanding of what her father and uncle did for a living - except that they seemed to always be talking about baseball.

Only as she grew older did she come to realize all that discussion - not to mention her bevy of annual summertime excursions to professional parks all over the country - was much more than just a passing family curiosity.

In fact, she discovered that her uncle Harry Craft had not only been a respectable big-league outfielder with the Cincinnati Reds for nearly six seasons (1937-42) before joining the Navy in the war effort - but was now in the midst of a fledgling managerial career that saw him skippering numerous New York Yankees farm clubs, as well as two of the majors' newest: the 1955 Kansas City As (relocated from Philadelphia) and the 1962 expansion Houston Colt .45s.

Along the way, Denton recalls innumerable childhood brushes with baseball greatness - Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Billy Martin, Rusty Staub - all of whom credited Craft for his valuable tutelage during their careers.

And unwittingly willed a lifetime of memories and love for the game for a certain Texas farm girl.

View Details

The Athletic Major League Soccer staff writer Pablo Maurer steps into our vortex of what-used-to-be in professional sports this week, with a look back at some of the more confounding and overlooked stories of the not-so-distant past of US pro soccer.

It's our deepest dives yet into memorable North American Soccer League gems like 1977's one-year wonder Team Hawaii; 1983's divisive US Men's National Team-as-pro-franchise Team America; the curious Stateside detours of world greats like Bayern Munich superstar Gerd Müeller, Dutch legend Johan Cruyff and Manchester United icon George Best - plus, of course, the NASL's inventive ahead-of-its-time 35-yard-line Shootout tie-breaker.

We also tackle some of the already forgotten early days of Major League Soccer - including its own version of the Shootout; LA's ill-fated "first" second franchise Chivas USA; and impossible-to-forget franchise monikers like Wiz, Burn, Clash, and MetroStars.

PLUS: the unheralded pre-MLS rules experiments of the mid-90s USISL minor league pyramid.

AND: the incomparable (if not incomprehensible) Socker Slam!

View Details

Obscure trivia answers abound this week, as we return to the pro rinks of the 1970s with Twin Cities sports fan extraordinaire Dan Whenesota ("A Slap Shot in Time") for a look back at the not one, but two World Hockey Association franchises known as the Minnesota Fighting Saints.

The first team was one of the WHA's original twelve franchises, playing from 1972 until mid-1976; the second was the rebirth of the league's hastily relocated Cleveland Crusaders, and played for part of 1976-77 season. Neither incarnation completed its final season of play.

Save for a few games in the early months of the first version's inaugural season, both Fighting Saints played in the uniquely configured St. Paul Civic Center - where clear acrylic glass dasher boards offered fans completely unobscured views of all the action.

As for action, there was plenty - both in terms of fan-friendly uptempo offensive play, and aggressive, often penalty-drawing physicality - befitting of the team's name and iconic logo.

If you remember the WHA, the cross-town rival NHL North Stars, the movie "Slap Shot" (not-so-loosely based on the Saints and its minor league affiliate Johnstown [PA] Jets), or even simply where you were on June 27, 1972 when Bobby Hull stunned the sports world by signing with the upstart league - this is the episode for you!

View Details

We spotlight the new Amazon Prime Video series "A League of Their Own" - an inventively reimagined telling of the story of the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (and originally made famous in the 1992 Penny Marshall-directed motion picture of the same name) - with writer and executive producer Desta Tedros Reff.

Decidedly more "dramedy" in tone than the comedic approach of the namesake film (or even its short-lived, lesser-remembered CBS-TV primetime sitcom spinoff the following year), the new League still builds its rich storyline around the AAGPBL's four-time champion Rockford (IL) Peaches - while notably incorporating race and gender identity themes not previously addressed (or even acknowledged) in the original.

Tedros Reff takes us inside the myriad of challenges behind the making of the series, including: the persistent curveballs thrown by COVID-era production scheduling; the purposeful approach to historical accuracy (yes, various scenes were shot in Rockford); and the obvious, but important risks of reframing the lighthearted plot of a modern-day film classic into an authentic narrative befitting the true legacy of the league's pioneering women players.

View Details

Life has come full circle for TV news reporter-turned-Triple-A baseball play-by-play broadcaster Mike Capps ("Grinders: Baseball's Intrepid Infantry") - now the longtime radio voice of the Pacific Coast League's Round Rock Express.

As a kid in early-1960s North Texas, Capps grew up immersed in the exploits of Dallas-Fort Worth's minor league Rangers, Cats and Spurs - intrigued by rotating rosters of determined pay-your-dues hopefuls bouncing up and down between baseball's majors and minors - players his grandfather called the "engine" of the sport.

After an intense award-winning professional career covering hard news for local Metroplex TV stations and early 1990s Gulf War-era CNN, Capps found solace and renewed purpose in those early childhood memories of the "grinders" of the game he fell in love with - reinventing himself in their mold into a second post-journalism work life as an (also) award-winning baseball play-by-play man for minor-league clubs in outposts like Tyler, TX (the former Texas-Louisiana League WildCatters), Sioux Falls, SD (Canaries), Atlantic City, NJ (the former Atlantic League Surf), and Nashville (Sounds).

By 2000, Capps' pressbox grinding paid off with an offer by Nolan Ryan to help inaugurate suburban Austin's expansion Express as its radio voice and director of broadcasting - a run that's lasted some 3000+ games (and counting).

View Details

It wasn’t easy being a soccer fan in the United States in the 1980s.

While the 24-team North American American Soccer League ushered in the decade with an air of stability and momentum (the league even sold a pennant proclaiming the game the “Sport of the 80’s”), it wasn’t long before big-time American pro soccer was dangerously on the ropes (the NASL shrank to just nine franchises by 1984) – and then seemingly gone for good when the league officially sank into oblivion in early 1985.

For a nascent generation of US fans newly hooked on the world’s “beautiful game,” it felt like an abandonment – and an air of disillusionment beset the American soccer scene in the immediate years that followed.

Slowly and awkwardly, Americans slowly got wise – miraculously qualifying for the 1990 World Cup in Italy, hosting the event four years later, and re-birthing the pro game with Major League Soccer in 1996 – and ultimately evolved it into one of the most popular sports in the country.

Sportswriter/author Hal Phillips ("Generation Zero: Founding Fathers, Hidden Histories & the Making of Soccer in America") joins the podcast this week to help trace the timeline of events that led to this epic transformation in American sports, by spotlighting the national team players and fans - raised on the game and tempered by hardship - who made it happen.

PLUS: Your chance to win a free copy!

View Details

Pro hockey history enthusiast/author Steve Currier (Episode 37; "The California Golden Seals: A Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL's Most Outlandish Teams") returns to the show after a five-year absence - this time to accompany us deep down the rabbit hole of one of the National Hockey League's most overlooked adventures of the 1970s. In his new book "When the NHL Invaded Japan: The Washington Capitals, the Kansas City Scouts and the Coca-Cola Bottlers' Cup", Currier recounts the story behind the NHL's long-forgotten, but historically relevant 1976 promotional exhibition series (colloquially known as the "NHL Japan Series") between the league's two most lamentable teams that year - the sophomore-twin Washington Capitals (11W-59L-10T) and Kansas City Scouts (12-56-12) - and their curious mission to introduce professional hockey to the Land of the Rising Sun.

View Details

Chicago sports fans of a certain age may remember the name Charlie Evranian atop the masthead of the executive suite (behind inimitable owner Lee Stern, of course) of the 1981 outdoor version of the North American Soccer League's Chicago Sting - when that club delivered the first major pro championship to the Windy City since 1963's NFL Bears. (Not to mention the team's first two barn-burning indoor NASL seasons at the former "Madhouse on Madison".) But Evranian's time leading the Sting of the early 1980s was merely a brief mile-marker along a fascinatingly peripatetic 20+ year journey across a litany of (mostly forgotten) teams and leagues in both the majors and minors of professional sports management - laden with unbelievable twists and turns that only a podcast of a certain genre could love. Evranian takes us on a wild ride alongside the likes of legendary front office figures like Bill Veeck, Ted Turner, Pat Williams, and Earl Foreman - for memorable stops including: * leading baseball's Class A Greenwood (SC) Braves to two league championships; * co-founding AHL hockey's minor league Richmond Robins; * reinventing the mid-70s' Chicago White Sox; AND * cleaning up an endless array of messes as the Major Indoor Soccer League's deputy commissioner.

View Details

Fresno Grizzlies baseball TV play-by-play broadcaster (and Episode 208 guest) Dan Taylor ("Lights, Camera, Fastball: How the Hollywood Stars Changed Baseball") returns to the podcast - this time with the story of one of the most unheralded players in pro football history. In his new book "Walking Alone: The Untold Journey of Football Pioneer Kenny Washington," Taylor writes the first solo biography devoted to collegiate star and original Los Angeles Rams standout running back Kenny Washington (1918-71) - perhaps the best known of the pro game's "Forgotten Four" (the others: Woody Strode, Bill Willis, and Marion Motley) - collectively recognized as the first Black athletes to permanently break pro football's color barrier in 1946. Of the group, it was Washington - a one-time UCLA teammate of Jackie Robinson in both baseball and football - who officially re-integrated the NFL by signing with the just-relocated-from-Cleveland Rams (he convinced the club to later sign Strode). While Willis and Motley were doing similarly with the challenger All-America Football Conference (and later NFL-absorbed) Cleveland Browns - ultimately earning them selections to the Pro Football Hall of Fame - Washington has yet to join them in such recognition, despite being the first of any of them to achieve the feat. Of course, there is MUCH more to the story - including Washington's prolific minor league football exploits, frequent small-part film roles, and local LA celebrity status. By the end of this episode, you too will be convinced that Washington deserves a place in the Canton's hallowed Hall.

View Details

We're back from vacation with a 50th anniversary rewind of 1972's iconic "Summit Series" between "Team Canada" (featuring the NHL's best from north of the border) and the then-Soviet Union - with veteran sports journalist/hockey analyst Scott Morrison ("1972: The Series That Changed Hockey Forever"). It's a deep dive into the curious, yet now-iconic battle between the hockey's two top superpowers at the time - played against the backdrop of global 1970s-era Cold War tensions - that morphed from a relatively unassuming cultural exchange-oriented pre-season "exhibition" into the defining hallmark of each country's rich hockey heritage. All culminating with Toronto Maple Leaf forward Paul Henderson's dramatic and decisive late-third-period "goal heard around the world" ​(​on September 28, 1972) to clinch the eighth and final game of an epic month-long hockey series that, to this day, remains Canada's most enduring professional sports triumph.

View Details

[We celebrate eminent North-of-the-border sportswriter Ed Willes' selection to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame's media wing last week - with a June 2018 archive re-release of one our most popular episodes!]

As Johnny Manziel’s pro football comeback journey wraps up a promising pre-season with the Canadian Football League’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats, we take a moment this week to reminisce on the approaching 25th anniversary of the CFL’s bold, but ultimately ill-fated attempt to bring its exciting brand of pigskin south of the border in 1993.

When the NFL put the brakes on its two-year World League of American Football experiment in the summer of 1992 (which included a franchise in Montreal, dubbed the “Machine”), an economically wobbly CFL sensed an opportunity to fill the gap in US markets newly comfortable with the notion of pro football, as well as a potential growth path for the tradition-rich Canadian game to expand outside the Provinces. In fact, two WLAF owners, Fred Anderson (Sacramento Surge) and Larry Benson (San Antonio Riders) "crossed over" to the Canadian League and were awarded newly rechristened franchises for 1993 – Anderson’s Sacramento Gold Miners and Benson's San Antonio Texans.

While the Gold Miners were the only ones to make it into the following season’s expanded CFL schedule (Benson literally – and ominously – left the league at the altar by bowing out the day of the league’s press conference announcing the expansion), the door was open to a wild three-season adventure that brought the wide-open Canadian game to far-flung American outposts in Baltimore, Las Vegas, Shreveport, Memphis, Birmingham, and, ironically (via eventual relocation from Sacramento), San Antonio.

Longtime Vancouver Province sportswriter Ed Willes (End Zones and Border Wars: The Era of American Expansion in the CFL) joins the podcast to discuss the league’s short-lived American expansion effort, which then-commissioner Larry Smith had hoped to eventually encompass ten US teams in a fully expanded 20-team league.

Among the misadventures, Willes recounts: the 1995 champion Baltimore Stallions (who operated as the nickname-less “CFLers” the previous season in a trademark dispute with the NFL over the “Colts” moniker); the woefully attended Las Vegas Posse (who practiced on the Strip in the Riviera Hotel’s parking lot and were forced to play their last “home” game in Edmonton); the Memphis Mad Dogs’ unique approach to fitting the longer/wider CFL field into the Liberty Bowl; why football-mad Birmingham couldn’t draw flies for Barracuda games once college and high school seasons started; and the “Great Tucker Caper” – featuring the infamous brothers Glieberman and their attempt to steal away the Shreveport Pirates to the greener pastures of Norfolk, VA.

View Details

[A June 2017 archive re-release favorite with one of the true insiders behind the initial success of the legendary original 1970s/80s Major Indoor Soccer League!]

This week, Tim Hanlon buckles up for a wild ride through the tumultuous early years of the original Major Indoor Soccer League with sports PR veteran Michael Menchel, in our longest and most anecdote-filled episode yet! 

Menchel takes us on a head-spinning audio journey across some of the most memorable (and forgettable) franchises in professional indoor soccer history – including stops in Long Island, NY (the Arrows trade for Pete Rose!); New Jersey (scoring champ Fred Grgurev’s unique approach to car maintenance!); Houston (the “Summit Soccer” borrows its name from the arena it plays in and its players from the NASL’s Hurricane!); Baltimore (the marketing genius of Tim Leiweke!); and Hartford (what the hell is a “Hellion”?).  

Plus, Menchel:  hits the road with Frank Deford;  spends a year outdoors among the Caribou(s?) of Colorado;  has a bad day in Rochester, NY;  and “settles down” in St. Louis wondering when and where the NFL football Cardinals will move next.

View Details

It's a special "retcon" episode this week, as we dig into both the original and revisionist histories of the NBA's Charlotte Hornets - with the first incarnation's most recognizable player, and the second iteration's most logical keeper-of-the-flame: Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues. Over a 14-year pro NBA career, Bogues ("Muggsy: My Life From a kid in the Projects to the Godfather of Small Ball") was best known for his ten standout seasons of on-court wizardry with the 1988 expansion version of the Hornets - which lit up the league in attendance (highest in the NBA for seven seasons, including an unprecedented string of 364 consecutive sellouts in the 22,500-seat Charlotte Coliseum [aka "The Hive"]); dynamic up-tempo style (featuring a bevy of budding stars like Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson, Glen Rice, and Dell Curry, as well as future Naismith Basketball Hall of Famers Robert Parish and Vlade Divac); and unique, ahead-of-their-time Alexander Julian-designed purple and teal uniforms. Bogues regales us with some of his most memorable moments from the OG Hornets - as well as other career highlights like: a rookie-of-the-year summer season with the 1987 USBL Rhode Island Gulls; two seasons of head coaching the WNBA Charlotte Sting; and stealing some scenes in the iconic 1996 film "Space Jam". And, of course, we debate the vagaries of the original Hornets team history in relation to the "revived" Charlotte franchise narrative - despite the club's move to New Orleans (now today's Pelicans) in 2002, and the subsequent expansion Bobcats' retroactive bending of the time-space continuum.

View Details

Society for American Baseball Research historian/chronicler Justin Mckinney (Baseball's Union Association: The Short, Strange Life of a 19th-Century Major League) joins the podcast this week to weigh in on the debate that continues to swirl around baseball's curious one-season Union Association - namely, was it a truly major league? As first broached in our Episode 73 with Jon Springer, the National League was less than a decade old back in 1884, and the rival American Association, which had been established two years earlier, was nipping at its heels. "Organized Baseball" had just been formed to help codify the still-gestating professional version of the game. But when a maverick millionaire and spurned team-owner aspirant named Henry Lucas established a new third major league that year - the Union Association - the pro game erupted into chaos. Come for the pennant-winning St. Louis Maroons (who won 94 of their 113 regular season games, and bested the second-place Cincinnati Outlaw Reds by a whopping 21 games), but stay for the litany of replacement teams (e.g., Wilmington Quicksteps, St. Paul Saints, Altoona Mountain Citys, Kansas City Cowboys, etc.) that folded just as soon as they arrived.

View Details

We're taking a few days of early summer vacation this week - but not before sitting down for a very fun interview with pro football enthusiast and friend-of-the-show Arnie Chapman - as a guest on his popular Sports History Network podcast "The Football History Dude."

Tim and Arnie dive into some of the most memorable football-related episodes of "Good Seats Still Available" thus far - and wax nostalgic on mutually favorite former circuits like the World Football League, the first XFL, the World League of American Football, and the original USFL, among others.

Please enjoy this conversation we recorded a few weeks back - and be sure to check out all the other great podcasts across the Sports History Network!

View Details

While more than a few generations of NBA fans believe the Sacramento Kings franchise began its life when the team played (and lost) its very first exhibition game against the Los Angeles Clippers at the warehouse-converted ARCO Arena (I) on October 25, 1985 - serious students of the game know better. Indeed, a very rich and colorful series of previous incarnations dating back to nearly a century earlier - beginning as the primordial semi-pro "industrial league" Rochester (NY) Seagrams in the mid-1920s, and evolving into the NBL, BAA and eventually NBA versions of the Rochester Royals - historically confirm the Kings as one of the sport's oldest consecutively run professional outfits. Gerry Schultz (Cincinnati's Basketball Royalty: A Brief History) joins the podcast this week to delve into the club's pivotal, and, at times, legendary, 15-year stint as the Cincinnati Royals (1957-72) - when the franchise and the league both came of age by virtue of the play of some of the NBA's greatest all-time performers. Join us for a trek back to the old Cincinnati Gardens (and frequently, other "home" courts in Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus, and even Omaha, NE) - as we look back at the exploits of eventual basketball Hall of Famers like Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas, Maurice Stokes, Clyde Lovellette, Wayne Embry, and Jack Twyman - and ponder how today's Kings might better memorialize the legacy of the club's mostly forgotten time in the Queen City. THANKS to OldSchoolShirts.com for their sponsorship of this week's show (promo code "GOODSEATS" for 10% off all orders!)

View Details

"Dave Bancroft should not be in the Hall of Fame." That's how this week's guest Tom Alesia's new book "Beauty at Short: Dave Bancroft, the Most Unlikely Hall of Famer and His Wild Times in Baseball's First Century" starts - a curious way to begin the first (and only) biography of one of Cooperstown's most underappreciated inductees. A competent, if not unremarkable major league shortstop (Philadelphia Phillies, New York Giants, Boston Braves, Brooklyn Robins), and manager (Braves; All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Chicago Colleens, South Bend Blue Sox) - Bancroft was well short on statistical credentials (e.g., .279 lifetime batting average; just 32 career HRs; .406 managerial winning percentage) to warrant obvious inclusion. But his solid play with the two-time World Series winning Giants in the early 1920s came in handy when two of his fellow players from those teams - Bill Terry and Frankie Frisch - became influential members of the Hall's Veterans' Committee in the late 1960s, and squinted hard to tap their collegial teammate for induction in 1971. Part of a stable of early 1970s enshrinees labeled as "Giant cronies" of Terry and Frisch (e.g., Jessie Haines, Chick Hafey, Ross Youngs, George Kelly, Jim Bottemley, Freddie Lindstrom), Bancroft was nonetheless one of his era's more prominent and popular figures - a "player's player," both on and off the field. By the end of this conversation with Alesia, you'll understand why Bancroft's membership in the Hall of Fame actually makes sense.

View Details

We revisit the endlessly fascinating World Football League - and its enigmatic founder/first commissioner Gary Davidson - with ESPN.com senior writer Ryan Hockensmith ("The Renegade Who Took On the NFL [And the NBA and the NHL]"). Drawing on recent interviews with Davidson, former NFL defectors Larry Csonka & Paul Warfield, and previous podcast guests Howard Baldwin & Upton Bell, Hockensmith delves into some of the more memorable (and a few of the truly unbelievable) historical moments in the WFL's brief mid-1970s existence - all one-and-a-half seasons of it. The tales are tall, but the history is real - and Hockensmith makes it seem as fresh and vivid as the original events themselves nearly 50 years after its flashy debut and quickly spectacular flameout.

View Details

Hollywood film producer (Ray; The Game of Their Lives; Sudden Death) and original New England/Hartford Whalers founder/owner Howard Baldwin (Slim and None: My Wild Ride from the WHA to the NHL and All the Way to Hollywood) returns after a three-year absence to help fill in some of the gaps left over from Episode 100, and to dish on "new" territory from his hard-to-believe career, including: * The contagious indefatigable spirit of WHA founder Dennis Murphy * Who really paid for Bobby Hull's headline-grabbing contract (and who didn't) * How Houston and Cincinnati went from being "in" the June 1978 WHA-NHL "merger," to being "out" of the senior league's "expansion" a year later * The early 1990s saga of the HC CSKA Moscow "Red Army" team (aka the "Russian Penguins") * Why the way to San Jose stopped first in Pittsburgh and then Minnesota; AND * The World Football League's (almost) "Boston Bulls"

View Details

With the rebooted (though still potentially trademark-infringing) USFL now in full swing, we take a look back at one of the clubs from the original version that didn't make the cut this time around - the Washington Federals. Washington Post sports reporter Jake Russell ("As the USFL Restarts, A Look Back at the Washington Federals") takes us inside his pursuit to decode the numerous curiosities of one of the first league's poorest-performing franchises - both on the field (a 7-22 record over two seasons), and in the stands (the USFL's second-worst average home attendances each year at venerable RFK Stadium). Snakebitten from the start by: an initial owner who instead swapped for a franchise in Birmingham, AL; a convoluted, decision-slowing three-company joint venture/limited-partnership ownership structure; and a newly ascendant Redskins team celebrating its first NFL title in 41 years just weeks before the new team's debut - the Federals' journey in the USFL was beset by revenue shortfalls, poor timing and just plain bad luck. Still, the Feds had their moments - and Russell takes us inside some of his conversations with notable names in the team's brief, but colorful history (including one of the league's best logo/color schemes) like veteran QB Kim McQuilken, rookie QB Mike Hohensee, RB Craig James, and WR Joey Walters.

View Details

It's the 60th year of New York Mets baseball, and we celebrate this week with a look back at the transformational multipurpose facility they called home for 45 seasons - including three of the club's four NL pennants and its only two World Series championships - Shea Stadium. Matthew Silverman (Shea Stadium Remembered: The Mets, The Jets, and Beatlemania) takes us back to the origin story behind the conceptually named "Flushing Meadow Park Municipal Stadium" - which began almost immediately after the Dodgers' and Giants' relocation to California in 1958 as a lure for a new expansion franchise to replace them. Through the combined political efforts of New York City mayor Robert Wagner, city urban planning power broker Robert Moses, and Continental League founder (and future stadium namesake) William Shea, the Queens-based facility opened in 1964 as the mutual home of not only the NL expansion Mets, but also the newly reincarnated AFL football New York Jets (née Titans). We delve into more than four decades of Shea memories, including the 1969 "Miracle Mets," the Jets' 1968 AFL Championship, Bill Buckner's ill-fated error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, and the insane year of 1975 - when the AL Yankees and football Giants also called the stadium home. And, of course, the iconic first stop on the Beatles' 1965 tour of North America - the biggest-ever grossing concert of the era that became synonymous with "Beatlemania."

View Details

We take it hard to the tin this week, with a lively roundtable reminiscence of the oft-overlooked, but undeniably influential Women's Professional Basketball League (WBL) of 1978-81 - with four of its pioneering players that helped pave the way for today's flourishing female pro hoops scene.   Liz "Bandit" Galloway McQuitter (Chicago Hustle); Charlene McWhorter Jackson (Hustle, Washington Metros, Milwaukee Does, St. Louis Streak); Adrian Mitchell-Newell (Hustle, Streak; LPBA Southern California Breeze); and episode 28 guest "Machine Gun" Molly Bolin Kazmer (Iowa Cornets, San Francisco Pioneers; Breeze; WABA Columbus Minks), join for an intimate discussion about the rapid rise, untimely fall, and heartening modern-day rediscovery of the WBL - catalyzed by their collective involvement in Legends of the Ball, a new nonprofit dedicated to preserving the foundational history of the league and all that's come because of it.

View Details

Baseball historian, Minnesota Twins official scorer and Episode 114 guest Stew Thornley ("Metropolitan Stadium: Memorable Games at Minnesota's Diamond on the Prairie"), returns for a fond look back at the semi-iconic structure that helped secure "major league" status for the Twin Cities in the early 1960s. Known simply as "The Met" by area locals (or even the "Old Met" to distinguish from the downtown Minneapolis Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome that effectively replaced it in 1982), Bloomington's Metropolitan Stadium opened in April of 1956 with the stated hope of luring a Major League Baseball franchise to the region - just as the sport was beginning to chart its modern-era manifest destiny. While ultimately luring Calvin Griffith's Washington Senators to become the Twins in 1961 - as well as the expansion NFL football Vikings that same year - the Met was mostly the exclusive home of the minor league American Association Minneapolis Millers for its first five years of existence, save for a handful of annual NFL preseason exhibition games and two regular season Chicago Cardinals matches in 1959. In 1976, it also became the popular outdoor home of the North American Soccer League's Minnesota Kicks - and its legions of young tailgate-crazy fans. Ahead of its time in the mid-50s, Met Stadium was nearly obsolete by the end of the 70s - decent for baseball, not so much for football - and rumors of at least the Vikings absconding for another to-be-built stadium in the area (including concepts for a domed enclosure or a new football-only facility between it and the nearby indoor Met Center) swirled around the community as early as 1970. Alas, after only 21 seasons each for the Twins and the Vikings (six for the Kicks), Metropolitan Stadium succumbed to poor maintenance and the allure of a new, winter-proof Metrodome. Demolished in 1985, the Met gave way to what is now the country's largest shopping center - the Mall of America.

View Details

Long-time Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) contributor and "Mover and Shaker: Walter O'Malley, the Dodgers, and Baseball's Westward Expansion" author Andy McCue joins the podcast to discuss his provocative new book "Stumbling Around the Bases" - a persuasive account of the American League's consistently haphazard approach to expansion and franchise relocation during baseball's modern era:

​"​From the late 1950s to the 1980s, baseball’s American League mismanaged integration and expansion, allowing the National League to forge ahead in attendance and prestige. While both leagues had executive structures that presented few barriers to individual team owners acting purely in their own interests, it was the American League that succumbed to infighting—which ultimately led to its disappearance into what we now call Major League Baseball. "Stumbling Around the Bases" is the story of how the American League fell into such a disastrous state, struggling for decades to escape its nadir and, when it finally righted itself, losing its independence.

​"​The American League’s trip to the bottom involved bad decisions by both individual teams and their owners. The key elements were a glacial approach to integration, the choice of underfinanced or disruptive new owners, and a consistent inability to choose the better markets among cities that were available for expansion. The American League wound up with less-attractive teams in the smaller markets compared to the National League—and thus fewer consumers of tickets, parking, beer, hot dogs, scorecards, and replica jerseys.

​"​The errors of the American League owners were rooted in missed cultural and demographic shifts and exacerbated by reactive decisions that hurt as much as helped their interests. Though the owners were men who were notably successful in their non-baseball business ventures, success in insurance, pizza, food processing, and real estate development, didn’t necessarily translate into running a flourishing baseball league. In the end the National League was simply better at recognizing its collective interests, screening its owners, and recognizing the markets that had long-term potential.​"​

View Details

​A pro football​ player who protests against the actions of his government, is shunned by ​the league establishment, and eventually ​winds up out of the ​game, working for social justice. ​ No, it's not Colin Kaepernick​; it's the 1960s NFL saga of a former St. Louis Cardinals linebacker named Dave Meggyesy. A 17th-round draft pick in 1963 out of Syracuse, Meggyesy was a steady presence and reliable performer for seven mostly mediocre Cardinal seasons (save for a 1964 season-ending Bert Bell Benefit [aka "NFL Playoff"] Bowl victory over Green Bay) - when​ he quit at the height of his career​, ​repulsed by a game he saw rife with problems and injustices, and a nation fighting an increasingly futile war in Vietnam. In 1970, he wrote​ a bombshell exposé of a book called "​Out of Their League​"​ – a blistering assault on football and ​the institutions that enabled it - in which ​he detailed ​multiple ills of the game, many of which still exist today. ​ Racism, corruption, militarism, institutionalized violence, drug abuse, collegiate "amateurism," and the relentless inevitability of injuries and their lasting effects - blunt and searing insights that​ ​​not only ​shocked ​fans of the NFL, ​but also​ ​shook up the broader 1970s ​sport​s establishment.​​
​Still​​, at its heart,​ ​Meggyesy's​ memoir ​wa​s also a moving de​piction​ of ​his individual​ struggle​ for social justice and personal liberation​, the contents of which were both ahead of its time - and as timely as ever.​

View Details

[A September 2017 archive re-release favorite with the production wizard behind behind early network TV coverage of the World Football League & North American Soccer League of the 1970s!]

On January 20, 1968, a frenzied crowd of 52,693 packed the Houston Astrodome to witness the #2-ranked University of Houston Cougars nip the #1 (and previously undefeated) UCLA Bruins in a college basketball spectacle that legendarily became the sport’s “Game of the Century.” In addition to the record-sized gate, it was the first-ever college game to be televised nationally in prime time – and it was sports entrepreneur Eddie Einhorn’s scrappy little independent network of affiliated stations called the TVS Television Network that brought it to millions of TV viewers. Calling all the shots from the production truck was veteran TV sports director Howard Zuckerman – who quickly became the backbone for the fledgling ad hoc network’s subsequent coverage of not only college hoops, but also two of the most colorful pro sports leagues of the 1970s – the World Football League and the North American Soccer League. Zuckerman joins host Tim Hanlon to recount some of his most memorable (and forgettable) moments in TVS history, including:

• Surviving a power outage in the middle of the WFL’s first-ever national telecast from Jacksonville;
• Managing a motley crew of rotating guest commentators for WFL broadcasts, including the likes of George Plimpton, Burt Reynolds and McLean Stevenson;
• Hastily reorienting weekly WFL production travel plans as teams suddenly relocated or folded;
• Faking on-field injuries during NASL telecasts to allow for ad hoc commercial breaks;
• The origins of the specially-composed TVS theme song and its orchestral big band sound; and
• Post-TVS work, including the Canadian Football League’s Las Vegas Posse, and the worldwide music landmark event Live Aid.

View Details

Pat Jordan grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut where, in the mid-1950s, he became a highly pursued pro baseball prospect as a young pitching phenom in local Little League and as a high school ace at Fairfield Prep. On July 9, 1959, after being pursued by more than a dozen Major League Baseball organizations (MLB's first amateur draft didn't start until 1965), Jordan signed a then-record $36,000 "bonus baby" bounty to join the National League's Milwaukee Braves - where he reported to the McCook Braves of the Class D Nebraska State League, playing alongside future big leaguers Phil Niekro and Joe Torre. Despite being one of the minors' hardest-throwing pitchers at the time, Jordan floundered through three seasons across obscure Braves posts such as Waycross (GA), Davenport (IA), Eau Claire (WI) and Palatka (FL), and by the end of 1961, was out of the game for good - a victim of injury, hubris and the realities of adulthood. Baseball's loss was ultimately sports journalism's gain, as Jordan pivoted hard into a prolific, long-form, non-fiction writing career that began in earnest with the publishing of 1975's clear-eyed memoir "A False Spring" - which Time magazine called “one of the best and truest books about baseball, and about coming to maturity in America,” and Sports Illustrated has consistently listed as one of the best sports books of all time. Like his brusque, straight-ahead writing style, Jordan holds back nothing in this wide-ranging conversation - featuring a multitude of stories featuring some of modern-day sports' most fascinating characters such as softballer Joan Joyce, Tom Seaver ("Tom Seaver and Me"), pro volleyballer/hoopster Mary Jo Peppler ("Broken Patterns"), Wilt Chamberlain, Renee Richards, and even the 56-year-old version of himself attempting a comeback with the the independent Northeast League's Waterbury Spirit in 1997 ("A Nice Tuesday: A Memoir").

View Details

We traverse a fascinating litany of top-tier North American professional indoor soccer leagues with pioneering player, record-setting coach and now, current Major Arena Soccer League (MASL) commissioner Keith Tozer. In a pro career spanning more than 40 years, Tozer has literally done it all in the indoor game: * Playing on original Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL) sides like the Cincinnati Kids, Hartford Hellions and Pittsburgh Spirit; * Dually playing/coaching for the American Indoor Soccer Association's (AISA) Louisville Thunder and Atlanta Attack; and * Coaching both the last two seasons of the MISL's Los Angeles Lazers and, legendarily, winning six titles in 22 seasons across four leagues with the Milwaukee Wave

Tozer is not only the winningest coach in indoor pro soccer history (amassing over 700 wins), but one of the most successful overall US soccer coaches of all time. Buckle up for a wild ride across the rocky terrain of professional indoor soccer - including an outdoor detour with the American Soccer League Pennsylvania Stoners, coaching US teams for international futsal tournaments, and whatever happened to Mark Cuban's much-hyped Professional Futsal League. And, of course, an analysis of the present state of the pro indoor game - and where Tozer hopes the MASL can take it in the years ahead.

View Details

We reminisce about the original Arena Football League and its curious dalliances with the New York metropolitan area, with veteran Newsday sports writer/columnist Gregg Sarra - who not only regularly covered franchises like the 1997-98 New York CityHawks and the Long Island-based New York Dragons (2001-08), but also even played an actual game with one of them - and lived to tell (and write) about it. After beat-reporting two woeful seasons' worth of CityHawks games at the "World's Most Famous Arena" (Madison Square Garden had hastily lobbied the league for its own expansion club when it got wind of a team coming to the nearby New Jersey Meadowlands: the Red Dogs) - Sarra was both surprised and giddy when he heard yet another team would be coming to the market - this time to his hometown Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The Dragons were actually the relocated Iowa Barnstormers (1995-2000) - a smaller-market sensation owned by league founder (and episodes 43 & 44 guest) Jim Foster - who sold the franchise to New York Islanders NHL owner Charles Wang, with the blessing of an AFL management eager to finally succeed in the nation's largest media market. On April 8, 2001, Sarra got the literal "inside story" of the new club - when, at Wang's suggestion, he suited up for and saw last-minute action in the Dragons' first-ever home preseason match - a Plimptonian participatory experience that gave his Newsday readers a true sense of what the indoor game was all about. Did you know that every week, nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at https://linkedin.com/GoodSeats.

View Details

It's another bucket-list conversation with one of Tim's favorite players from the legendary New York Cosmos of the original North American Soccer League - defender extraordinaire​ (and de facto club keeper-of-the-flame) Werner Roth. A childhood émigré of his native Yugoslavia in the mid-1950s, Roth spent the bulk of his youth in New York City - cutting his semi-professional teeth in the heavily ethnic, regionally competitive and historically influential German American Soccer League with German-Hungarian SC - where he eventually caught the attention of the new local NASL expansion franchise in 1971. Roth joined the Cosmos the next year as one of its precious North American players, helping the club secure its first-ever league title and quickly establishing himself as a reliably solid defensive back whose presence could be counted on - especially as the team's ambitions grew. By 1977, Roth had become captain of a high-wattage international superstar lineup featuring the likes of Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, and Giorgio Chinaglia - winning back-to-back Soccer Bowl titles and a global following.
We talk about all of it - plus Roth's time on the US National Team, his role in the cult classic WWII soccer movie Victory, thoughts on the current state of soccer in the US, and the potential for a Cosmos television miniseries in the not-so-distant future.

View Details

[We dig out from last week's major winter storm with a fan-favorite Archive Re-Release from 2018!]

By the summer of 1959, the absence of two former National League franchises from what was once a vibrant New York City major league baseball scene was obvious – and even the remaining/dominant Yankees couldn’t fully make up for it. Nor could that season’s World Series championship run of the now-Los Angeles Dodgers – a bittersweet victory for jilted fans of the team’s Brooklyn era.

Fiercely determined to return a National League team to the city, mayor Robert Wagner enlisted the help of a Brooklyn-based attorney named William Shea to spearhead an effort to first convince a current franchise to relocate – as the American League’s Braves (Boston to Milwaukee, 1953), Browns (St. Louis to Baltimore, 1954), and A’s (Philadelphia to Kansas City, 1955) had recently done. When neither Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, or even MLB Commissioner Ford Frick, could be convinced by the opportunity, Shea and team moved on to an even bolder plan – an entirely new third major league, with a New York franchise as its crown jewel.

Financial backers from not only New York, but also eager expansionists in Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver, Toronto, Atlanta, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and Buffalo joined in the effort – christened the “Continental League” – and recruited longtime pioneering baseball executive Branch Rickey to do the collective’s bidding. In preparation for an inaugural 1961 start, Rickey immediately preached the virtues of parity, and outlined a business plan that included TV revenue-sharing, equally accessible player pools, and solid pension plans; properly executed, it would take less than four years for the new league to be a credible equal of the National and American Leagues. His plan: poach a few established big-league stars, and supplement rosters with young talent from a dedicated farm system that would quickly ripen into a formidable stream of high-caliber players and, in turn, a quickly competitive “major” third league. That, plus an aggressive legal attack on MLB’s long-established federal antitrust exemption – designed to force greater player mobility and expanded geographic opportunities.

Suddenly pressured, MLB owners surprisingly responded in the summer of 1960 with a hastily crafted plan for expansion, beginning in 1962 with new NL teams in New York (Mets) and Houston (Colt .45s) – undercutting the upstart league’s ownership groups in those cities, and promising additional franchises in the years following. Within weeks, the Continental League was no more, and the accelerated expansionary future of the modern game was firmly in motion.

Original Continental League minor leaguer Russ Buhite (The Continental League: A Personal History) joins host Tim Hanlon to share his first-person account (as a member of the proposed Denver franchise’s Western Carolina League Rutherford County Owls in 1960) of both the build-up to and letdown of the “league that never was” – as well as the broader history of the unwittingly influential circuit that changed the economic landscape of modern-day Major League Baseball.

View Details

Fresh off his appearance on last month's Year-End Holiday Roundtable Spectacular, fellow defunct sports enthusiast Steve Holroyd returns to the show for a dive into the deep end of the "forgotten sports" pool, with a look back at the little-remembered, but ahead-of-its-time Pro Cricket from 2004. An attempt to quickly capitalize on the venerable sport's faster-paced Twenty20 format launched in England a year earlier, Pro Cricket was essentially a rogue creation formed outside of cricket's US and international sanctioning bodies - featuring eight teams in a three-month summer season played largely in minor league baseball stadiums across the country. Crowds were sparse, mainstream sports media attention was minimal, television coverage (Dish Network PPV) was limited, and sustaining funds (supposedly three seasons' worth) were quickly exhausted. Yet, the play was surprisingly competitive (a smattering of international stars played; the San Francisco Freedom defeated the New Jersey Fire for the only title), and cricket enthusiasts were inspired at the potential the game could ultimately have in the States, once "done right." That chance could come again next summer, when the new Major League Cricket launches. Replete with at least one purpose-built stadium (the soon-to-be-converted minor league baseball AirHogs Stadium in Grand Prairie, TX), and backed by a blue-chip roster of investors including media giant Times of India Group and tech backers like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe Chairman/CEO Shantanu Narayen - MLC promises to bring "world-class T20" to the States, nearly twenty years after Pro Cricket sowed the first seeds.

View Details

After hiding in plain sight for the better part of five years, we finally take an initial swing at the deeply fascinating story of baseball's original "lovable losers" - the St. Louis Browns. St. Louis native and keeper of the flame Ed Wheatley ("St. Louis Browns: The Story of a Beloved Team" & "Baseball in St. Louis: From Little Leagues to Major Leagues") knows a thing or two about this most forlorn, but curiously beloved American League franchise of yore (1902-53); as the President of the St. Louis Browns Historical Society, it is his passion and duty to burnish the memory and celebrate the contributions of the Brownies - despite its half-century of mostly forgettable on-field performance. Before organized baseball forced then-owner Bill Veeck to sell the club to a Baltimore syndicate in 1953 to ultimately become today's similarly lamentable Orioles, the Browns battled the cross-town Cardinals for St. Louis' baseball attention - often at the city's venerable Sportsman's Park, which they both claimed as home for the better part of 30 years, including an all-St. Louis World Series in 1944 (won, of course, by the Redbirds). Despite only one playoff appearance in 52 seasons ("First in shoes, first in booze, and last in the American League"), the Browns still had their share of fans, as well as some of baseball's most memorable characters - like Branch Rickey (as a player, manager and even GM), Hall of Famers "Gorgeous George" Sisler and Rogers Hornsby, one-armed utility outfielder Pete Gray, and, of course, the one-at-bat wonder of 3-foot, 7-inch Eddie Gaedel.

View Details

As we continue to debate the general wisdom of resurrecting the intellectual property of the original short-lived 1980s version of the United States Football League - as well as question the viability of launching yet another spring pro football circuit - our attention this week turns to one of the eight chosen "franchises" for the new USFL launching this April. Of course, memorably well-supported originals like the Tampa Bay Bandits, New Jersey Generals, Birmingham Stallions, and the only two clubs to ever win USFL championships - the Stars (once in Philadelphia, once in Baltimore) and the Michigan Panthers - make some semblance of sense. But the lamentable one-year Pittsburgh Maulers? Longtime sports promotions executive Tom Rooney - nephew of famed Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney, and former Maulers front office executive - joins for a nostalgic trip back to Three Rivers Stadium ("One and Dumb: The Story of the Maulers" from Three Rivers Stadium: A Confluence of Champions) and shares just why this mostly forgotten team from 1984 just might be worth bringing back to life.

View Details

We geek out this week with Sports Reference, LLC founder and president Sean Forman ("The Negro Leagues are Major Leagues: Essays and Research for Overdue Recognition") for an inside look into the complex and detailed process of integrating the statistics of the recently elevated Negro Leagues into the official records of Major League Baseball. Advocated for decades by countless baseball researchers and historians - and buoyed by MLB's long-overdue proclamation in December 2020 that seven of Black baseball's segregated professional leagues between 1920-1948 finally deserved "major league" status - the incorporation of Negro League player data into the sport's overall statistical record has been both swift and meticulous. Forman talks us through how the company's vaunted Baseball Reference team partnered with Negro League stats specialist Seamheads.com to onboard and combine data from the Negro National League (I) (1920–1931); the Eastern Colored League (1923–1928); the American Negro League (1929); the East-West League (1932); the Negro Southern League (1932); the Negro National League (II) (1933–1948); and the Negro American League (1937–1948). And how the process will remain iterative for some time to come.

View Details

Valdosta State University Professor of History and African American Studies Thomas Aiello ("Dixieball: Race and Professional Basketball in the Deep South") joins our first podcast of the New Year - with an intriguing look into the tortuous history of pro hoops in America's Deep South. While NBA fans take today's Hawks and Pelicans as historical "givens," their very existences belie the Sunbelt South's complicated economic and social relationship with professional sports during the modern era - especially with respect to basketball. We dig into the sport's tenuous first professional incursions into both New Orleans (the ABA's charter Buccaneers) and Atlanta (the NBA's relocated St. Louis Hawks) during the culturally and politically charged late-1960s - as well as why it took so long for those franchises to even materialize in the first place. ​Aiello also takes us through the similarly challenged exploits of the NBA's New Orleans Jazz (today domiciled in Utah) of the 1970s - who, despite the dazzling on-court wizardry of adopted LSU native son Pete Maravich, found the going in the Big Easy to be anything but.

View Details

[More holiday fun with a re-release of a fan favorite episode from January 2018!]

We conclude our two-part journey into the early history of the Arena Football League with founder and inventor Jim Foster, who recounts some of the most notable events of the league’s formative years – including a memorable 1987 “demonstration season” featuring:

• The February debut “Showcase Game” in suburban Chicago’s Rosemont Horizon between the hometown Bruisers and the Miami Vise – highlights of which later dominated ESPN’s SportsCenter;
• A return to the Horizon for the first-ever nationally televised league match four months later (after a non-televised inaugural game the night before in Pittsburgh) – an overtime thriller that left fans, ESPN broadcasters, and league officials scrambling for the newly-written rule book;
• The league’s first “Arena Bowl” championship game (won by the visiting Denver Dynamite) in front of a sold-out Pittsburgh Civic Center and a live national TV audience; AND
• US patent filings (officially granted in the spring of 1990) protecting the original rules, play and configuration of arena football – and precluding potential competition (like 1989’s almost-World Indoor Football League) from stealing the concept.

Plus: the early dynasty of the Mike Illitch’s Detroit Drive; the holier-than-thou genius of coaching legend Tim Marcum; Des Moines gets a team; what happens when a ball gets stuck in the goalpost during the run of play; and can today's Arena Football League be saved?

View Details

[We celebrate the holidays with a re-release of a fan favorite episode from January 2018!]

As the new year beckons, the fate of the Arena Football League – one of America’s most innovative modern-day professional sports concepts – hangs in the balance. With only four teams (the mutually-owned Washington Valor and Baltimore Brigade, defending champion Philadelphia Soul, and a still-unnamed Albany, NY squad) confirmed for the upcoming 2018 season, the AFL will play with exactly the same number of franchises that comprised its inaugural “demonstration” season back in 1987 – and a mere fraction of the 19 clubs that competed during its heyday in the early-to-mid 2000s.

Much has happened to the league and the sport during those 30+ years, of course – and few doubt that the unique (and once-patented) excitement of arena football won’t eventually find a sustainable business model and a return to long-term stability.

In the interim, however, we delve into how it all began, with the first of our two-part interview with Iowa native Jim Foster – the inventor of arena football and the founder of the original Arena Football League – who takes host Tim Hanlon on rollicking excursion across the uncharted sports terrain of the 1970s and 80s that led to both the birth of a sport and the launch of a professional league, including:

• Exporting professional American football to Europe decades before the NFL;
• Discovering fans’ year-long appetite for pro football via the USFL;
• Scribbling parameters for “indoor football” on a manila envelope while attending the 1981 MISL All-Star Game;
• Tinkering on a shoestring with facilities, equipment, rules, and approaches to TV broadcast coverage;
• Tapping into the nostalgia and cost economics of two-way players, as well as the fan appeal of “run-and-shoot” offensive action; AND
• Defending the notion of centrally-controlled league ownership from franchise-hungry charter owners.

View Details

We try to make sense of a decidedly bipolar 2021 with our third-annual Holiday Roundtable Spectacular - featuring three of our favorite fellow defunct sports enthusiasts Paul Reeths (OurSportsCentral.com, StatsCrew.com & Episode 46); Andy Crossley (Fun While It Lasted & Episode 2); and Steve Holroyd (Episodes 92, 109, 149 & 188).

Join us as we discuss the past, present and potential "futures" of defunct and otherwise forgotten pro sports teams and leagues - starting with a look back at some of the year’s most notable events, including:

• COVID-19's continued wrath across the entirety of pro sports;
• Cleveland says goodbye Indians - and hello Guardians;
• The dubious reincarnation of the USFL;
• Relocation threats from MLB's Oakland Athletics, the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes, and half a season's worth of the Tampa Bay Rays;

• NWHL women's hockey reorg/rebrand to Premier Hockey Federation;

• NPF women's softball suspends operations after 17 years; AND

• The passing of challenger league pioneer Dennis Murphy.

Plus, we say goodbye to ESPN Classic!

View Details

Our "tour" of lost pro sports venues continues with another stop in the Keystone State, this time for a loving look back at the life and times of Pittsburgh's legendary Civic Arena - aka "The Igloo" - with Steel City native Dave Finoli (editor, "Pittsburgh's Civic Arena: Stories from the Igloo").
Originally constructed in 1961 for the city's Civic Light Opera, the Arena was an ahead-of-its-time architectural marvel - distinctively adorned by a massive 3,000-ton retractable steel-roof dome that was world's first of its kind - making not just an attractive venue for music and entertainment, but big-time sports of all kinds. Over time, the Igloo became synonymous with its longest-running tenant - the NHL's Penguins - who became the building's main occupant as an expansion franchise in 1967, and saw three (of its total five) Stanley Cup title runs. But, of course, we remember the other teams that also called the Civic Arena home - including: basketball's Rens, Pipers & Condors; World Team Tennis' Triangles; soccer's Spirit & Stingers; arena football's Gladiators; lacrosse's Bulls & CrosseFire; and even roller hockey's oft-forgotten Phantoms. And don't forget Dr. J's Pisces too!

View Details

Our GPS coordinates take us back to the "City of Brotherly Love" this week for a fond, first-person reminiscence of Philadelphia's legendary Spectrum - with one of its chief managerial architects, Lou Scheinfeld ("Blades, Bands and Ballers: How 'Flash and Cash' Rescued the Flyers and Created Philadelphia’s Greatest Showplace"). A state-of-the-art indoor sports and events mecca upon its opening in September of 1967, the facility dubbed "America's Showplace" was Philly's first ​true ​modern indoor arena - built ​quickly (in roughly a year) and specifically for the city's new NHL expansion franchise (the Flyers) - one that Scheinfeld and NFL Eagles co-owners Ed Snider, Jerry Wolman and Earl Foreman helped originally secure. The Spectrum was an instant hit for the freshman Flyers - and for the defending NBA champion 76ers, who also joined the tenant roster that first year - as well as the darling of top rock artists and concert promoters, immediately enamored with the facility's surprisingly top-notch acoustics. And of course, a bevy of forgotten sports events and franchises that we love to obsess about, including some of our all-time favorites: the NASL's Philadelphia Atoms 1974 indoor exhibitions with the Soviet Red Army team that eventually launched the MISL and its Philadelphia Fever in 1978; the multi-league indoor lacrosse Wings; Billie Jean King's WTT Philadelphia Freedoms; the Bulldogs of the mid-90s' Roller hockey International; and much more.

View Details

After months of speculation, the first concrete pieces of confirmation of a possible return of the United States Football League were issued by Fox Sports' PR department last week. Despite a press release claiming to contain "everything you need to know" about the new USFL, a ton of important questions about the what, when, how, and even where of the proposed spring league still remain. What is known is that Fox will be a major equity owner of the new circuit, and will contribute a number of its senior executives from its sports ranks to help run the enterprise. Brian Woods, founder of the four-year-old developmental Spring League - and recent acquirer of a bevy of original USFL league and team trademarks - will head up football operations. The new league will have eight (presumably location-branded) teams and play a ten-game season schedule in a single city - currently rumored to be Birmingham, Alabama - on weekends from April to mid-June.

Other than that, it's still anybody's guess as to where players and coaches will come from (or how much they might make), what teams (and cities) will be resurrected, what rules (and potential innovations) might look like - and just what the mighty NFL (or even the still-promised XFL 3.0 in 2023) might be thinking.

We check in with our man in Birmingham, episode 184 guest Scott Adamson ("The Home Team: My Bromance With Off-Brand Football") to mutually speculate about what positives might come from a reincarnated USFL - and why it's hard not to be cynical about a potential return to the "glory days" of the 1980s.

View Details

The NBA's 75th anniversary season is well underway, and we take a reverential look this week at some of the league's most legendary dynasties, starting with its very first - the Minneapolis Lakers of the late 1940s/early 1950s - with sportswriter Marcus Thompson ("Dynasties: The 10 G.O.A.T Teams That Changed the NBA Forever").

While the Los Angeles version of the Lakers has been pumping out iconic clusters of championships since 1971 (including the Magic Johnson-led "Showtime"-era in the 1980s, and the Shaq/Kobe-powered bookends during the 2000s) - it was the team's genesis in Minnesota's Twin Cities during the league's fledgling first years that set the template for modern-day pro hoops greatness.

In fact, Minneapolis' Lakers franchise was dominating the game even before joining the NBA's inaugural season in 1949-50 as the champions of both of the circuit's predecessors - the penultimate season of the National Basketball League (1947-48) and the last season of the Basketball Association of America (1948-49).

Led by pro basketball's first true national superstar George Mikan, the Lakers piled up six championship trophies across three leagues between 1948-54 - including four out of the NBA's first five titles.

View Details

The Thom & Hawk Football Show is the only football podcast hosted by two long-time NFL vets, former teammates, AND current best friends. Each week, twice a week, join 10-time Pro-Bowler, Joe Thomas, and 7-year NFL vet, Andrew Hawkins as they bring you an unfiltered and insider’s perspective on today’s NFL that you’re not gonna get anywhere else.

Listen every Wednesday as they welcome in guests, play some games, and make weekly picks as they weave through the NFL slate. And on Mondays, listen exclusively on Amazon Music for the "insider minicast" where Thom and Hawk bring you football, FASTER, breaking down their five favorite stories from the weekend, in 1 0 minutes or less.

Listen each week during football season, Mondays and Wednesdays here
http://wondery.fm/THS_GSSA

View Details

We return to the fascinating story of the pioneering National Women’s Football League (1974-88-ish) - and its overlooked role in the surprisingly resilient world of women’s pro football - with sportswriters Britni de la Cretaz & Lyndsey D'Arcangelo ("Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League")

The modern women’s pro game started modestly enough in 1967, when a Cleveland-based talent agent named Sid Friedman launched a barnstorming outfit known as the “Women’s Professional Football League” in which a team of women (eventually nine) toured the country playing men’s clubs in exhibitions and charity events – even as halftime entertainment at NFL and CFL games.

Frustrated by the lack of seriousness accorded their efforts, a number of breakaway players and teams bolted from Friedman's grip in 1974 to form a decidedly (and competitively) legit seven-team league; by 1976, the NWFL had ballooned to 14 franchises from coast-to-coast, including three in football-mad Texas – led by the “Herricanes” of Houston (our Episode 154 with filmmaker Olivia Kuan).

Though lacking sustainable budgets, major media coverage or appreciable crowds, the NWFL featured a passionate and determined breed of player – drawn to an unprecedented opportunity to play real men’s-style tackle football for pay and buttressed by an emerging progressive era of Title IX, the Equal Rights Amendment and rampant sports league entrepreneurialism.

D'Arcangelo and de la Cretaz share insight into this little-known but ultimately influential league, especially from the stories of its players - whose spirit, tenacity and simple "love for the game" helped set the template for the eventual mainstream arrival of women's pro sports in the decades that followed.

View Details

By the time you hear this week's episode, the Atlanta Braves just may be celebrating their second-ever World Series trophy since moving from Milwaukee in 1956.

If so, it would be the team's first title in 26 years, and only the second time in the region's modern sports history - or fourth, if you include the titles won by the now-defunct NASL's Atlanta Chiefs in 1968 and Major League Soccer's Atlanta United three years ago - that "The ATL" has been able to boast of any true major pro sports championship.

That kind of futility can make any sports fan question their sanity, and as this week's guest Clayton Trutor ("Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta―and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports") tells us - in Atlanta's case, that self-doubt dates all the way back to the mid-1970s when one of its major newspapers dubbed the city "Loserville, USA".

As Trutor describes it, Atlanta's excitement around the arrival of four professional franchises during a dynamic six-year (1966-72) period quickly gave way to general frustration and, eventually, widespread apathy toward its home teams. By the dawn of the 80s, all four of the region's major-league franchises were flailing in the standings, struggling to draw fans - and, in the case of the NHL's Flames, ready to move out of town.

While that indifference/malaise has dissipated somewhat in the decades since then (save for a second attempt at the NHL with the short-lived Thrashers), the dearth of team titles continues to loom over Atlanta's pro sports scene.

The resurgent Braves and their paradigm-changing Truist Park complex may just help change all that.

View Details

It's off to Vegas this week, baby, as we dig in to the fascinating backstory of two short-lived racetracks that lived fast and died hard trying to bring top-flight motorsports to Sin City in the late 1960s and early 1980s - with all the over-the-top theatrics, gambling connotations and underworld intrigue you'd expect from the "Entertainment Capital of the World."

Racing writer Randy Cannon ("Stardust International Raceway: Motorsports Meets the Mob in Vegas"; and "Caesars Palace Grand Prix: Las Vegas, Organized Crime and the Pinnacle of Motorsport") takes us behind the scenes of two of the city's most ambitious auto racing facilities - each designed to attract high-rolling visitors to both the tracks and the tables, long before it was kosher for sports and gaming to coexist.

View Details

We pick up where we left off in our previous episodes 62 (with the "Whaler Guys") and 100 (featuring WHA-version franchise founder Howard Baldwin) for a comprehensive look into the former NHL franchise that regularly sells more branded merchandise than even some current league teams - the Hartford Whalers.

Author Pat Pickens ("The Whalers: The Rise, Fall, and Enduring Mystique of New England's [Second] Greatest NHL Franchise") walks us through the history and ongoing mystique of one of the National Hockey League's most enigmatic clubs - one whose legacy endures some 24 years after its odd and bittersweet relocation to Raleigh (via Greensboro), North Carolina in 1997.

View Details

We take another crack at the history and mythology of the late, great North American Soccer League - this time through the eyes of sports filmmaker Rachel Viollet, whose new documentary "Big-Time Soccer: The Remarkable Rise & Fall of the NASL" makes its US debut at New York's Kicking + Screening film festival later this week.

If that surname sounds familiar, it won't surprise you that Rachel is also the daughter of the late Dennis Viollet - one of the legendary Manchester United "Busby Babes" of the late 1940s & early 1950s - who later went on to become one of the pioneering coaches in the 1970s-era NASL.

With managerial roles overseeing Washington, DC's Diplomats and two flavors of Tea Men in both New England and Jacksonville, the elder Viollet unwittingly provided his young daughter with a bird's-eye childhood purview into a vibrant and hugely entertaining pro soccer circuit, whose influence is still felt in today's MLS and beyond.

Featuring dozens of first-person interviews, rare video footage, and a mountain of exhaustive research, "Big-Time Soccer" is a love letter to both the best and the worst of the NASL - and the legacy it left behind.

View Details

Veteran sportswriter and Sports Broadcast Journal columnist Rich Podolsky ("You Are Looking Live! How 'The NFL Today' Revolutionized Sports Broadcasting") joins the pod this week for an inside look at the TV pregame show that modernized how America experiences nationally televised pro football.

While the concept of NFL pregame coverage dates back to the earliest days of the medium, it wasn't until 1974 that the format was produced live for the first time in full "wrap-around" fashion via the The NFL on CBS - with studio hosts Jack Whitaker and Lee Leonard providing pregame features, as well as halftime and post-game scores and highlights from around the league.

But it was during the following season - when CBS Sports producers hired up-and-coming play-by-play sportscaster Brent Musburger, former Miss America winner Phyllis George, and ex-Philadelphia Eagle player Irv Cross to anchor the proceedings - that things really got interesting.

Three magnetic personalities from differing sports experiences and perspectives - soon joined by professional gambler Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder in 1976 - helped drive the now-renamed "The NFL Today" to must-watch status among both die-hard NFL fans and casual viewers alike. And with it: sky-high ratings and Emmys for CBS' NFL coverage.

Along the way, headline-grabbing drama among the show's stars became commonplace - including George's shocking departure from the show in 1978 (replace briefly by former Miss Ohio USA Jayne Kennedy) and equally surprising return two years later; a post-show, bar-room fist-fight between Musburger and Snyder in 1980; and Snyder's infamous comments about Black athletes during a 1988 Martin Luther King Day interview that immediately ended his career.

View Details

It's a return to the Nation's Capital this week as we take a romp through Washington, DC's surprisingly rich pro basketball history with Brett Abrams (The Bullets, the Wizards, and Washington, DC Basketball).

While today's astute District hoops fans know the current Washington Wizards were once known as the Bullets - the name under which the franchise won its one and only NBA title back in 1978, and from which it converted to its mystically less violence-connoted label in 1997 - lesser devotees of the team are aware of its previous home (Baltimore: 1963-73), let alone its origins as the NBA's first-ever expansion club in 1961, the Chicago Packers.

Of course, true Washington basketball connoisseurs know the city's relationship with the professional game runs far deeper - dating all the way back to the mid-1920s American Basketball League "Palace Five" - owned by future Washington NFL football owner George Preston Marshall.

And in between, a host of teams - all domiciled in the NE quadrant's history-drenched Washington Coliseum (née Uline Arena) - attempted to keep pro hoops in the local sports spotlight:

• The Red Auerbach-coached Capitols (1946-51) of the NBA-antecedent Basketball Association of America;
• The half-season-lasting Tapers of Abe Saperstein's not-much-longer-lasting "new" American Basketball League (1961); and
• The exceedingly curious single season (1969-70) American Basketball Association "Caps" - the peripatetic franchise that began its life (along with the ABA's) in 1967 as the Oakland Oaks, and ended as the regionally-oriented Virginia Squires until the league's demise in 1976.

View Details

We revisit LA's spirited pre-majors Pacific Coast League rivalry (begun in Episode 208: The Hollywood Stars - With Dan Taylor) with a look at the team ultimately responsible for the demise of both - the Los Angeles Angels.

Baseball author Gaylon White (“The Bilko Athletic Club: The Story of the 1956 Los Angeles Angels”) helps us set the table for the club’s background story as the city’s preeminent minor league baseball franchise - seen through the lens of its triumphant pennant-winning season of 1956, its penultimate before the National League’s Dodgers took over town.

Comprised of major league castoffs and unproven rookies, the Angels that season were centered around a bulky, beer-loving basher of home runs named Steve Bilko - a former St. Louis Cardinal whose headline-grabbing exploits at the plate led the PCL in eight different categories and the club to a dominating 107-61 record - 16 games ahead of their nearest challenger.

In addition to earning national Minor League Player of the Year honors that season, Bilko also became an instant celebrity in Los Angeles - earning as much (if not more) than some of his better-known major league colleagues, as well as unwitting fame the eponymous lead character for of the Emmy Award-winning Phil Silvers Show.

When the Angels and the Stars left town in 1958, so did Bilko - this time for a few more cups of coffee in the bigs, including, ironically, the first two seasons of the major (AL) league expansion version of the Angels in 1961-62 - the inaugural season of which was played in the same Wrigley Field that housed him and its predecessor.

View Details

University of Texas Permian Basin history professor Derek Catsam ("Flashpoint: How a Little-Known Sporting Event Fueled America's Anti-Apartheid Movement") joins to delve into the intriguing story of how a relatively low-key South African rugby tour of the United States in 1981 became an unwittingly pivotal turning point in the nation's growing collective conscience against apartheid, and an influential test of American foreign policy.

By the late 1970s, the US lagged significantly behind the rest of the Western world when it came to addressing the thorny moral, societal and diplomatic issues posed by the Republic of South Africa's racial policies, and its ruling National Party's obstinate defense of them despite increasing international condemnation.

The September 1981 American tour of the country's perennially world-dominant "Springbok" national rugby union team - a continuation of an already tumultuous and violent summer of matches in New Zealand - markedly changed that dynamic.

Those who had been part of the US’s relatively small anti-apartheid decades-long struggle opportunistically seized the visit by one of white South Africa’s most cherished sporting and cultural institutions to mobilize against both the team, and the political regime it represented.

American protestors confronted the Springbok team at airports, chanted outside their hotels, and openly courted arrest at matches - forcing tour organizers to hastily (and bizarrely) convert publicly announced matches into near-clandestine affairs to avoid undue attention or confrontation.

What began as a modest effort to publicize an exciting but little-followed sport in the US, quickly gave rise to the solidification of the nation's soon-robust anti-apartheid movement.

View Details

Quiz any fan of soccer in the US as to the origin of the professional game on American soil, and you're likely to get a myriad of answers - usually rooted in generational identity. ​If you're under 30, the 1996 launch of Major League Soccer looks like a logical starting point - 25 years old, 29 teams strong, and dozens of soccer-specific stadiums befitting a "major" sports league. Older MLS fans in places like Seattle, Portland, and San Jose point out the original versions of their current clubs being domiciled in something called the North American Soccer League - which featured a bevy of international stars and drew huge crowds in the late 1970s/early 1980s as the then-"sport of the future." Others with longer memories (and often soccer-playing lineages) will recall the decades-long, ethnically-flavored heartbeat of the sport known as the American Soccer League - dating back to 1933, or even 1921, depending on your guideposts. But, as soccer historian Dr. Brian Bunk ("From Football to Soccer: The Early History of the Beautiful Game in the United States") reveals to us this week, the true birth of the pro game dates all the way back to 1894 - when not one, but two leagues sought to bring England's popular fast-growing sport to the colonies - introduced (interestingly) with the financial backing and operational resources of baseball's National League.

View Details

Described as a "festive prison yard" by famed New Yorker baseball essayist Roger Angell during the 1962 World Series, San Francisco's famed Candlestick Park was equally loved and hated by sports teams and fans alike during its 43-year-long run as the dual home of baseball's Giants and the NFL's 49ers.
​Curiously (and perhaps illegally) built on a landfill ​atop​ a garbage dump ​at the edge of San Francisco Bay, the "'Stick"​ was notorious for ​its​ tornadic winds​, ​ominous fogs​​ ​and uncomfortably chilly temperatures - especially in its first decade as an open-facing, largely baseball-only park.
​Though fully enclosed in 1971 to accommodate the arrival of the football 49ers (replacing the stadium's grass surface with the more-dual-purpose Astroturf to boot), the aesthetics changed little - made worse by the elimination of the park's previously lovely view of San Francisco's downtown. B​ut there were sports to ​be had. While the Giants only won two NL pennants during their time at Candlestick (despite some huge talent and multiple future Hall of Famers), the 49ers brought perennial playoff-caliber football to the venue - including five NFL titles and a record 36 appearances on ABC's "Monday Night Football" - before leaving for Santa Clara in 2014. Sportswriter Steven Travers ("Remembering the Stick: Candlestick Par​k: ​1960–2013​")​ takes us back in time to recount the good, bad and downright bizarre of one of the Bay Area's most unique sports venues.

View Details

It's been more than two years since we last checked in on the spectacular flame-out of the Alliance of American Football back in April 2019 - enough time, perhaps, to begin the process of dissecting how something so fresh and innovatively promising went so speedily to hell in a hand-basket.
Documentary filmmaker Steven Potter ("Alliances Broken") joins this week's 'cast to discuss his brand new movie - the first extended look at the dramatic and ultimately catastrophic story arc of a league that seemingly had everything going for it (charismatic founder, solid venture investors, big-name coaches, pedigreed football administrators, national television contracts, even a supposedly ground-breaking mobile betting app) - until all of a sudden, it didn't. Originally hired by the AAF's Orlando Apollos to help with video content
creation and local market social media promotion, Potter unwittingly became an inside chronicler of a league that rapidly (and bizarrely) went from a legitimate beacon of hope for players looking to extend their chances at pro football careers to a gargantuan debacle that hundreds of former employees and a litany of creditors are still trying to process the ramifications of. The evolving "history" of the Alliance is still relatively new, and Potter helps us get the first few chapters solidified while the memories of those who were there are still fresh.

View Details

[A re-release of a fan favorite episode from July 2017!]

National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee and three-time ABC-TV “Superstars” champion Kyle Rote, Jr. joins Tim Hanlon from his home in Memphis for an in-depth and wide-ranging conversation about his trailblazing journey as America’s first true native-born professional soccer star.

Along the way, Rote, Jr. reveals:

• How a fortuitous heart-to-heart with his famous football star-father helped convince him to choose soccer over football for his pro career;
• How a standout Rookie of the Year season with the 1973 Dallas Tornado helped thrust him into the North American Soccer League’s national marketing spotlight;
• The remarkable impact of winning a made-for-TV athletic competition against the biggest stars of the “traditional” sports world;
• The unique relationship he developed with the New York Cosmos’ international legend Pelé, and the public relations narrative the NASL built around them;
• How lucrative marketing endorsements made up for embarrassingly low-paying player contracts;
• The serendipitous story of how he helped rescue an MISL team from the “hell” of Hartford; AND
• The unmistakable higher power that continually guided him through the ups and downs of professional athletics – both on the field and off.

View Details

Your humble host does his best this week to tamp down his inner fanboy as he sits down for a bucket-list conversation with one of his favorite players from the legendary New York Cosmos of the original NASL - winger extraordinaire Steve Hunt ("I'm With the Cosmos: The Story of Steve Hunt").
Abruptly transferred into the star-studded orbit of North America's burgeoning super-club at the tender age of 20 from his hometown (Birmingham) England First Division Aston Villa side in the spring of 1977, Hunt unwittingly arrived just in time to grab a seat on the rocket ship breakout season that vaulted the Cosmos into the stratosphere of soccer not only across the US, but also worldwide. Joining an array of international greats like Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, Giorgio Chinaglia, and the incomparable Pelé, the speedy Hunt quickly became an instant sensation and vital offensive cog - not to mention a huge fan favorite - for a Cosmos unit that would soon break records both on and off the field, including an iconic MVP star turn in the club's historic Soccer Bowl '77 championship-winning match. While he only played three seasons in Gotham, Hunt was a crucial component of NASL championships achieved in each of them (1977, 1978 & 1982) - a springboard to a triumphant return to England's top tier and national team caps.

View Details

We close the gap between our previous explorations of the National Hockey League's former California Golden Seals and Minnesota North Stars with a deep dive into the two-year curiosity that bridged between them - the unforgettably forgettable Cleveland Barons. Episode 111 guest and WKKY-FM/Geneva (OH) radio jock Gary Webster ("The NHL's Mistake By the Lake: A History of the Cleveland Barons") returns the 'cast - this time to go deep into the baffling prelude, chaotic operations, and historically debatable termination/relocation of a franchise that was seemingly snakebitten even before its hasty arrival in Northeastern Ohio in the summer of 1976. Named for a decades-old, nine-time minor league AHL championship-winning team that preceded it until 1973 - which itself had been replaced by the struggling "major league" Crusaders of the wobbly World Hockey Association - the Barons came close to folding in both of its two NHL seasons, despite the frantic efforts of two separate ownership groups, a brand-new state-of-the-art arena, and at least one league bailout. Along the way, attendance was meager, media coverage was scant, and on-ice play was woeful - the perfect ingredients for an episode sure to please!

View Details

We're absconding for a few days of summer vacation this week - but not before taking time to sit down for a thoroughly enjoyable interview with pro football enthusiast and friend-of-the-show Aron Harris - as a guest on his popular Sports History Network podcast "The Football Odyssey."

Tim and Aron obsess about all things defunct football - including spring circuits of the past (and still); challenger league rules innovations; sharing stadiums with baseball - and of course, the incomparable and incomprehensible World Football League.

Please enjoy this conversation we recorded a few weeks back - and be sure to check out all the other great podcasts across the Sports History Network!

View Details

We mourn last week's passing of legendary sports entrepreneur and challenger-league impresario Dennis Murphy with a special archive re-release of our two previous interviews from September 8, 2019 (Episode 129) and August 30, 2020 (Episode 179). The brainchild behind some of modern-day sports' most audacious, convention-challenging "alternative" leagues - the American Basketball Association (1967-76), World Hockey Association (1971-79), World Team Tennis (1974-78), and Roller Hockey International (1992-2001), among others - "Murph" was a one-of-a-kind hustler/pioneer who leaves a lasting mark on today's pro sports landscape. Obits: * "Dennis Murphy, Co-Founder of Pro Sports Leagues, Dies at 94" (Beth Harris, Associated Press) * "Dennis Murphy, Impresario of Alternative Leagues, Dies at 94" (Richard Sandomir, New York Times) * "As a Promoter, Dennis Murphy Was in Several Leagues of His Own" (Mark Whicker, Los Angeles Daily News)

Biography:

• Murph: The Sports Entrepreneur Man and His Leagues (Richard Neil Graham)

View Details

Pittsburgh’s dean of sportswriters Jim O’Brien (Looking Up: From the ABA to the NBA the WNBA to the NCAA - A Basketball Memoir*; Looking Up Again - A Basketball Memoir)has seen it all in his more than 50 years of chronicling stories across the pro and collegiate sports landscape - but perhaps no more deeply than in basketball, and in more detailed fashion than during the old American Basketball Association. Throughout the life of the league, you could find O’Brien’s reliable ABA reportage and musings seemingly everywhere: essential weekly columns in The Sporting News; meticulous pre-season team & player profiles in the annual Complete Handbook of Pro Basketball; and the hugely influential Street & Smith’s Basketball Yearbook* (which he co-founded in 1970) - where he strove to ensure the challenger circuit's coverage was equal to that of the legacy NBA's. We merely scratch the surface of O'Brien's treasure trove of stories from the old "red-white-and-blue" in this week's episode - where you'll hear personal reminiscences of legendary ABA figures like Connie Hawkins, Julius Erving, and (Episode 132 guest**) Dan Issel; the significance of the former league's recent fiftieth anniversary; and why Pittsburgh was (both in the antecedent American Basketball League, and thrice-versioned in the ABA), and then wasn't a great pro hoops city.

View Details

As the debut season of the surprisingly entertaining Tony Stewart/Ray Evernham-led Camping World SRX Series nears its conclusion next week, we dive deeper into the rabbit hole of one of its major influences - the legendary International Race of Champions (IROC) - with longtime automotive journalist and former Motor Trend magazine Executive Editor Matt Stone (“The IROC Porsches: The International Race of Champions, Porsche’s 911 RSR & the Men Who Raced Them”). As table-set in our previous Episode 173 with former Indianapolis and Ontario Speedway exec Dave Lockton, IROC was envisioned as the American motorsports equivalent of a major “all-star” showcase - pitting twelve of the world’s best professional drivers from racing’s top competitive circuits in a series of races in identically prepared and maintained cars, in an effort to test participants’ pure driving ability and determine the sport’s true “champion.” Stone helps us with the backstory of IROC’s operational formation - brought to life in late 1973 by racing executives Roger Penske, Les Richter and Mike Phelps in the form of an initial four-race roadcourse series across Riverside international Raceway (three qualifying races: 10/27-28, 1973) and Daytona International Speedway (final: 2/14, 1974) - all televised in tape-delayed glory on ABC’s then-dominant sports anthology series Wide World of Sports. Inaugural invitees: NASCAR Winston Cup champions Bobby Allison, Richard Petty & David Pearson; SCCA Can-Am road-race standouts Mark Donohue, Peter Revson & George Folker; USAC Champ (Indy) Car winners Bobby Unser, A.J. Foyt, Gordon Johncock & Roger McCluskey; and Formula One stars Denis Hulme & Emerson Fittipaldi. And the now-iconic sports car initially selected to challenge them all: the purpose-built, virtually identical 1974 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0 - all 16 originals of which are still alive, well, hugely revered, and highly sought-after today.

View Details

FrontRowSoccer.com's Michael Lewis returns after a two-year absence to help us dig into the news of the Major Arena Soccer League's hiring of three marquee names from pro indoor soccer's 1980s heyday - as it attempts to translate the sport's past glory into interest for a new generation of fans. The additions of Shep Messing (Chairman), Keith Tozer (Commissioner) and Episode 66 guest JP Dellacamera (President, Communications/Media) to the MASL executive suite signals a major effort to stabilize the long-wobbly league and elevate the indoor game back to the level of its legendary predecessors - like the original Major Indoor Soccer League and even the old North American Soccer League. Besides weighing in on what might happen in the months ahead, Lewis mines nearly forty years of soccer reporting to recount some of the most memorable indoor matches from his sportswriting career, including: * The MISL's epic 1981 "Championship Weekend" at the St. Louis Checkerdome, where the hometown Steamers outlasted the Wichita Wings in a logic-defying 8-7 shootout semifinal, but lost a nail-biting 6-5 final to the New York Arrows two days later; * 1975 NASL indoor tournament matches at Rochester's War Memorial, where goals measured only four feet high x 16 feet long; * The MISL's 1981 All-Star Game - played at the World's Most Famous Arena, Madison Square Garden; * A January 1985 Cosmos MISL home loss to the San Diego Sockers that portended the team's folding just two weeks later; and * US National Team goalie Tony Meola's indoor debut with the New Jersey Ironmen of the one-year Xtreme Soccer League in 2008.

View Details

Most baseball fans are familiar with the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from the hit 1992 movie "A League of Their Own" - but most do not know that there was another pro women's circuit that played only in the greater Chicago area at around the same time. Documentary filmmaker Adam Chu ("Their Turn At Bat") joins the pod to discuss the fascinating story of the National Girls Baseball League (1944-54) - formed out of the city's amateur softball talent-loaded Metropolitan League in 1944 - from which the AAGPBL had recruited many of its initial players a year earlier. Co-founded by area roofing company owner Emery Parichy, Chicago Cardinals NFL football team owner Charles Bidwell and city politician/softball enthusiast Ed Kolski, the NGBL consisted of six heavily sponsored teams (originally the Bloomer Girls, Bluebirds, Chicks, Queens, Cardinals, and Music Maids) - playing in neighborhood baseball parks across Chicago and its nearby suburbs, including Parichy's purpose-built showcase Memorial Stadium in Forest Park. The league regularly drew over half-a-million fans annually with its exclusively underhand-pitching format (the AAGBPL allowed for overhand), and even featured football legend Red Grange as its commissioner for its first three seasons. Although the NGBL and AAGPBL never directly competed against each other on the diamond, they did battle fiercely for players - ultimately leading to a pact between the two to not raid each other's talent - and even a truce of sorts when players from both circuits joined together in the four–team International Girls Baseball League (IGBL) in Miami during the winter of 1952–53.

View Details

We knock out a bunch of previously unexplored US soccer franchises of yore with the delightful Graham "Buster" Tutt ("Never Give Up: The Graham 'Buster' Tutt Story") - whose tragically derailed, but ultimately persevering pro soccer journey across three continents serves as the backdrop for intriguing tales of the modern-day American pro game's formative years. A promising young goalkeeper for England's Charlton Athletic in the early 1970s, Tutt turned pro with the London club the day after graduating high school at age 17, ultimately making 78 first-team appearances and helping the Addicks vault from the FA's Third Division to the precipice of the First in just three seasons. However, during a promotional bid game against Sunderland in 1976, Tutt suffered a brutal kick to the face that broke his cheekbone and nose, internally damaged his right eye, and permanently damaged his right eye - effectively ending his playing career. Yet, after two eye operations and 18 months of difficult recovery, Tutt found redemption as a two-time Goalkeeper of the Year in the rough-and-tumble South African League - before springboarding to the burgeoning American pro soccer scene in 1980. Join us for Tutt's Stateside adventures with the ASL Columbus Magic, outdoor/indoor NASL Atlanta Chiefs, ASL Georgia Generals & the AISA/NPSL indoor Atlanta Attack.

View Details

In our Episode 104 with David Hubler & Josh Drazen, we examined the existential crisis faced by organized baseball during the first half of the 1940s, when America's heightened involvement in World War II threatened to shut down pro leagues entirely as the country focused its attention elsewhere. While President Roosevelt's now-famous "Green Light Letter" to MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis on January 15, 1942 ensured the game would continue unimpeded Stateside, hundreds of major-league and thousands of minor-league players soon found themselves drafted into, or even volunteering for active wartime duty abroad - including some of baseball's biggest stars of the era, like Joe DiMaggio, Pee Wee Reese, Ted Williams, and Stan Musial. Baseball-in-wartime expert Gary Bedingfield ("Baseball in Hawaii During World War II") joins the 'cast to discuss the travails of these professional players across the war's Pacific and European theaters, who balanced combat-related "day jobs" with surprisingly competitive military league play - especially in Hawaii, where many of the game's best found themselves stationed at one point or another.

View Details

We dial up Robert Cherry, author of the definitive biography of legendary pro basketball great Wilt Chamberlain ("Wilt: Larger Than Life"), to delve into the lesser-known (but enormously fascinating) aspects of the "Big Dipper"'s athletic career - including intriguing stops and stints with: * The Harlem Globetrotters (1958-59) - where Chamberlain effectively played out his senior college year after two years (and an NCAA Tournament Final) with Kansas, before becoming age-eligible for the NBA Draft; * The Philadelphia Warriors (1959-62) - "Mogul" Eddie Gottleib's burgeoning NBA franchise where Chamberlain was preordained to join by way of the league's territorial rights framework, and where he quickly shattered all kinds of scoring records - including a history-making 100-point game against the NY Knicks on 3/2/62; * The San Diego Conquistadors (1973-74) - the rival ABA's first (and only) expansion franchise that lured Chamberlain away from his remaining option year with the LA Lakers (after two consecutive NBA Finals appearances and a title in 1972) with a $600,000 offer to be the Qs' combo player/coach; and * The International Volleyball Association (1974-79) - where Chamberlain wore a myriad of hats as a founder, investor, owner, player (Southern California Bangers, Orange County Stars, Seattle Smashers), coach, and even league Commissioner.

View Details

The starting grid is set for the 105th running of the Indianapolis 500 this Sunday, and what better way to get ready than with a look back at the divisive battle between two competing sanctioning bodies that almost decimated the sport of open-wheel IndyCar racing - and even "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing" itself.

Veteran motorsports reporter John Oreovicz ("Indy Split: The Big-Money Battle That Nearly Destroyed Indy Racing") joins the podcast to help us better understand the political infighting that has plagued the sport since the late 1970s - most notably the schismatic 12-year "split" from 1996-2007 between CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) and the Indy Racing League - the lingering effects of which still threaten to undermine the sport's future.

At the heart of all of it has been the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway - open-wheel's undisputed center of gravity for more than a century - and now, along with a recombined IndyCar Series, boasts new ownership (racing industry legend Roger Penske) that aims to again harmonize the sport into a viable and vibrant future.

View Details

We admit that when our friends at Liverpool's deCoubertin Books reached out recently with an advance look at their upcoming title devoted to the history of one of England's most venerable top-flight soccer clubs, we weren't immediately sold on the premise, nor its applicability to our (admittedly) odd brand of sports curiosity.

But after just a few minutes with the meticulously detailed "Toffee Soccer: Everton and North America," we became not only intrigued by the rich, storied saga of Everton F.C.'s 143-year journey into what is now known as the English Premier League - but downright fascinated with its surprising contributions to the development of the game in North America.

Toffee co-authors David France and Rob Sawyer join the podcast this week to shine light on the little-known, but undeniable connection between the "Blues" and the rise of the modern-day pro game in the US & Canada.

From the club's unexpected 1961 runner-up finish in the influential International Soccer League, to its subsequent supply of dozens of top players to the foundational North American Soccer League of the 70s/80s, to its recent embrace of world-class American players like Landon Donovan and Tim Howard - the "People's Club" has been an unwittingly integral part of soccer's Stateside history - far beyond Goodison Park.

View Details

American soccer insiders know Steve Gans as one of the sport's leading domestic corporate attorneys, with a long track record of legal representation from all sides of the ball - including as a former candidate for the US Soccer Federation's highly contentious presidential election in 2018.

Few, however, are aware that the Boston-born-and-raised Gans - who also spearheaded the Foxborough, MA venue bid for the US-hosted 1994 World Cup - began his long professional association with the 'beautiful game" as a teenaged marketing/PR intern with two of the most regionally peripatetic franchises in North American Soccer League history: the Boston Minutemen (1974-76) and the New England Tea Men (1978-80).

The Minutemen played two successful and one dismal outdoor seasons in the NASL spread across six different home fields - including a hodgepodge of 1976 venues completely outside of Boston proper (Quincy, Foxborough, New Bedford). Star players like brash American goalkeeper Shep Messing and Portuguese international legend Eusebio dotted early lineups, but team owner John Sterge's sketchy and ultimately criminal business dealings soon undermined the club's fledgling success.

After a year's absence, the NASL returned to the area in 1978 with the expansion New England Tea Men - owned by the Lipton Tea Company and domiciled in Foxborough's Schaefer Stadium. The composition of the team belied its nickname, as a largely British-flavored roster - led by Charlton Athletic loanee and eventual league MVP Mike Flanagan - topped its division and even knocked off the mighty Cosmos twice. But the wheels started coming off in 1979, when Charlton refused to loan Flanagan again, and a dispute with nearby Foxboro Raceway forced the club to hastily move to Boston University's Nickerson Field, where attendances dropped precipitously. By 1981, the club had fled to Jacksonville, and the region was bereft of pro soccer until the MLS Revolution in 1996.

View Details

Soccer America columnist and Episode 49 guest Ian Plenderleith ("Rock 'n' Roll Soccer: The Short Life and Fast Times of the North American Soccer League") returns to the show for our initial hot take on the ill-fated "Super League" - a long-rumored, big-money elite European club tournament concept that is already being left for dead a mere two days after its official launch on April 18th.

Stealthily announced on the eve of a UEFA Executive Committee meeting set to revamp and expand an already-lucrative Champions League competition, the breakaway Super League aimed to expedite the process by way of a new 20-team circuit featuring 15 permanent "founding clubs" (supplemented by five annual qualifiers), each guaranteed bankable spots in each season's competition.

Among the twelve announced at launch were some of the richest soccer clubs on the planet: La Liga's Atlético Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid; Serie A's Inter Milan, Juventus and A.C. Milan; and six from the English Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.

The reaction from the world's soccer establishment was swift in its condemnation and ferocious in its hostility - with some of the hottest protestations coming from the very fans of the proposed league's charter members, already wary of foreign investment in their domestic leagues. Plenderleith helps us understand how we got here, what happens in the immediate aftermath (especially to the "Treasonous Twelve") - and why the "Super League" will likely not be the last of efforts to squeeze more corporate riches from the peoples' "beautiful game."

View Details

Baseball historian Steve Treder ("Forty Years a Giant: The Life of Horace Stoneham") steps up to the plate this week to delve into the oft-overlooked contributions of influential San Francisco (née New York) Giants owner Horace Stoneham - who quietly stewarded the storied National League franchise through four turbulent decades of baseball history (1936-76).

Inheriting the club at the tender age of 32 from his father after his death in 1936, Stoneham actually began his tenure with the Manhattan-based Giants (and its sprawling multi-sport Polo Grounds venue) twelve years earlier as an apprentice - working his way up from lowly ticketing assistant to (legendary field manager) John McGraw confidante by the early 1930s.

Despite winning only four NL pennants (including the famous 1951 "Shot Heard 'Round the World") and just one World Series title (1954) while in New York, Stoneham more significantly impacted the team's legacy and the game's future off the field. In the mid-1940s when the Pacific Coast League was angling to gain Major League status, few except Stoneham and Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey took it seriously; twelve years later, the Giants and Dodgers became the first teams to boldly relocate westward. Stoneham was also an early pioneer in racial integration: he signed Negro League stars Monte Irvin and Hank Thompson in 1949 (enabling the Giants to become the second-ever MLB club to break the color barrier); and he hired the majors' first-ever Spanish-speaking scout to help find and develop Latin American players.

View Details

The Roarin' Twenties was a time of Prohibition, jazz, gangland murder - and, for baseball, an age of superstitious magic - when even future Hall of Fame players believed that rubbing the hump of a hunchback would guarantee a hit at the plate.

Irreparably disfigured by a childhood playground seesaw accident, South Philadelphia teenager Hughie McLoon never grew taller than 49 inches; but in an era when baseball club mascots were chosen with as much care as starting pitchers(!), McLoon prevailed upon legendary Philadelphia Athletics owner Connie Mack to hire him as the team's lucky charm in 1916.

Reeling from an unfamiliar last-place finish in 1915 (after winning four American League pennants and three World Series titles between 1910-14), Mack's A's needed all the help they could get - including a replacement for their previous humpbacked batboy/mascot/star Louis Van Zelst, who had died prior to the season's start. Although McLoon couldn't help the A's escape the AL basement during his three seasons, he still became a local celebrity much like his "more successful" predecessor; he loved the crowds at Shibe Park, and they loved him back. McLoon became the toast of the town, parlaying his fame with the A's into a bevy of law-bending ventures, including boxing manager/promoter, speakeasy owner, and booze runner - all while serving as a secret agent for Philly's police chief. Gunned down in a gang-style confrontation outside his tavern one summer night in 1928, McLoon's death rocked the city - and throngs of well-wishers came out for his wake. Veteran political journalist Allen Abel ("The Short Life of Hughie McLoon: A True Story of Baseball, Magic and Murder") joins us to recount this very curious story of 1910s baseball, its odd superstitions and one of its most unique characters.

View Details

There’s one question Cam Perron ("Comeback Season: My Unlikely Story of Friendship with the Greatest Living Negro League Baseball Players") has heard over and over again: “How does a white kid from a suburb of Boston become friends with all of these former Negro League baseball ­players?”

An ardent Red Sox fan, Perron grew up during the '00s loving history, and from an early age, had a knack for collecting. But when he was twelve and bought a set of Topps baseball cards featuring several players from something called "the Negro Leagues," his curiosity was piqued.

In 2007, while still in middle school, Perron started writing letters to former Negro League players, asking for their autographs and a few words about their careers. What he got back was much more than he expected. The former players responded with detailed stories about their glory days on the field, as well as disconcerting descriptions of the racism they faced - including run-ins with the KKK. They explained how they were repeatedly kept out of the major leagues and confined to the lower-paying and lesser-publicized Negro Leagues - even after Jackie Robinson had supposedly broken the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. By the time Perron started high school, letters had turned into phone calls, and he was spending hours a day talking with dozens of seemingly forgotten ex-players. Many of them professed ignorance as to the existence or whereabouts of any records of their play, and sadness at how they'd lost touch with their former teammates. In 2010, with the help of a small group of fellow researchers, a then-15-year-old Perron helped organize the first annual Negro League Players Reunion in Birmingham, Alabama, where he finally got to meet his new friends - all of them 50-to-70 years his senior - in person. Their bond was natural and instant.
In between subsequent reunions, Perron has become deeply involved in an ever-expanding mission to help ex-players get rightly-owed pension monies from Major League Baseball, while simultaneously working to get the Negro Southern League Museum in Birmingham opened in 2015. Support the show by trying one month of BlueChew for FREE (just pay $5 shipping) with promo code GOODSEATS at checkout!

View Details

Founded as the "Eastern Pennsylvania Basketball League" for its first season in post-war 1946 - and later (1970-78) known as the Eastern Basketball Association before eventually morphing into the NBA's semi-official minor-league Continental Basketball Association - the Eastern Professional Basketball League was the probably greatest pro hoops circuit you've never heard of. The EPBL was a fast-paced and physical affair, often played in tiny, smoke-filled gyms across the northeast and featuring standout players who found themselves "boxed out" of the NBA for a variety of reasons - unspoken quotas on Black players (like Hal “King” Lear, Julius McCoy, & Wally Choice), collegiate point-shaving scandals (e.g., Sherman White, Jack Molinas, Bill Spivey), or simply the harsh math of a 1950s/60s NBA that counted less than 100 roster slots total across its 8-10 franchises.

Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein ("Boxed Out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League") join the show to delve into the fascinating story of a league that, for over 30 years, was the next-best professional league in the world after the NBA.

And featured a bevy of eventual basketball luminaries - like Syracuse University coach Jim Boeheim, former Temple University coach John Chaney, former Detroit Pistons player & coach Ray Scott, former NBA coach & TV analyst Hubie Brown, and former NBA player & coach Bob Weiss - who went on to make their marks upon the modern game. If you remember teams like the Scranton Milers, Wilkes-Barre Barons, Sunbury Mercuries or Allentown Jets - this is the episode for you! Support the show by trying one month of BlueChew for FREE (just pay $5 shipping) with promo code GOODSEATS at checkout!

View Details

Author Dan Taylor ("Lights, Camera, Fastball: How the Hollywood Stars Changed Baseball") joins the pod for an in-depth look at one of baseball's most uniquely inventive teams - known for its star-studded celebrity ownership structure (including the likes of Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, George Burns, and Cecil B. DeMille) - and warm embrace of movie industry publicity during the 1940s/50s heyday of Hollywood's "Golden Age."

Long before Brooklyn's relocated Dodgers colonized Los Angeles with "major league" status in 1958, the Hollywood Stars (along with its fierce cross-town rival LA Angels) pioneered a host of innovations with a promotional flair that was the envy of its "near-major" Pacific Coast League competitors.

Led by Robert Cobb, owner of the legendary Brown Derby restaurant chain (and Cobb salad namesake), the Stars routinely challenged baseball conventions with a litany of paradigm-changing initiatives such as: uniforms with short pants, in-stadium cheerleaders and movie star beauty queens, between-innings infield-dragging (to boost concession sales), high-end ballpark food, and professional baseball's first regularly broadcast televised home games. Support the show by getting two free months of NordVPN - plus a FREE GIFT - when you use promo code GOODSEATS *at checkout!*

View Details

International Tennis Hall of Fame Museum director Doug Stark (The SPHAs: The Life and Times of Basketball's Greatest Jewish Team) joins this week's 'cast for an authoritative exploration of one of his first loves - pro basketball's pioneering Philadelphia SPHAs. Originally organized in 1918 as a local amateur team by South Philadelphia High School grads Eddie Gottlieb, Harry Passon and Hughie Black - and acronymically named for their early uniform sponsors, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association - the SPHAs rose from a regional amateur league power in the 1920s to become an early avatar for professional basketball dominance in the 1930s & 40s. With home games played in the ballroom of Philly's Broadwood Hotel (replete with customary singles dances afterwards), the SPHAs became a sensation in the local Jewish social scene, and soon graduated (under the guidance of Gottlieb) to winning titles in various early pro hoops leagues like the Eastern League and Abe Saperstein's American Basketball League - while beating legendary teams like Boston's Original Celtics and New York's Renaissance Five along the way. In the ABL alone, the SPHAs captured seven titles in their 13 years of play between 1933-45, and were runners-up twice. In 1946, the NBA-forerunning Basketball Association of America debuted, and the ABL ceased to be a major league. With Gottlieb establishing the Philadelphia Warriors as his BAA franchise, the SPHAs continued with the minor league ABL and as a touring opponent of the Saperstein's barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters. Gottlieb sold the team in 1950 to former SPHAs star Red Klotz, who changed the name to the Washington Generals. Support the show by trying one month of BlueChew for FREE (just pay $5 shipping) with promo code GOODSEATS at checkout!

View Details

Youngstown State professor Denis Crawford ("The Life and Teams of Johnny F. Bassett: Maverick Entrepreneur of North American Sports") joins the 'cast for a jam-packed deep dive into the life of one of the most underrated, yet enormously influential pro sports figures of the 1970s/80s. A third-generation scion of a prominent Canadian industrialist family steeped in both media and sports team ownership, John F. (Johnny) Bassett distinguished himself from his elders as a marketing-savvy showman with a P.T. Barnum-esque flair for spectacle and a penchant for challenging the traditional conventions of professional sports - notably with teams in leagues predicated on bucking the establishment: * The World Hockey Association's Toronto Toros and Birmingham Bulls; * The World Football League's Toronto Northmen/Memphis Southmen; * World Team Tennis' Toronto-Buffalo Royals; AND * The United States Football League's Tampa Bay Bandits

Through all his adventures, Bassett catered to the common fan, demanded fair treatment of athletes, and forced traditionalist sports owners to take hard looks at the way they did business. Crawford helps us unpack some of Bassett's most notable escapades, including: a quixotic attempt to compete with the NHL's Maple Leafs; raiding the NFL for Miami Dolphins stars Larry Czonka, Jim Kiick and Paul Warfield; battling the Canadian government over American football; an audacious attempt at marketing pro hockey in the Deep South; and his bitter rivalry with a greedy Donald Trump for the soul of the USFL. Support the show by downloading the DraftKings app NOW and using promo code GOODSEATS to join the free One Million Dollar College Hoops Survivor Pool!

View Details

We fire up the GPS for a trek back to the City of Brotherly Love this week for a fond - but decidedly one-of-a-kind - remembrance of Philadelphia's oddly beloved "octorad"-styled outdoor sports mecca known as Veterans Stadium. Memoirist, Philly native and actual (Vietnam War) vet Tom Garvey ("The Secret Apartment") joins us to delve into his incredible story of living in a self-fashioned apartment underneath the seats of the old Vet's left-field Section 354 (above the visiting team's baseball bullpen) in the early 1980s: From the opening chapter of "The Secret Apartment": "Let's begin an implausible story with a seemingly simple yet complex question: If you were single, never married with no children or dependents, would you, if you had the opportunity, have lived 'on the down low' in a secret apartment in Veterans Stadium? "In this proposal, we have an off-the-wall South Philly version of 'Phantom of the Opera,' but the larger notion this question begs could easily challenge the inner demons of sports fans anywhere. If you had an opportunity to live in a major sports stadium of a team you grew up loving, what would you have done? "In my case: I could, so I did."

View Details

Arizona State calculus professor Scott Surgent ("The Complete World Hockey Association, 11th Edition"; "The World Hockey Association Fact Book") joins this week to discuss his personal passion project of documenting everything statistical from the fascinatingly ephemeral World Hockey Association - despite never having witness a single game during its brief seven-year run (1972-79). Like many young sports fans of the 70s living outside of actual WHA markets (for as long as they lasted), Surgent's first introduction to and ongoing understanding of the upstart WHA was by way of laboring through the tiny catch-all "scoreboard" agate of local newspaper sports sections - where league standings, player transactions and a random box score or two would qualify as "coverage." Surgent would squint hard to literally and figuratively read between the lines as to what the WHA was all about - supplemented by an occasional wire service article, usually about a team (or the league itself) in financial trouble. Imagination and hearsay filled in the rest - until the league's "merger" with the NHL in 1979, when everything WHA-related seemingly vanished with it, as if nothing had ever transpired. By the early '90s, Surgent was perplexed as to the continued absence of anything historical - let alone definitive - from the league's statistical existence. So he struck out on his own to literally set the record straight - resulting in the first edition of "Complete" in 1995. 25 years and ten editions later, Surgent's reference opus - all 526 glorious pages of it - is now the go-to resource for anyone seeking authoritative certitude about anything WHA. Support the show by getting two free months of NordVPN - plus a FREE GIFT - when you use the promo code GOODSEATS at checkout!

View Details

After a severely challenging, COVID-hampered 2020, it wasn't altogether surprising to hear NBA Commissioner Adam Silver openly muse with reporters at year's end about the potential for adding a new franchise or two to help shore up the league's finances. "I'd say it's caused us to maybe dust off some of the analyses on the economic and competitive impacts of expansion," Silver said back in December. "We've been putting a little bit more time into it than we were pre-pandemic." While not necessarily a fait accompli, it is still a remarkable turn of strategic thinking that immediately sent local tongues wagging in multiple North American cities from Las Vegas to Louisville to even Mexico City and Montreal. But few would argue that the aggrieved city of Seattle - losers of the much-beloved SuperSonics in the summer of 2008 to a carpet-bagging ownership group from Oklahoma City - should be the first in line for a new club when the NBA is officially ready. Author Jon Finkel ("Hoops Heist: Seattle, the Sonics and How a Stolen Team's Legacy Gave Rise to the NBA's Secret Empire") helps us bolster the case for big-time basketball's return to the Emerald City - through the eyes of both Sonics' legends like Lenny Wilkens, Spencer Haywood, Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp & Ray Allen, as well as via home-grown players like Isaiah Thomas, Brandon Roy, Doug Christie, Jason Terry, Nate Robinson & Jamal Crawford - who all came of age in the Sonics' shadow and now define the modern-day NBA. Support the show by getting two free months of NordVPN - plus a FREE GIFT - when you use promo code GOODSEATS at checkout!

View Details

We continue our dogged pursuit of the history of baseball's Negro Leagues with a stop this week in the suburban Philadelphia borough of Darby, PA - for a look at the famed Hilldale Club with SABR Seymour Medal-winning historian Neil Lanctot ("Fair Dealing and Clean Playing: The Hilldale Club and the Development of Black Professional Baseball"). Established as an amateur boys team in 1910 by a moonlighting civil servant named Ed Bolden, the club incorporated in November 1916, as the Hilldale Baseball & Exhibition Company - and developing into a professional Negro League powerhouse in the 1920s. Along with Atlantic City's Bacharach Giants, Hilldale played as eastern "associates" of the predominantly midwestern Negro National League in 1920-21 - before becoming charter members of a full-fledged Bolden-founded rival Eastern Colored League in 1923. Immediately, Hilldale's "Darby Daisies" became the team to beat - winning the ECL's first three league pennants, and earning two trips to the first-ever Colored World Series against the NNL's powerhouse Kansas City Monarchs - barely losing a best-of-nine series in 1924, but dominating in a five games-to-one title in 1925. Darby lineups were frequently stocked with some of the top players of the era - including six eventual baseball National Baseball Hall of Famers: Oscar Charleston, "The Immortal" Martin Dihigo, "Pop" Lloyd, "Judy" Johnson, "Biz" Mackey, and Louis Santop. ​Hilldale also made waning appearances in 1929's one-year American Negro League and 1932's East-West League ​as the economic strains of the Great Depression ultimately pushed the club into extinction.

View Details

Philadelphia's dean of baseball writers Rich Westcott ("The Mogul: Eddie Gottlieb, Philadelphia Sports Legend and Pro Basketball Pioneer") steps outside the batter's box this week to help us go deep into the story of one of pro basketball's most foundational figures, Eddie Gottlieb. Armed with a great smile and a razor-sharp memory, the Ukranian-born and South Philly-raised Gottlieb was a multi-faceted hoops pioneer - rules innovator, successful coach, masterful promoter, and logistics wizard - whose tactical talents and business acumen gave rise to what would ultimately evolve into today's NBA.

In 1918, Gottlieb organized and coached a social club-sponsored amateur team for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association (SPHA) that he grew into a regionally dominant and ultimately professional powerhouse; from the late 1920s to early 1940s, the SPHAs dominated the original Eastern and American Basketball Leagues, winning multiple championships and regularly beating prominent touring clubs like the Original Celtics and the New York Renaissance Five (Rens).

In 1946, Gottlieb helped establish a new professional league - the Basketball Association of America. As owner, general manager, coach, and "promoter-in-chief" of the league's Philadelphia Warriors, he won the BAA’s first championship in 1946-47.

Three seasons later, Gottlieb played a pivotal role in the merger of the BAA with the National Basketball League to form the National Basketball Association, where his Warriors would win a second league crown in 1956, and to which he would later add the groundbreaking talents of one Wilt Chamberlain in 1959.

After selling the team in 1962, Gottleib became the NBA's "Mr. Basketball" - the definitive and authoritative resource spanning league rules, history, scheduling, and operations - until his death in 1979. He is immortalized not only as a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, but also as the name on the trophy given annually to the NBA's Rookie of the Year.

View Details

Author Geoff Williams (C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America) joins for the stranger-than-fiction story of the cross-country long-distance running event/endurance contest that only the Roarin' 20s could have spawned. On March 4, 1928, a motley assortment of nearly 200 marathon pros, amateur sports enthusiasts and random publicity-seekers took to the starter's pistol from Los Angeles' Legion Ascot Speedway to begin an incredible 3,423-mile trek (half of it on a brand-new Route 66 highway) to New York's Madison Square Garden as part of the "C.C. Pyle International Transcontinental Foot Race of 1928" dubbed the "Bunion Derby" by the sports press - in pursuit of their share of a combined $48,500 in cash prizes offered by archetypal sports promoter Charles C. ("Cash & Carry") Pyle. Pyle was the P.T. Barnum of sports promotion, who first came into prominence by convincing collegiate football standout Red Grange to turn pro. Grange helped Pyle make a fortune, which he later parlayed into a similar turn promoting the first professional US tennis tour, converting top amateurs like Suzanne Lenglen. But it was the transcontinental ultra-marathon concept that would be Pyle's legacy: "It will be the greatest free show ever offered the American public," Pyle boasted. "The runners will go through hundreds of towns, each of which will be assessed for advertising. Thousands will flock to these towns to see the runners. We'll sell them programs and tickets to our traveling side show." On May 26, just 55 survivors stumbled into the Garden, where a 19-year-old Oklahoma Native American named Andrew Payne crossed the finish line to win - an 84-day journey comprising a total running time of 573 hours, 4 minutes and 34 seconds - a roughly 16-hour lead over second-place finisher John Salo of Passaic, NJ.

The prize money was held up for a week, but was finally doled out by fellow promoter Tex Rickard, who bailed out Pyle from an estimated $150,000 loss on the endeavor. Incredibly, Pyle came back for a second (and ultimately final) run in 1929 - with similar results.

View Details

After overwhelming response to our Episode 194 exploration ​of hockey's epic 1972 "Summit Series," we gas up the Zamboni for a return visit into Canada/Russian competition lore - this time for the equally intriguing (but often overlooked) sequel Summit Series of 1974 - with sports author/historian Craig Wallace (The Forgotten Summit: A Canadian Perspective on the 1974 Canada-Soviet Hockey Series). While ostensibly a "round two" between the world's top national hockey programs, the 1974 Series differed in that the Canadian side was comprised exclusively of players from the World Hockey Association (WHA) - a major preseason promotional boost for the fledgling two-year-old circuit still struggling to gain a pro foothold against the mighty NHL. As a result, wildly popular Canadian WHA stars like Winnipeg's Bobby Hull, Houston's Gordie Howe and Cleveland's Gerry Cheevers - each forbidden by the NHL from playing two years earlier - saw their first national team action, joined by returning series veterans Paul Henderson, Frank Mahovlich and Pat Stapleton. Despite a strong start in the first two games, Team Canada could not replicate its trailblazing success from their 1972 exploits; the Soviets won the series (4 wins, 3 ties, 1 loss) - but as Wallace reveals, the games were close, extremely competitive and wildly entertaining - replete with just as much drama and excitement as its predecessor (and even better uniforms).

View Details

We sit down with the eldest scion of Los Angeles' legendary Dr. Jerry Buss family sports empire for a wide-ranging discussion about its early construction, day-to-day operations, eventual unwinding - and its ongoing legacy via the current NBA World Champion Lakers, of which (along with his five siblings) he is a part-owner. Along the way, Johnny takes us through his personal adventures in places like: * The original mid-1970s World Team Tennis (the Los Angeles Strings, Jerry's first pro sports ownership endeavor); * Inglewood's "Fabulous" Forum (the eventual hub for Buss family-owned assets acquired from Jack Kent Cooke in 1979); * The MISL's Los Angeles Lazers (where Johnny was president for the team's first three seasons); * The WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks (again president, from the team's/league's inception in 1997 until 2006 - including back-to-back league titles in 2001 & 2002)

Buss also sheds some light on the often-challenging family dynamics both under father Jerry's watch and even more so after his passing - as well as hints at the sport that still intrigues him enough to potentially come out of retirement to make another go at it. Support the show by getting four free months of NordVPN when you use promo code GOODSEATS at checkout!

View Details

Former Denver Post columnist and long-time sports writer/author Terry Frei (“Third Down and a War to Go;” “'77: Denver, the Broncos, and a Coming of Age” + plenty more) joins to discuss the briefly curious life (1976-82) of NHL hockey's Colorado Rockies - Frei's first-ever professional newspaper beat assignment back in the day.

As originally recounted in his eyebrow-raising 2010 memoir Playing Piano in a Brothel: A Sports Journalist's Odyssey, Frei helps us better understand the events, personalities and hijinks that comprised the six-year Denver incarnation of the former Kansas City Scouts and future New Jersey Devils franchise - with some perspective on its under-appreciated history and legacy.

It's a story that traverses four separate owners, six different coaches, a constant threat of relocation, a terrible lease arrangement in a state-of the art (McNichols) arena, one meager (1978) playoff appearance (despite finishing 21 games under .500), a legendary logo - and a bombastic season of sour "Grapes."

If you're a fan of the Devils or today's Colorado Avalanche, consider this your hockey history lesson for the week!

Support the show by getting four free months of NordVPN when you use promo code GOODSEATS at checkout!

View Details

Filmmaker and Maryland-native Troy Lowman ("The Ghosts of 33rd Street") helps us kick off the new year with a look back at the pro football franchise that still looms large over the city of Baltimore's sports exploits - the Colts.

While the Ravens have been carrying the region's modern-day NFL torch since their messy arrival/conversion from the original Cleveland Browns franchise in 1996, few residents of Charm City would dispute the deep roots and lasting contributions of the legendary club that preceded them from 1953-83 - including three memorable NFL championships and a Super Bowl [V] title.

Before surreptitiously absconding for the greener financial pastures of Indianapolis in the snow-whipped overnight/morning hours of March 28-29, 1984, the Colts had largely been the darlings of Baltimore sports fans for much of their 30 years - only to be undone by a long-festering brew of owner greed, stadium economics and political miscalculation.

Lowman helps us unravel the elongated story arc of the once-beloved Baltimore Colts franchise, why the club ultimately left, and how that which has replaced it since will never fully equal what once was.

Support the show by getting four free months of NordVPN when you use promo code GOODSEATS at checkout!

View Details

[A re-release of fan favorite episode from January 2020!]

Prolific rock/R&B drummer/musician Steve Ferrone (Average White Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) joins to delve into the backstory of helping write/craft the official theme song for the New York Cosmos – the latest chapter in our irregular series devoted to Tim’s longstanding fascination with the North American Soccer League’s most famous franchise.

Pop music aficionados know Ferrone as part of the “classic” mid-70s lineup of AWB (along with Hamish Stuart, Alan Gorrie, “Onnie” McIntyre, Roger Ball, and “Molly” Duncan); as a two-decade+ member of the Heartbreakers (1994-2017); and from a prodigious body of studio session work with a literal who’s-who of pop music’s biggest talent (Chaka Khan, Rick James, Eric Clapton, Stevie Nicks, and the Bee Gees, just to name a few).

But long-time Cosmos soccer fans may also remember Ferrone’s semi-invisible hand in the creation and performance of the club’s rhythmic anthem that blared from the Giants Stadium PA system after goals and anchored the team’s WOR-TV telecasts – recorded under the AWB nom de plume of the “Cosmic Highlanders” via Warner Communications corporate sister Atlantic Records.

Besides the circumstances of the song’s origins, Ferrone regales Tim with stories of: how he stepped into the Average White Band during a critical time in the group’s then-young life; the musical magic of Atlantic and its founder-brothers Ahmet & Nesuhi Ertegun; how the “Cosmos Clap” came about; and the original song idea Cosmos management had in mind for the club’s official theme!

View Details

We bid an emphatic good riddance to a crappy 2020 with our second-annual holiday roundtable spectacular featuring the return of fellow defunct sports enthusiasts Andy Crossley (Fun While It Lasted & Episode 2); Paul Reeths (OurSportsCentral.com, StatsCrew.com & Episode 46); and Steve Holroyd (Episodes 92, 109, 149 & 188) – for a spirited roundtable discussion about the past, present and potential future of “forgotten” pro sports teams and leagues.

It's a look back at some of the year’s most notable events, including:

• COVID-19's wrath across the entirety of pro sports;
• The mid-season implosion of the reincarnated XFL;
• Premier League Lacrosse's absorption of 20-year-old Major League Lacrosse;
• New names for the NFL's Washington and Raiders franchises; AND
• Major League Baseball’s RSVP approach to contracting the minors.

Plus, some predictions on what might transpire in 2021, as:

• Major League Cricket gears up for launch;

• The Rock cooks up a resuscitation recipe for the XFL;

• Cleveland's baseball club ponders a new nickname - and the others likely to follow;

• Adidas unevenly tries to cash in on NHL retro jerseys;

• Soccer expansion in Louisville (NWSL), Austin (MLS) and NISA; AND

• We continue to search for anyone with updates about Mark Cuban’s Professional Futsal League!

Support the show by getting four free months of NordVPN when you use promo code GOODSEATS at checkout!

View Details

Just about any Canadian of a certain age will be able to tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing on September 28, 1972.

That's the day when "Team Canada" (and Toronto Maple Leaf) forward Paul Henderson scored a dramatic and decisive late-third-period "goal heard around the world" to clinch the eighth and final game of an epic month-long hockey series against a similar professional all-star team from the Soviet Union - in what is today remembered as simply the "Summit Series."

Hockey historian Rich Bendell ("The Summit Series: Stats, Lies & Videotape - The Untold Story of Hockey's Series of the Century") joins us this week for a deep dive into the curious, yet now-iconic battle between the sport's two top superpowers at the time - played against the backdrop of global 1970s-era Cold War tensions - that morphed from a relatively unassuming cultural exchange-oriented "exhibition" into the defining hallmark of each country's rich hockey heritage.

View Details

A guilty pleasure this week, as we go deep into the story of iconic vintage sportswear retailer Ebbets Field Flannels - the world leader in researching, sourcing and creating 100% authentic athletic apparel - with its owner and founder Jerry Cohen. From the EFF website:

"Jerry Cohen grew up in Brooklyn, not far from where the fabled stadium once stood in Flatbush. Jerry listened to his father tell stories of the colorful players of another era. He was proud of the fiercely independent neighborhood. And the Brooklyn Dodgers' heritage as the first major league team to integrate professional baseball in 1947, with the addition of Hall-of-Famer Jackie Robinson.

"Jerry was fascinated with sports emblems and uniforms. As a youngster, he would purchase baseball cards to see the uniform changes and colors rather than for the players. Fast-forward to 1987, when he was trying to find a vintage flannel baseball jersey to wear onstage with his rock & roll band.

"Not satisfied with the 'polyester era' look and designs, Jerry became a bit obsessed, and eventually tracked down some old wool baseball flannel and had a few shirts made for himself. When people literally wanted to buy the shirt off his back, Ebbets Field Flannels was born. Focusing on non-major league history such as the Negro leagues and the pre-1958 Pacific Coast League gave the company a unique twist, and brought relatively unknown baseball history to the public at large.

"Over 30 years and thousands of flannels later, EFF is still making vintage jerseys, jackets and caps in America the old fashioned way, using original materials and manufacturing techniques.

"Each limited edition garment is handmade from the world's largest inventory of 100% authentic, historical fabrics. All jerseys, ballcaps, jackets and sweaters are cut, sewn, or knit, from original fabrics and yarns.

"We don't follow the latest fads. Instead, we're fanatics when it comes to historical accuracy, backed by documented research. We weave that local color and heritage into an array of products as timeless as the game itself."

PLUS: Enjoy 10% off any purchase from Ebbets Field Flannels when you use promo code "GOODSEATS10"!

View Details

For the first time since Episode 47 with Dennis Seese, we dial back to US pro soccer's optimistic but tenuous late 1960's reboot, with Derek Liecty - the founding general manager of one the period's most successful (yet historically overlooked) teams, the Oakland (née California) Clippers. One of ten inaugural franchises in the renegade National Professional Soccer League - one of two competing attempts to launch true "Division One" soccer in North America (the other being an officially FIFA-sanctioned 12-team United Soccer Association) in the spring of 1967 - the Clippers were unquestionably the NPSL's best club.

Stocked with a pipeline of top Yugoslavian imports (including NPSL All-Stars Ilija Mitic and Mirko Stojanovic), the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum-based club captured the regular season title with 19-8-5 record (23 points better than the second-best Baltimore Bays), and were undefeated at home. The Clippers bested the Bays in the two-game NPSL championship final (4-2 on aggregate) and also claimed an unprecedented "treble" by defeating the division runner-up St. Louis Stars for the league's post-championship "Commissioner's Cup."

Survivors of an off-season NPSL-USA merger, the Clippers continued their winning ways in the new 17-team North American Soccer League - tying for most wins (18), scoring the most goals (71), posting the second-best point total (185), and sending five players to the 1968 NASL All-Star team. But due to a quirk in the league's distortional divisional points system, the club oddly missed the four-team playoff cut - and were denied a chance to defend its NPSL title. When the NASL contracted to just five clubs at season's end, Oakland owners Joseph O'Neill and H.T. Hilliard opted instead for a more lucrative series of independent international exhibitions; renamed again as the California Clippers, the team played top teams such as Atlas, Chivas, USSR champion Dynamo Kiev, and Italian champion Fiorentina at stadiums across the state (including LA's Memorial Coliseum). O'Neill and Hillard pulled the plug for good in June 1969, when the US Soccer Federation refused to sanction further matches.

View Details

We celebrate the Society for American Baseball Research's fiftieth anniversary with a look back at one of the most pivotal events in major league baseball history - and featured in the group's newly-released commemorative anthology "SABR: 50 at 50". Longtime Society contributor Bob Bailey ("Four Teams Out: The National League Reduction of 1900") revisits his 1990 Baseball Research Journal article describing how a fledgling 12-team, 1890s-era National League pro baseball monopoly found itself on the brink of implosion - as financial imbalance, competitive disparity, self-dealing common ownership, and a pronounced national economic Depression collectively threatened the circuit's very survival by decade's end. As a result, the NL eliminated four franchises for the 1900 season - all former refugees from the previous American Association: * Ned Hanlon's "small ball"-centric (original) Baltimore Orioles (AA: 1882-92; NL: 1893-99); * The Cy Young-led Cleveland Spiders (AA: 1887-88; NL: 1889-99); * The woeful original Washington Senators (AA: 1891 as the "Statesmen"; NL: 1892-99); AND * Louisville's first and only major league baseball team - the Colonels (née Eclipse)

By 1901, Baltimore, Cleveland and Washington each had new franchises in Ban Johnson's NL-challenging American League - with Louisville never returning to major league play.

View Details

When anyone brings up the topic of pro hockey in Philadelphia, the conversation quite naturally starts (and often stops) with the Flyers - one of the six franchises added to the NHL in the league's 1967 "Great Expansion," and the fastest of the bunch to capture the Lord Stanley's Cup, after only its seventh season. But as this week's guest Alan Bass ("Professional Hockey in Philadelphia: A History") suggests, limiting the discussion to just the Flyers not only ignores the surprisingly long history of the game in the "City of Brotherly Love" prior to their arrival, but also neglects the club's lasting impact more broadly on Philly's sports scene ever since. ​For example, few fans know that the Flyers were actually not the first NHL franchise in Philadelphia. That "honor" instead went to the 1930-31 debacle known as the Quakers - a hastily relocated cellar-dwelling team from Pittsburgh (the Pirates), owned by a Depression-era bootlegger (Bill Dwyer), fronted by a temporarily retired lightweight boxing champion (Benny Leonard), and producer of one of the worst seasons in the league's 103-year history (4-36-4 record; .136 winning percentage). Or that the city nearly got its second shot at the NHL in 1946-47, when franchise rights holders of the dormant Montreal Maroons couldn't secure funding for a new arena on the site of the old Baker Bowl. Or even that for decades before the Flyers' arrival, Philadelphia was a reliable home to a wide range of colorful minor league franchises with names like Arrows, Comets, Ramblers, Rockets and Falcons - and even after (Firebirds, Phantoms). And we won't even mention the World Hockey Association's home ice-challenged flirtations with the market - the inaugural 1972-73 season's Philadelphia Blazers (Civic Center/Convention Hall) and 1973-74's mid-season relocated New York Golden Blades-to-Jersey Knights (suburban Cherry Hill [NJ] Arena)!

View Details

We consult a higher authority this week to help us dig into the story of the NFL's former Houston Oilers - one of the American Football League's founding franchises in 1960, and the predecessor to today's Nashville-based Tennessee Titans. Before decamping for divinity school in the late 1990s and a second career as a vicar in the US Anglican church, Fr. Ed Fowler ("Loser Takes All: Bud Adams, Bad Football & Big Business") spent over 30 years as both a writer and columnist for sports sections at major newspapers such as the Austin American-Statesman, Kansas City Star, Chicago Daily News, and finally, the Houston Chronicle - where he spilled plenty of ink on the trials and tribulations of Houston's first professional football team.
The Oilers were owned throughout their existence by Houston oil industry entrepreneur Bud Adams - and dominated the AFL's early years by winning titles in 1960 and 1961, and barely missing out on a third (a double-OT loss to the Dallas Texans in the 1962 AFL Championship Game). Post-merger, the Oilers spent the bulk of the '70s as NFL also-rans until the coach "Bum" Phillips-led "Luv Ya Blue" era (1978-80), that netted two straight (though losing) AFC Championship Game appearances and featured stars like Elvin Bethea, Billy "White Shoes" Johnson and rookie RB sensation Earl Campbell. Though the team consistently made the playoffs from 1987-93 behind the QB wizardry of CFL star Warren Moon, the Oilers posted losing records in virtually every season otherwise. Adams, who first threatened to move the team in the late 1980s, followed through at the end of the 1996 season and relocated the Oilers to Tennessee - where they became the "Tennessee Oilers" for the 1997 (Memphis) and 1998 (Vanderbilt Stadium) seasons, before permanently converting to the "Titans" in 1999.

The Titans retained the team's previous history and records, and the Oilers name was officially retired by then-league Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, preventing the name from ever returning.

The NFL would return to Houston just three years later with a new franchise, the Texans.

View Details

Our resident lax experts Dave Coleman and Steve Holroyd ("Two for the Show") return to help us dig deeper into the largely untold story of the original National Lacrosse League - the seminal mid-70s indoor circuit that helped lay the groundwork for modern-day professionalization of one of North America's oldest organized sports. Originally conceived by NHL hockey owners as a means of filling their arenas in the off-season summer months, the NLL consisted of six clubs in each of its 1974 (Maryland Arrows, Montreal Quebecois, Philadelphia Wings, Rochester Griffins, Syracuse Stingers, Toronto Tomahawks) and 1975 (Maryland, Montreal, Philadelphia - and the relocated Long Island Tomahawks, Quebec Caribous, and Boston Bolts) season. While sizable crowds flocked to the league's fast-paced, rough-and-tumble summertime box lacrosse action in Philadelphia, suburban DC's Landover, Maryland, and Montreal - the NLL's other franchises found the going much tougher.
When it came time for a planned third season in 1976, however, three of the league's six clubs were already bankrupt, and the Quebecois were rendered homeless by the Montreal Summer Olympics, which had annexed the Forum as its boxing venue.
There would not be another professional lacrosse league in North America until the birth of the Eagle Pro Box League in January 1987 - the precursor to today's NLL.

View Details

Pop culture writer/filmmaker Steven Blush ("American Hardcore") joins the festivities this week to (at long last) help us delve into the enigmatic story of the original 1970s-era incarnation of World Team Tennis - including an exclusive preview of his upcoming book & documentary Bustin' Balls: World Team Tennis - Pro Sports, Pop Culture and Progressive Politics.
From the "Bustin' Balls" book dust jacket:
"Tennis. Exquisitely tailored white outfits. Formally attired spectators. Stiff upper lips and utterly antiquated attitudes that made the sport accessible only to wealthy WASPs. "'Tennis is the perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquility,' said legendary rule-breaker Billie Jean King in 1973. "By 1974, Ms. King and a group of investors made up of fans, promoters, and at least one used-car salesman crashed the country clubs and well-manicured courts with the creation of World Team Tennis - and eliminated proper etiquette in tennis forever. "Tennis stars from the far reaches of the world came to Cleveland, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and showed a new breed of fans that the emotional passion and physical violence on the court were as entertaining as any Sunday afternoon football. Between cursing out judges, encouraging personal grudges, and the "anything goes" milieu of the 70s, World Team Tennis busted through all race, sex and gender barriers. "Bustin' Balls is the entirely true story of the most controversial, influential and fantastic sports league you never heard of."

View Details

When legendary Red Sox slugger Ted Williams gave his induction speech at the National Baseball Hall of Fame on July 25, 1966, he unexpectedly included a blunt admonition to the sport's establishment that something in the hallowed Hall was significantly awry - the absence of standout players from the Negro Leagues:

"I've been a very lucky guy to have worn a baseball uniform, and I hope some day the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson in some way can be added as a symbol of the great Negro players who are not here - only because they weren't given a chance."

The "Splendid Splinter" was referring to two of the most famous names in the Negro Leagues, who were not given the opportunity to play in the Major Leagues until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. (Gibson died early in 1947 and never played in the majors; Paige's brief major league stint came long past his prime.) Williams biographer Leigh Montville called the broadside "a first crack in the door that ultimately would open and include Paige [in 1971] and Gibson [1972] and other Negro League stars in the shrine."

The Hall has been playing catch-up ever since - and as this week's guest Steven Greenes (Negro Leaguers and the Hall of Fame: The Case for Inducting 24 Overlooked Ballplayers) argues - still has plenty of ground to cover if it is to fully memorialize the contributions of some of the best talent to have ever played the game.

View Details

Logo archivist Chris Creamer (SportsLogos.net) and graphic brand designer Todd Radom (Todd Radom Design) join this week's show to dive into the rich and fascinating visual story of the National Hockey League's nearly 103-year history - as told by the names, logos and uniforms of its teams.

Their new book collaboration Fabric of the Game: The Stories Behind the NHL's Names, Logos and Uniforms is a comprehensive look into the rationale behind and the execution of the iconography of each of the league's major historical franchise lineages - from the respective journeys of today's 32 teams to the forgotten former clubs of yore.

Of course, we go long and hard into the visual foibles of the latter - who can forget the Cleveland Barons, Kansas City Scouts, Colorado Rockies, California/Oakland/Bay Area/California Golden Seals, the Atlanta Thrashers, or even the New York/Brooklyn Americans?

But there are plenty of revealing tidbits and surprising twists for fans of today's NHL franchises - including directionless Stars, wayward Flames, cartoonish Ducks - and a hot debate on just where team histories should go when they pull up stakes for greener pastures.

View Details

Veteran sportswriter and Birmingham, AL native Scott Adamson (*The Home Team: My Bromance with Off-Brand Football*) joins the pod to discuss his curious decades-long relationship with the various attempts at rooting pro football in the "Magic City."

Birmingham's venerable Legion Field - known legendarily as the "Football Capital of the South" for its long-time association with the annual Alabama-Auburn "Iron Bowl" college season-ender - has also been home base for a parade of franchises in virtually every major challenger pro football league since the 1970s, including:

• The World Football League "World Bowl" champion Birmingham Americans (1974);
• 1975's de facto title-winning Birmingham Vulcans of the reincarnated second edition WFL;
• The USFL's perennially competitive Birmingham Stallions (1983-85);
• The World League of American Football's Birmingham Fire (1991-92);
• 1995's Birmingham Barracudas of the Canadian Football League;
• The woeful Birmingham Thunderbolts of 2001's original XFL; AND
• The playoff-qualifying Birmingham Iron of the 2019's short-lived Alliance of American Football

Adamson helps us dig into Birmingham's checkered history with the pro game, the pathology of its fandom over that time, why the city is reliably found on new/startup league short lists, and whether the XFL's return in 2022 might portend yet another chance - this time with a brand new Protective Stadium as a lure.

View Details

From the book jacket of the 2007 reissue of Invisible Men: Life in Baseball's Negro Leagues - the seminal 1983 book by this week's guest Donn Rogosin:

"In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier and became a hero for [B]lack and white Americans, yet Robinson was a Negro League player before he integrated Major League baseball. Negro League ballplayers had been thrilling [B]lack fans since 1920. Among them were the legendary pitchers Smoky Joe Williams, whose fastball seemed to "come off a mountain top," Satchel Paige, the ageless wonder who pitched for five decades, and such hitters as Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard, 'the Ruth and Gehrig of the Negro Leagues.'"

"Although their games were ignored by white-owned newspapers and radio stations, [B]lack ballplayers became folk heroes in cities such as Chicago, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, DC - where the teams drew large crowds and became major contributors to the local community life. This illuminating narrative, filled with the memories of many surviving Negro League players, pulls the veil off these 'invisible men' who were forced into the segregated leagues. What emerges is a glorious chapter in African American history and an often overlooked aspect of our American past."

View Details

Writer/author (and Episode 158 guest) Eric Nusbaum ("Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between") returns for a second visit, this time to help us obsess about the curious story of the National League's 1899 Cleveland Spiders - the worst major league baseball team of all time.

While today's current generation of baseball fans will swear that the 1962 NL expansion New York Mets (40-120 record; .250 winning percentage), the 2003 AL Detroit Tigers (43–119; .265), or even the 2018 AL Baltimore Orioles (47-115; .290) might each own the record for on-field futility - none come close to the stunningly woeful 20-134 (.130) performance turned in by Cleveland's first major league team, one that preceded and indirectly influenced today's AL Indians.

The Spiders were a consistently competitive team in the 1890s - loaded with eventual Hall of Fame talents like Bobby Wallace, Jesse Burkett and legendary pitching ace Cy Young. Attendance and ticket revenue, however, were terrible - hindered significantly by Ohio blue laws that prohibited lucrative games on Sundays.

So in the 1898 off-season, team owner-brothers Frank & Stanley Robison took advantage of the NL's liberal "syndicate" ownership rules, purchased the financially teetering but far better-drawing St. Louis Browns, and shipped their more talented Spiders roster to the Gateway City as the "Perfectos" - leaving their Cleveland franchise to founder for 1899, all by design.

Nusbaum takes us through the various layers of ignominy that beset the Spiders' last season of existence, including: losing 40 of their last 41 games (and 70 of their last 74); drawing so poorly by June (a mere 179 per game) that all home games were moved to either neutral sites or visiting teams' home parks; and even proffering a local hotel cigar stand clerk to pitch their final game in Cincinnati (a 19-3 loss).

Plus, how the Spiders helped today's Indians get their now increasingly controversial nickname.

View Details

Little did we know when we dropped our minor league hockey tribute to the 1990s ECHL Columbus Chill in our Episode 169 with David Paitson & Craig Merz earlier this year that it would not only become our most listened-to episode of 2020 (so far), but would also unearth a project devoted to the colorful history of the forgotten teams that preceded it.

Columbus native and Cincinnati creative agency professional Eric Weltner ("International Incidents"), previews his soon-to-be-released 80-minute documentary of "old-time hockey gold" devoted to the three clubs in the rock 'em, sock 'em International Hockey League that called Ohio's capital city (and the scruffy Ohio Expo Fairgrounds Coliseum) home during the late 1960s and early 1970s:

• The Columbus Checkers (1966-70): the city's first-ever professional hockey franchise - a "Plan B" sports ownership pursuit for Cleveland's entrepreneurial Schmeltzer brothers, after just missing out on the NBA's Boston Celtics;
• The Columbus Golden Seals (1971-73): Charlie O. Finley's malnourished attempt to create a feeder team for his floundering California NHL namesake - whose woeful 25-117 record set IHL futility records; and
• The Columbus Owls (1973-77): mortgage executive Al Savill's franchise rehab that handed full managerial reigns to local hockey legend "Moe" Bartoli - undermined by Savill's 1975 purchase of the NHL Penguins.

View Details

Columbia College Chicago cultural studies professor Rich King (Redskins: Insult and Brand) joins the podcast this week to discuss the roots and long-simmering backstory of the Washington NFL football franchise's problematic - and now former - nickname.

Investigative reporter Tisha Thompson framed the situation in her recent piece for ESPN:

“Daniel Snyder endured decades of protests, lawsuits and emotional appeals over the nickname of his Washington NFL team. ‘We'll never change the name,’ he told USA Today in 2013. ‘It's that simple. NEVER -- you can use caps.’

“Then, in a blinding rush this summer, the name long criticized by Native Americans and others was gone.

“But the change didn't feel sudden to the coalition of Native American groups that started working long ago to force Snyder's hand by investing in the corporations that pay hundreds of millions of dollars for sponsorship deals.”

Amplified by a renewed national furor over racial injustice sparked by the death of George Floyd - and opportunely reflexive corporate commitments to diversity and inclusion (particularly team sponsors like Nike, PepsiCo and stadium name rights holder FedEx) - the movement to retire the Washington NFL franchise's derogatory Native American name of over 80 years has been seemingly swift and sudden.

Instead, King helps us understand why the team's (and NFL's) dramatic decision is not only not a knee-jerk capitulation to trendy "political correctness" - but actually an overdue reckoning for a nickname steeped in systemic racism and cultural insensitivity.

What remains to be seen is how both pro football and the Washington franchise rectify the situation - and, importantly, how each appropriately squares it with the ignominious history that preceded it.

View Details

If we ever get around to creating a Good Seats Still Available "Hall of Fame," this week's return guest will most certainly be part of its inaugural class of inductees.

Dennis Murphy (“Murph: The Sports Entrepreneur Man and His Leagues”) is a bona fide legend in sports entrepreneurial circles - a man responsible for helping found no less than four "major" game-changing leagues across the North American pro sports landscape, including the polychromatic American Basketball Association (our previous Episode 129), and this week's focus: the raucous World Hockey Association. (The others: World Team Tennis and Roller Hockey International.)

This week's shorter-than-normal episode was originally intended to be our second full-length discussion with "Murph" - and our first exclusively devoted to the founding and operation of the WHA - until events last year conspired against it.

A scheduling snafu resulted in a shorter window of conversation than originally intended, and the recording itself was feared lost during our internal archives transfer process weeks later.

However, in the process of doing background research for our recent episode on the original Winnipeg Jets with Curtis Walker, we were lucky enough to stumble across the fully intact audio file on a redundant backup server - which we now present as the bulk of this week's episode.

What it lacks in length is more than made up with in depth and surprising detail from the now-93-year-old Murphy's still-sharp memory of hockey's "rebel league."

View Details

We steal away for a little summer vacation time this week - but not before sitting down for a massively enjoyable interview with fellow defunct sports enthusiast and long-time friend-of-the-show P.F. Wilson - as a guest on his comedy-tinged podcast "PF's Tape Recorder."

P.F. (née Patrick François) is also the creative engine behind one of our longest-running sponsors OldSchoolShirts.com - where our listeners can enjoy a 10% discount on everything in the store, when using the promo code "GOODSEATS" at checkout.

Tim and P.F. obsess about all things defunct - including Gary Davidson's WFL Waterloo, the directionally challenged "New York/New Jersey" moniker, long-forgotten college bowl games, who/what (really) killed the USFL, and the MISL's (barely) one-season wonder New Jersey Rockets.

Please enjoy this conversation we recorded a few weeks back - and thanks to both P.F. and OldSchoolShirts.com for their support of the show!

View Details

We cross the virtual border northward this week to obsess about the original incarnation of hockey's Winnipeg Jets - with author/team completist Curtis Walker ("Winnipeg Jets: The WHA Years Day By Day"; "Coming Up Short: The Comprehensive History of the NHL's Winnipeg Jets").

One of the twelve founding franchises in the upstart World Hockey Association's inaugural 1972-73 season, the Jets were one of only four teams to survive the entire run of the rebel league - and to ascend into the vaunted NHL after its demise in 1979.

They were also, arguably, the WHA's most successful club - winning three of the league's seven-ever AVCO Cup championships, while finishing as playoff runners-up twice. (We'll get into the story of the Houston Aeros' two titles and one finals loss in another episode!)

Walker helps us proverbially "scratch the surface" of the Jets' intriguing history in not only the WHA (including the credibility-validating, league-collective-funded signing of Bobby Hull; the Swedish-flavored "Hot Line" contributions of Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson; and a franchise-saving "Save the Jets" community campaign in 1974) - but also the National Hockey League, where the club largely struggled to reclaim their earlier glory - especially when facing their long-time regional nemesis, the Edmonton Oilers.

Of course, we tackle the delicate issue of where the original Jets' legacy should credibly reside: with the lamentable Arizona Coyotes (the franchise moved to Phoenix in 1996); the current Jets team (the relocated Atlanta Thrashers since 2011); or in the collective memories of the fans that routinely packed the rafters of the old Winnipeg Arena.

View Details

By popular demand, former Los Angeles Lazers president and Episode 166 guest Ronnie Weinstein returns for an eagerly-awaited "part two" conversation about his sojourn through professional indoor soccer - this time centered on the intriguing story of the 1990s-era Continental Indoor Soccer League he helped create and operate.

Loosely borne from the 1992 collapse of the Major (née Indoor) Soccer League, the idea for what ultimately became the CISL actually germinated from Weinstein's last days running the Lazers in the spring of 1989. It was then when team (and legendary Lakers/Kings/Forum) owner Jerry Buss - while pulling the plug on his money-losing MISL club - opined on the stronger financial merits of a league based in the summer, when the NBA & NHL were out of season, and arena owners were eager to fill dates with quality sports product.

Weinstein took Buss' words to heart, and with his mentor's support - along with that of fellow sports mogul Jerry Colangelo - convinced more than a dozen major league team and arena owners of the viability of the concept.

By its second season, the CISL was drawing more than a million fans to its games across the country - and for at least a while, the prescience of Buss and the passion of Weinstein proved to be a winning combination.

View Details

Cycling writer/historian Peter Nye (Hearts of Lions: The History of American Bicycle Racing) joins the podcast this week to help us understand the long and curious backstory behind the 1989 launch of the Tour de Trump - a major world-class cycling event that, for a brief period, aspired to become the American equivalent of the sport's iconic Tour de France.

Once the king of sports in the US at the turn of the 20th century (prominent cycling competitions in the early 1900s routinely drew thousands of paying spectators, attracted significant wagering action and stretched across multiple days), bicycle racing fell precipitously from the national sporting spotlight in the decades that followed - until major outdoor stage races backed by progressive sponsors like Celestial Seasonings and Coors rekindled interest during the late 1970s/early 1980s.

Buoyed by building enthusiasm for the sport from CBS' increased television coverage of the Tour de France in the US, an unlikely alliance - sports TV host/music composer John Tesh, college basketball analyst/entrepreneur Billy Packer, Olympic sports management executive Mike Plant, and a bombastic, egocentric real estate baron-cum-personal branding nightmare named Donald Trump - conceived an East Coast "Tour de Jersey" in an attempt to compliment and eventually rival the French spectacle.

After Packer convinced an already-controversial Trump to lend his name to the enterprise, sizable increases in media attention, rider interest, corporate sponsorship, and prize money were assured - at least until Trump's (first set of) corporate financial woes forced him to bail after only two Tours.

Still, the later-renamed Tour Du Pont lasted six more seasons, all the while elevating competitive cycling to a level the US had not seen in decades - and, arguably, hasn't since.

View Details

As the National Women's Soccer League concludes its deftly assembled 2020 Challenge Cup tournament (with congrats to the Houston Dash on their first-ever major trophy), we enlist sportswriter/soccer insider Beau Dure ("2012: The Year That Saved Women's Soccer") to help us make sense of the confoundingly discontinuous history of the women's pro game in the US over the last 20 years - and the unwitting origin story of the NWSL.

Against the backdrop of an undeniably prolific US Women's National Team - a program that has produced four FIFA Women's World Cup titles, four Olympic gold medals and currently (and regularly) sits atop the FIFA Women's World Rankings - the path to building and sustaining a viable top-tier women's domestic pro league over that time has proven surprisingly quixotic.

While the reasons are myriad, Dure navigates us through:

• The Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA): the big-money, TV-backed, John Hendricks-boostered attempt to create a first-ever pro league in the wake of 1999's breakthrough USWNT's World Cup title - but quickly burned through over $100MM and flamed out after just three seasons;
• Women's Professional Soccer (WPS): the pragmatic but woefully under-funded attempt to resurrect a circuit - this time with momentum from a 2008 Olympic Gold Medal - but done in by a wobbly investor base, none more dubious than "magicJack" owner-operator Dan Borislow; AND
• Today's NWSL: which, through the backstopping efforts of the US Soccer Federation, kept the burning embers of the WPS alive to help reconstruct what is now a seemingly thriving seven-year-old loop that will add its 10th (Louisville) and 11th (LA) franchises in the next two seasons.

View Details

Longtime sports/information technology entrepreneur/executive Dave Lockton joins this week to discuss his managerial adventures in the geographically fragmented and provincially fractious auto racing scene of the late 1960s/early 1970s – including the founding of the groundbreaking Ontario Motor Speedway, and its role in the ideation of the ultimate “all-star” professional driving competition – the International Race of Champions (IROC).

Sports fans of a certain age will surely remember the old IROC series – which ran for 30 seasons starting in 1973 – where the best drivers from the world’s top auto racing disciplines raced one another in equally prepared and equitably crewed cars to determine motorsports’ “ultimate” annual champion.  Multi-circuit veteran Tony Stewart (who won the final IROC XXX in 2006) certainly does – he and fellow NASCAR Hall of Famer Ray Evernham are teaming to reinvent the format next summer with a nationally televised six-race, short-track series to air in prime time on CBS called the Superstar Racing Experience (SRX).

The basis for the IROC concept dates back to Lockton’s time as President/CEO and chief visionary of Ontario’s “Indianapolis of the West” – a stalled mid-1960s pipe dream that Lockton helped resuscitate, leveraging his budding professional driver representation firm and his Indianapolis Speedway/USAC governing body relationships into a state-of-the-art, all-purpose West Coast racing mecca just east of Los Angeles.

Among the innovations Lockton and team pioneered at Ontario (which included a private stadium club with annual memberships, corporate suites, crash-absorbent retaining walls & safety fences, and computerized real-time timing/scoring/positioning data) was a first-of-its-kind pro-am celebrity race – featuring a co-mingling of Hollywood luminaries and professional drivers competing in similarly prepared vehicles – the foundational element of what would soon become the signature IROC series.

PLUS: Hugh Downs keeps it together; Evel Knievel makes his case; and the short-lived sports commissioner career of Gerald Ford!

View Details

We point our GPS coordinates this week to the endearingly enigmatic city of New Orleans, for an overdue look into the Big Easy’s chaotic pro sports franchise history – with Historic New Orleans Collection writer (and recovering sports scribe) Nick Weldon (“A Streetcar Named Basketball”).

Although a mainstay of baseball’s minor and Negro leagues since the dawn of the sport’s professional era in the late 1800s (including Louis Armstrong’s well-outfitted, attention-grabbing, but largely lamentable 1931 barnstorming “Secret Nine” club), Louisiana’s largest city has been considered more of a football town over the last half-century – especially after the arrival of the NFL Saints in 1967.

But it’s the pursuit (and occasional success) of pro basketball that has captured the fancy of local sports entrepreneurs most in the intervening decades – providing the Crescent City with some of its most fascinating, yet oft-forgotten sporting exploits:

• The American Basketball Association’s Buccaneers (1967-70) – a charter member, who came within one game of winning the league’s first-ever title, before moving to Memphis two seasons later;
• The National Basketball Association’s Jazz (1974-79) – an expansion franchise known mostly for the dazzling on-court wizardry of local LSU hero “Pistol” Pete Maravich, and not much else;
• The Women’s Professional Basketball League’s Pride (1979-81) – ready-made to take advantage of the region’s strong female collegiate roots and presumptive US women’s success at the (eventually boycotted) 1980 Olympics; AND
• The arrival of the NBA’s Hornets (now Pelicans) in 2002 – finally cementing the long-term viability of pro basketball in New Orleans.

Weldon helps us dig in to all of these points on NOLA’s pro hoops history curve – but also some tantalizing tangents like the one-year incarnation of the USFL’s New Orleans Breakers, and even the “Sun Belt” Nets of the original mid-1970s World Team Tennis.

View Details

Pittsburgh-based The Athletic sportswriter Stephen J. Nesbitt (“How the Pipers, Condors and Pro Basketball in Pittsburgh Went Extinct”) joins to help us dig into the surprisingly rich (though mostly woeful) history of professional hoops in the Steel City.

Though the game has long thrived at the collegiate level (Pitt’s Panthers began playing in 1905; the Duquesne Dukes in 1914), the city’s record of success at the pro level has been distinctly more fleeting. In fact, some would argue it was never better than the pre-integration Black Fives era of the 1910s/20s, when eventual Naismith Hall of Famer Cumberland Posey led his Monticello (1912) and Loendi Big Five (1919-23) clubs to five “Colored” Basketball World Championships.

As professional (and eventually integrated) leagues took root in the decades that followed, Pittsburgh’s attractive demographic profile made it a natural choice for inaugural – yet ultimately short-lived – franchises in virtually every major hardwood circuit that came calling, including:

• The never-playoff-qualifying Pirates (1937-39) and re-born Raiders (1944-45) of the NBA-precedent National Basketball League;
• The lamentable Ironmen (1947-48) of the NBA tributary Basketball Association of America;
• The Connie Hawkins-led Renaissance (“Rens”) of the one-and-a-half-season (1961-62) American Basketball League; and especially;
• The head-scratching Pipers of the legendary American Basketball Association – who, despite winning the league’s first championship behind regular-season and playoff MVP Hawkins in 1968 – relocated to Minneapolis, moved back to Pittsburgh, and finally re-branded as the “Condors” for two forgettable last seasons (1970-72).

With a checkered pro history like that, it’s little wonder that the basketball team most memorably associated with the City of Bridges wasn’t even a real club – the Pittsburgh Pisces (née Pythons) of the 1979 sports/disco fantasy cult film classic The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.

View Details

When the original version of the modern-era Washington Senators announced its intention to relocate to Minneapolis-St. Paul in 1960 to become the Twins the following season, Major League Baseball moved up part of its planned 1962 expansion by a year to help stave off dual competitive threats of both a new challenger Continental League and the potential loss of its longstanding federal antitrust exemption.

To placate regulators, the American League reworked its plans and replaced the departing DC franchise with an entirely new expansion club – to also be known as the Senators – to commence immediately in its wake for 1961. After an “inaugural” season at old Griffith Stadium, the new Senators moved to the new District of Columbia Stadium under a 10-year lease.

For most of their second incarnation, the “new” Senators were just as woeful as their predecessors, losing an average of 90 games a season and perennially finishing below .500 – helping preserve the traditional lamentation to which DC area fans had become accustomed: “Washington: First in War, First in Peace and Still Last in the American League.”

But in 1969, when new owner Bob Short successfully coaxed Hall of Fame batting legend Ted Williams out of retirement to become the club’s rookie manager, things immediately changed. Williams' maniacal approach to hitting helped ignite the moribund Senators to its one and only winning season during its 11-year run – winning 86 games (21 more than in 1968) – and vaulting from last in the previous year’s ten-team American League to just one game out of third in the new divisional AL East.

Attendance at the newly renamed RFK Stadium zoomed above 900,000 for the season (not to mention a Senators-hosted MLB All-Star Game featuring a booming 2nd inning HR by hometown hero Frank Howard), and Williams was voted AL Manager of the Year. For the first time in decades, it seemed baseball in Washington was “back.”

But, as 1969 Senators chronicler Steve Walker (“A Whole New Ballgame: The 1969 Washington Senators”) tells us, the excitement was not to last; the club soon reverted back to its forlorn ways – exacerbated by an increasingly impatient and already-conspiring Short – who relocated the franchise to the Dallas Metroplex after the 1971 season, to become today’s Texas Rangers.

It would be 33 years until another major league team would call DC home again.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Red Lightning Books imprint of Indiana University Press – who offer our listeners a FREE CHAPTER of pioneering sportswriter Diana K. Shah’s new memoir A Farewell to Arms, Legs and Jockstraps!

View Details

We take a rare dip into the minors this week with the intriguing story of hockey’s Columbus Chill – the 1990s sensation that took the East Coast Hockey League and the Ohio capital’s sports scene by storm, and helped set the table for Columbus’s ascension into top-tier “major league” status by the dawn of the 2000s.

Historically overshadowed by the scale, prowess and outsized culture of its hometown Ohio State University Buckeyes athletics programs, Columbus’ pro sports landscape in 1991 largely consisted of AAA baseball’s sleepily long-standing Yankees affiliate Clippers – and not much else. Professional hockey, specifically, had been absent from the market for 14 years, after a largely lamentable run of thinly supported International Hockey League franchises (Checkers, Golden Seals, Owls) during the late 60s and 1970s.

But though cheeky marketing campaigns and promotion-laden game-day experiences – targeted at both the growing city’s young professional set and fun-seeking OSU students looking for off-campus entertainment alternatives – the Chill quickly made an impact and suddenly becoming the hottest ticket in town. Sellouts in the ancient 5,600-seat Ohio State Fairgrounds Expo Coliseum (opened in 1918) became the norm, and national media lauded the club as the vanguard of minor league sports.

After a dubious scheduling snafu by Fairgrounds management amidst the Chill’s second season, fans and local community leaders galvanized around a longer-term plan to solidify the newly popular team’s future and independence – leading to the eventual commitment to construct a top-flight downtown (now, Nationwide) arena – and, ultimately, the awarding of an expansion NHL franchise in 1999.

Ex-Chill President David Paitson and former Columbus Dispatch sportswriter Craig Merz (Chill Factor: How a Minor-League Hockey Team Changed a City Forever) recount the story of the team that paved the way for the Columbus Blue Jackets – and beyond.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Red Lightning Books imprint of Indiana University Press – who offer our listeners a FREE CHAPTER of pioneering sportswriter Diana K. Shah’s new memoir A Farewell to Arms, Legs and Jockstraps!

View Details

Negro League ace historian/author Jim Overmyer (Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles; Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City) returns for a deep dive into the extraordinary dual-sport career of Negro League baseball AND Black Fives-era basketball legend Cumberland Posey – including the two dominating teams he founded, owned, managed, and played for – baseball’s Homestead Grays and basketball’s Loendi Big Five.

Considered the best African-American hoops player of his time (although not inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame until 2016), Posey was a standout collegiate player at Pitt, Penn State and Duquense before launching his semi-pro Loendi club in 1915 – which he built and led to four consecutive Colored Basketball World's Championships from 1919-1923.

Posey was already moonlighting as a player with Negro League baseball’s Grays starting in 1911, becoming the team’s manager in 1916, and finally its owner by the early 1920s – ultimately building one of the powerhouses of black baseball. Posey’s Homestead franchise won eleven pennants across three leagues – including nine consecutive Negro National League titles from 1937-45 – and three Negro World Series Championships (against counterparts from the Negro American League) in ’43, ’44 & ’48.

Overmyer discusses his new book (Cum Posey of the Homestead Grays: A Biography of the Negro Leagues Owner and Hall of Famer), Posey’s prodigious talents both as a player and owner (which garnered him posthumous induction in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006), and the Grays’ twin homes of both suburban Pittsburgh and Washington, DC.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Red Lightning Books imprint of Indiana University Press – who offer our listeners a FREE CHAPTER of pioneering sportswriter Diana K. Shah’s new memoir A Farewell to Arms, Legs and Jockstraps!

View Details

While we ruminate on what a potential resumption of the National Hockey League’s delayed 2020 regular season (and playoffs) might look like in the months ahead, we pause to look back at the rich, but altogether confounding history of the world’s premier pro hockey circuit with Down Goes Brown blog scribe and Athletic columnist Sean McIndoe (The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL: The World's Most Beautiful Sport, the World's Most Ridiculous League).

Over its often-illogical 103-year history, the NHL has proven to be – as the dust jacket to McIndoe’s loving, but irreverent book intimates – a league that often can't seem to get out of its own way:

“No matter how long you've been a hockey fan, you know that sinking feeling that maybe – just maybe – some of the people in charge here don't actually know what they're doing. And at some point, you've probably wondered – has it always been this way? The short answer is yes. As for the longer answer, well, that's this book.”

McIndoe helps us cheat-sheet through some of the league’s defining historical inflection points, including:

• The myth of the “Original Six” – the hallowed group of supposedly foundational franchises cemented during WWII-era 1942 – that conveniently ignores 15 teams that preceded them in the league’s first 25 years of existence;
• 1967’s “Great Expansion” – when the NHL doubled its franchise count from six to twelve, including pre-emptive strikes against the Western Hockey League with new teams in Los Angeles (Kings) and Oakland (Seals);
• The 1979 “merger” with the pesky World Hockey Association – which absorbed only four of the challenger’s seven remaining clubs; AND
• Comical expansion/relocation follies in Cleveland, Kansas City, Denver, and Atlanta (twice).

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Red Lightning Books imprint of Indiana University Press – who offer our listeners a FREE CHAPTER of pioneering sportswriter Diana K. Shah’s new memoir A Farewell to Arms, Legs and Jockstraps!

View Details

The Major Indoor Soccer League’s rocket red ball bounces back our way this week for an Eighties-style rewind into the story of the Los Angeles Lazers – as seen through the eyes of one of its chief front office architects, Ronnie Weinstein.

Claimed from dormancy (as the previous Philadelphia Fever) by LA sports baron Dr. Jerry Buss – owner of the 1980 NBA champion Lakers, NHL Kings, 1981 TeamTennis champion Strings, and the building that housed them, Inglewood’s “Fabulous” Forum – the Lazers began life in the MISL in the fall of 1982 under the direction of Weinstein and Buss’ eldest son Johnny.

True to its name (and emblematic of the league’s over-the-top promotional zeitgeist), the team immediately became known for its cutting-edge pre-game laser light shows, which management felt ideally suited to the lightning-fast pace of indoor soccer – and hoped would help the Lazers stand out from the wealth of entertainment options available in Southern California.

Weinstein, Buss & Co. also tapped heavily into the celebrity-driven energy associated with their “Showtime”-era Laker arena mates, borrowing the Paula Abdul-choreographed Laker Girls to become the “Lazer Girls” for their games – and regularly recruiting Hollywood A-listers like James Caan, Neil Diamond, Cher, Ricky Schroeder, and elder Buss poker mate Gabe Kaplan to the festivities.

But the white-hot Lakers, the rising Kings, a robust concert schedule, and the family-favorite Strings all took scheduling precedence over the Lazers, leaving only a hodgepodge of mostly weekday winter school nights from which to attract soccer-mad families to the Forum.

Of course, there was high-scoring MISL soccer action – but the Lazers were not very good (an 8-40 inaugural record and just one winning [1987-88] season over the team’s run didn’t help) – and the majority of games were not well-attended (the league’s least-drawing franchise in five of its seven seasons).

Despite all the synergies – including Jerry Buss’ strong enthusiasm for the game itself – nothing seemed to work. By 1987 (with son Jim now helming the team alongside Weinstein), Buss saw the Lazers and the league as doomed – unless moves to reduce player salaries and shift play to a more family-friendly summer schedule were embraced.

After fruitless pleading with the MISL Board of Governors, Buss pulled the plug on the team after the 1988-89 season, telling Weinstein if he ever wanted to pursue another indoor soccer endeavor with his more prudent business model, he’d be there to back it.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Red Lightning Books imprint of Indiana University Press – who offer our listeners a FREE CHAPTER of pioneering sportswriter Diana K. Shah’s new memoir A Farewell to Arms, Legs and Jockstraps!

View Details

It’s our deepest dive yet into the legendarily one-of-a-kind All-American Girls Professional Baseball League with Marshall University Professor of Women’s Sport History Kat Williams (The All-American Girls After the AAGPBL: How Playing Pro Ball Shaped Their Lives).

Widely acknowledged as the forerunner of women's professional league sports in the United States, the pioneering AAGPBL featured more than 600 female players over the course of its twelve seasons between 1943-54 – spanning 15 mid-sized markets across the American Midwest, and drawing sizable crowds – including nearly a million fans at its peak in 1948.

In its first season, the league played a game that resembled more softball than baseball: the ball was regulation softball size (12 inches) and the pitcher's mound was only 40 feet from home plate – a third closer than that of men’s baseball. Pitchers threw underhand windmill (as in softball) and the distance between bases was 65 feet – a full 25 feet shorter than in the men’s game.

But, over the AAGPBL’s history, the rules gradually evolved to approach those of full-fledged men’s baseball; by the league’s final season in 1954: the ball was regulation baseball size, the mound distance was 60 feet (a mere six inches closer than the men’s game), and the basepaths were 85 feet long (just five feet shy of those of the men).

To prove its competitive seriousness, the league peppered its on-field managerial ranks with male skippers of substantial major league baseball pedigrees – including eventual National Baseball Hall of Famers Max Carey and Jimmy Foxx.

The quality of play was consistently high, convincing even the most purist of traditional baseball fans that “the Girls could play.” By 1947, the AAGBPL was even emulating the majors in identifying and recruiting talent from the fertile playing fields of baseball-mad Cuba – a story Williams helps illustrate with her new profile (Isabel “Lefty” Alvarez: The Improbable Life of a Cuban American Baseball Star) of one of the handful of émigrés who ultimately came to the US to become “All-American.”

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Red Lightning Books imprint of Indiana University Press – who offer our listeners a FREE CHAPTER of pioneering sportswriter Diana K. Shah’s new memoir A Farewell to Arms, Legs and Jockstraps!

View Details

The curious story of baseball’s Atlantic City (NJ) Bacharach Giants originates from a unique intersection of racism, tourism, and politics.

In 1915, an independent semi-pro “Atlantic City Colored League” was formed to provide an entertainment outlet for the city’s 11,000+ black residents – with the hope being they would attend the games and stay off the boardwalk, a then-booming summer haven for white tourists.

Two black businessmen active in the local Republican political machine asked an existing area team to join the league and promotionally rename itself after politician Harry Bacharach, the once-and-future mayor of Atlantic City. When the team refused, the duo travelled south and convinced eight members of the Duval Giants, a black amateur team in Jacksonville, Florida, to venture north and create the foundation for a new independent club instead.

The “Bacharach Giants” largely dominated whatever opponents came their way during the late 1910s, despite persistent financial wobbliness. In 1920, the team began a three-year stint as an associate member of Rube Foster’s new Negro National League (NNL) – allowing them to retain official independence, but also to coordinate non-league games with the teams from Foster’s largely Midwest-based circuit.

In 1923, Atlantic City broke from the NNL to help start the rival Eastern Colored League (ECL), where they achieved their greatest success – including winning two league pennants in 1926 and 1927 – though losing both times in subsequent Negro League World Series play to the NNL’s Chicago American Giants.

Beset by rancorous squabbles over player contracts, the ECL folded in 1928. Five of its clubs – including the Bacharach Giants – formed the bulk of a new American Negro League for 1929, only to see both the league and its team from Atlantic City fold by the end of the season.

Author/historian Jim Overmyer (Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City) joins to discuss the history of the club, and some of the legends that emanated from it, including Negro League standouts Dick Lundy, Oliver Marcell, Dick Redding, “Nip” Winters, Chanel White, “Rats” Henderson, Claude Grier, and Luther Farrell – and National Baseball Hall of Famer John Henry "Pop" Lloyd.

View Details

ESPN.com NFL Nation reporter Kevin Seifert stops by to help us perform a preliminary autopsy on the surprisingly sudden death of the XFL – WWE founder Vince McMahon’s second attempt at creating a viable alternative professional football league to that of the mighty NFL.

A confident, but visibly mellower McMahon announced the league’s unlikely rebirth at a video press conference on January 28, 2018 (two months before a similar launch by the rival Alliance of American Football) – with resolute commitments to professionalism, innovation and fan-friendliness noticeably absent in the XFL’s farcical first incarnation 17 years earlier.

Even after the abrupt collapse of the AAF midway through its first season last April, hopes were still high for “XFL 2.0” as its season kicked off in Washington, DC on February 8, 2020 in front of a near-sellout crowd of hometown Defenders fans at the previously “soccer-specific” Audi Field.

Like the Alliance, the quality of football was high, initial TV ratings were strong, and enthusiastic crowds approached 30,000 in markets like St. Louis and Seattle. But it would not last.

On March 8, after five weeks of play, the XFL announced its inaugural season would be suspended because of growing COVID-19 pandemic concerns and social distancing mandates. On April 10, the league fully halted day-to-day operations and laid off all its employees – except for Commissioner Oliver Luck, who was terminated the day before. The league (technically, McMahon’s sole-purpose LLC, Alpha Entertainment) then filed for bankruptcy three days later and put itself up for sale.

We chat with Seifert on the lead-up to the league’s launch, the current state of affairs, and what might further transpire in the months ahead.

View Details

We journey north of the border this week to get our first at-bats with the 35-year adventure formerly known as the Montreal Expos, with author and de facto team historian Danny Gallagher (Always Remembered: New Revelations and Old Tales About Those Fabulous Expos).

Created in expansionary haste by the National League in 1969, MLB’s first-ever Canadian franchise was named after the city’s futuristic “Expo 67” World’s Fair, and expected to be domiciled in a new domed stadium by 1972 after a temporary stint at a barely-minor-league field in the city’s Jarry Park. Chronically delayed and reshaped by preparations for the 1976 Summer Olympics, that permanent home (a cavernous, drafty and still-unfinished Olympic Stadium) didn’t formally arrive until 1977 – with its promised roof not in place until a full decade later.

The Expos’ locational challenges were only slightly overshadowed by their mediocre play on the field – which, while competitive at times (they had the best cumulative winning percentage in the NL from 1979-83, for example) – netted just one post-season appearance (in a convoluted strike-shortened 1981 season) in the team’s 35-year stay in Montreal. (The strike-abandoned season of 1994, when the team led the NL East by six games with eight weeks to play, literally and figuratively didn’t count.)

Still, the Expos had their share of talent (buttressed by a reliably prolific farm system) – boasting 11 MLB Hall of Famers (including fan favorites Gary Carter, Andre Dawson and Tim Raines) – and a panoply of memorable characters like Rusty Staub, Warren Cromartie, Steve Rogers, and Tim Wallach.

When Major League Baseball voted to contract two clubs in 2001, the Expos were targeted as one of them – beset by dwindling attendances and cellar-dwelling records during the latter half of the 1990s. A ham-handed league takeover that year led to three final lame-duck seasons – including a bizarre relocation of “home games” in 2003-04 to San Juan, Puerto Rico – before moving to Washington to become the Nationals.

View Details

We mourn the unexpected passing of longtime Boston-area sportswriter & Marvin "Bad News" Barnes biographer Mike Carey ("Bad News": The Turbulent Life of Marvin Barnes, Pro Basketball's Original Renegade) - with our previous Episode 137 interview from November 3, 2019.

View Details

From the day he first stepped into the New York Yankee clubhouse in 1962 at the age of 23, Jim Bouton was baseball’s deceptive revolutionary. Behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks and formidable fastball, lurked an unlikely maverick with a decidedly signature style – both on and off the diamond.

Whether it was his frank talk about MLB front office management and player salaries, passionate advocacy of progressive politics, or efforts to convince the Johnson Administration to boycott the 1968 Summer Olympics, “Bulldog” Bouton fearlessly – and seemingly effortlessly – confronted a largely conservative sports world and compelled it to catch up with a rapidly changing American society.

On the field, Bouton defied tremendous odds to reach the majors – first with the champion Bronx Bombers (making 1963’s AL All-Star team in his second season, and winning two World Series games in 1964) – and later, with an improbable post-retirement comeback at age 39 with the Atlanta Braves.

But in between, it was his memorable 1969 season with the woeful one-year Seattle Pilots – and his groundbreaking tell-all account called Ball Four – that literally and figuratively changed the game (not to mention Bouton’s career) by reintroducing America to its national pastime in a profound and traditional-altering way.

Author Mitch Nathanson (Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original) joins the show for a look at Bouton’s unconventional life, and how – in the cliquey, bottom‑line world of professional baseball, Bouton managed to be both an insider and an outsider all at once.

View Details

Film producers Tom McCabe and Kirk Rudell (“Soccertown USA”) join the podcast this week to discuss their newly released documentary about the modest working-class New Jersey town with an outsized influence on the history of the sport of soccer in the United States.

In the mid-1980s, as the domestic pro game began to fade with the demise of the once-hot North American Soccer League, and FIFA’s passing over of the US as potential replacement host for the 1986 World Cup – it was three kids from largely-unheralded Kearny, NJ who helped save it.

Native sons Tab Ramos, John Harkes, and Tony Meola – who formed the backbone of a Men’s National Team that willed its way to breakthrough success in both the 1990 and 1994 World Cups, and laid the groundwork for the pro game’s rebirth in 1996 with the launch of Major League Soccer – were products of a uniquely rich soccer-passionate culture dating back to the town’s Scottish immigrant influx in the 1870s.

Kearny’s storied heritage as a fertile American soccer hotbed – spirited factory-sponsored leagues, ASL cup-winning “pro” teams, strong youth programs, a vibrant street-soccer scene, and even local heroes in the 1970s NASL (including a member of the mighty New York Cosmos virtually next door) – not only nurtured these three pioneers of the game, but also continue to help inspire future generations to play and support the “beautiful game.”

View Details

Industrial writer and fellow defunct sports enthusiast Tom Brucato (Major Sports Leagues) joins this week’s installment of the podcast to delve deep into his all-new update of what can only be described as the Encyclopedia Britannica of forgotten pro sports teams and leagues.

The ultimate reference work for the discriminating sports historian, the Second Edition of Major Sports Leagues features the most comprehensive listing of (over 1600) “major league” teams to have ever played across 100+ top-tier US/North American professional leagues in 22 distinct sports: baseball, basketball, bowling, cricket, cycling, football (outdoor & Arena), golf, hockey (ice & roller), lacrosse (outdoor & box), martial arts, polo, rodeo, rugby, soccer (outdoor & indoor), softball, tennis, ultimate disc & volleyball.

Brucato walks us through some of the highs and lows of his 20+ year (and counting) odyssey of chronicling the seemingly impossible, including:

• The self-imposed criteria set out for the project – and the “tough calls” of who to include (and not) made along the way;
• How the historical sleuthing process has (and hasn’t) changed from 1990s-era microfiche to today’s broadband;
• A boundless continuum of sports history trivia – ranging from the obvious to the fascinatingly obscure; AND
• The inevitability of a Third Edition, as new discoveries about old/forgotten leagues and teams continue to be made.

PLUS: Your chance to win a copy of Major Sports Leagues for your own reference library!

View Details

LA’s Dodger Stadium – opened in April 1962, and now the third-oldest home ballpark in Major League Baseball – is an American icon. But the story of how it came to be goes far beyond baseball.

The hills that cradle the stadium were once home to three vibrant semi-rural Mexican American communities – Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop – collectively known as Chavez Ravine. In the early 1950s, all was condemned via eminent domain to make way for a utopian public housing project called Elysian Park Heights. Then, in a remarkable political turn, the entire idea of public housing in Los Angeles was defeated amidst a Red Scare conspiracy.

Instead of getting their homes back, the area’s remaining residents saw the city sell the land to Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley – in an opportunistic effort to finally lure big league baseball to the City of Angels – and definitively confirm its status as a “major league” American metropolis.

But before the Dodgers’ new home could be built, municipal officials would have to face down the neighborhood's last holdouts – including the defiant Aréchigas family, who fiercely refused to yield their home.

Author Eric Nusbaum (Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between) joins to discuss the sordid backstory of Dodger Stadium’s birth, the ensuing confrontation that stunned the nation, and the divisive outcome that still taints the team’s legacy and haunts the city’s modern history.

View Details

When 32-year-old Willy Roy and two of his NASL St. Louis Stars teammates were acquired by the still-yet-to-play expansion Chicago Sting in February 1975, the club had just four signed players and a hit movie-inspired logo to its name. 

No one knew what to expect, and Chicago’s twin pro soccer flame-outs less than a decade earlier – the White Sox-owned USA/NASL Mustangs (1967-68) and the Roy-led 1967 NPSL Spurs – didn’t exactly inspire confidence the Sting would be any different.

Indeed, the passion project of prominent Chicago commodities trader and youth soccer parent/convert Lee Stern floundered early and often during its first few seasons under first-time coach (but Manchester United playing legend) Bill Foulkes. 

Despite a division title in 1976 – the first with the retired Roy as Assistant Coach – the Sting was largely uncompetitive during its first few seasons.  Crowds were abysmal, as the team shuffled games between Soldier Field, Comiskey Park, and Wrigley Field each summer.  By early-season 1978, the Sting was off to a ten-game losing streak and the worst attendance in the entire 24-team NASL – averaging just 4,188 fans a match.

Over the objections of then-GM Clive Toye, owner Stern elevated Roy to interim, then permanent head coach – and the rest, as they say, is history.

National Soccer Hall of Famer Roy joins for Part Two of our extended conversation – as we focus on the rise of the Sting into one of the NASL’s most exciting, attractive and memorable sides – and an indelible part of Chicago’s rich pro sports history. 

View Details

Though he was born in Germany and still retains the distinctive vocal stylings to prove it, National Soccer Hall of Fame player/coach great Willy Roy has always been a Chicago kid in both heart and heritage.   

A post-WWII transplant to the Windy City at the age of six, Roy became a standout youth and young adult player in his adopted hometown – and by the mid-1960s, was honing his scoring skills and drawing national attention in the hard-nosed, Chicago-based National Soccer League with the multi-title winning club Hansa.

A few call-ups to a rag-tag US National Team soon followed (eventually notching nine goals in 20 caps over nine years and two World Cup qualifying cycles) – and, ultimately, an invitation to play with the Soldier Field-domiciled Chicago Spurs of the new 1967 National Professional Soccer League.  One of only eight US citizens across ten franchises, Roy became the NPSL’s second-leading scorer (17G, 5A), made the league All-Star team and won Rookie of the Year honors.

When the NPSL merged with the rival United Soccer Association to form the successor North American Soccer League the following year, Roy followed the relocated Spurs to Kansas City – and by 1971 had cemented an anchor role with the NASL’s American-heavy St. Louis Stars, commuting regularly from Chicago to do so.

But it was an eventual move to the league’s expansion Chicago Sting in 1975 – first as a player, then as an assistant coach, and finally as head coach (ten games into the 1978 season) – where Roy cemented his legacy as one of the NASL’s winningest coaches, including two memorable championship seasons (1981, 1984) that long-time Second City sports fans still remember fondly today.

View Details

With the entirety of pro sports in unprecedented lock-down mode, we offer some respite with a rewind back to the curiously borderline major league Continental Basketball Association (1946-2009), and one of its most successful franchises – the original Albany Patroons (1982-92).

Video production firm owner/sports doc filmmaker/Cap City native Brendan Casey (“The Minor League Mecca”) helps us trace the story arc of a team that spent ten memorable seasons punching above its weight both on and off the hardwood.

On the court, the Patroons won two CBA titles (1984, 1988), five Eastern Division crowns and complied a league-smashing 50-6 regular season record (28-0 in home games) in its penultimate season – becoming a launching pad for eventual NBA coaching standouts like Phil Jackson, George Karl and Bill Musselman. And a weigh station for notable big-league players past and future such as: Scott Brooks, Tod Murphy, Tony Campbell, Sidney Lowe, Mario Elie, Vincent Askew, and Michael Ray Richardson.

In the stands, the Pats routinely squeezed sellout crowds into the city’s 1890s-era Washington Avenue Armory – a reliably intimidating environment where Albany’s rabid fans found themselves intimately part of the action.

The team’s quick success at the gate became the aspirational force for the construction of a new region-defining 15,000-seat Knickerbocker Arena (today’s Times Union Center) in 1990 – only to see attendances dwindle and the franchise eventually drown against a backdrop of rising costs and CBA expansion.

View Details

Hollywood cinematographer and documentary filmmaker Olivia Kuan (Brick House) joins to discuss the revealing story of the Houston "Herricanes" of the pioneering National Women’s Football League (1974-88) – and their overlooked role in the historically rich and surprisingly resilient world of women’s pro football.

The modern women’s pro game started innocently enough in 1967, when Cleveland talent agent Sid Friedman launched a barnstorming “Women’s Professional Football League” in which a team (later nine) of women toured the country playing men’s clubs in exhibitions and charity events – sometimes even as NFL and CFL game halftime entertainment.

Led by the breakaway Toledo Troopers, the decidedly (and competitively) legit NWFL began play in 1974 with six teams; by 1976, the league had ballooned to 14 franchises from coast-to-coast, including three in football-mad Texas – led by the “Herricanes” of Houston.

Though devoid of sustainable budgets, major media coverage or appreciable crowds, the Herricanes (and the league itself) featured a passionate breed of player – drawn to an unprecedented opportunity to play real men’s-style tackle football for pay – buttressed by emerging progressive era of Title IX, the Equal Rights Amendment and rampant sports league entrepreneurialism.

Most were ecstatic simply to play “for the love of the game” – a common theme that emerges quickly in Kuan’s early research and principal production for Brick House, beginning with the Herricanes’ starting safety – her own mother Basia.

It’s not too late to plan your baseball Spring Training getaway at VisitArizona.com!

View Details

Award-winning illustrator, cartoonist and unwitting baseball historian Anika Orrock (The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League) joins to discuss her delightfully visual take on the pioneering circuit that not only helped save America’s pastime – but also became the forerunner of women's professional league sports in the United States.

With the US deep into WWII, attendance at Major League Baseball games by 1943 was dwindling and minor leagues were suspending operations as the nation’s war effort siphoned able-bodied men from pro baseball diamonds across the country. To keep interest in the sport alive, Chicago Cubs owner Philip Wrigley spearheaded the formation of an all-female league that featured a spirited blend of competitive moxie and girl-next-door femininity that delighted hundreds of thousands of fans throughout the Midwest and garnered significant national publicity.

The quality of play was surprisingly competitive, aided by ex-big league managers like Jimmy Foxx and Max Carey. The AAGPBL also doubled as a kind of finishing school for its players – all of whom were expected to maintain high moral standards, rules of conduct and even a Helena Rubinstein-contracted beauty regimen – in an effort to project positive and patriotic female images both on and off the field.

Orrock’s Incredible Women blends funny, charming, yet powerful vignettes told by the players themselves, with a whimsically stylized graphic design that delivers a remarkably detailed (and all-ages-accessible) oral history of the pioneering league’s 12-year run – and unique place in baseball history.

PLUS: The grocery-list stylings of San Francisco Giants’ radio voice Jon Miller!

It’s not too late to plan your own baseball Spring Training getaway at VisitArizona.com!

View Details

Spring training is finally under way, and we celebrate the National Pastime with a return visit to the 1989-90 curiosity known as the Senior Professional Baseball Association – with one of its few dedicated chroniclers, prolific sports author Peter Golenbock (The Forever Boys).

The brainchild of real estate developer (and former college player) Jim Morley, the SPBA was envisioned as a kind of Senior PGA golf-type circuit for ex-Major League Baseball players aged 35 and older (32+ for catchers), played at Spring training facilities throughout Florida during the traditional baseball off-season.

Featuring former All-Star player/labor pioneer Curt Flood as commissioner – and a talent roster that included future Hall of Fame players and managers, Major League batting champions, and Cy Young-winning pitching aces – the “Senior League” drew in big names and sizable media attention, but minuscule crowds.

The eight inaugural teams — the Bradenton Explorers, Fort Myers Sun Sox, Gold Coast Suns, Orlando Juice, St. Lucie Legends, St. Petersburg Pelicans, West Palm Beach Tropics, and Winter Haven Super Sox — averaged just 921 fans per game, roughly half of what Morley and his fellow owners envisioned.

The Dick Williams-managed Tropics were the league’s 72-game regular season leaders, but it was the Pelicans – the team Golenbock just happened to be following for Forever Boys – who won the step-laddered post-season playoffs to capture what ultimately became the SPBA’s first- and last-ever champion.

Plan your own baseball Spring Training getaway at VisitArizona.com!

View Details

We gear up for this week’s world premiere of God Save the Wings – the long-awaited documentary about one of the original Major Indoor Soccer League’s most improbable success stories – with co-producers Adam Knapp (Out Here in Kansas) and Mike Romalis (Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings).

The Wichita Wings were the smallest-market franchise of not only the fledgling MISL, but also of any major US pro sports circuit when they joined the league in its second season (1979-80) – becoming the first-ever major league professional sports team in Kansas history, and, ultimately, the MISL’s most durable.

The Wings defied conventional logic, as world-class soccer players from places like England, Denmark, Argentina, and Ecuador treated sold-out Kansas Coliseum crowds with spirited play that made them a perennial playoff contender and one of the league’s most successful franchises.

Although they never captured a championship in their 13 MISL seasons (nor during nine subsequent seasons in the successor NPSL), the Wings were still the perennial darlings of their “Orange Army” of rabid fans – much to the chagrin (and envy) of their big-city rivals.

Thank you VisitArizona.com for sponsoring this week’s episode!

View Details

Baseball writer Fran Zimniuch (Baseball's New Frontier: A History of Expansion, 1961-1998) help us sketch out a nearly forty-year survey of the major leagues’ fitful journey from a regional set of 16 teams confined to just ten US Northeast and Midwest cities, to the 30-club colossus that today stretches across 27 markets across North America.

While the sport’s modern-day wanderlust began in earnest during the 1950s as the Braves moved to Milwaukee, the Browns left for Baltimore (new name: Orioles), the A’s traded Philadelphia for Kansas City, and New York’s Giants and Brooklyn’s Dodgers made haste for California – Major League Baseball entered the 1960s with an urgent need to expand into new markets as the rival Continental League threatened to beat them to the punch.

In 1961, the American League added its own Los Angeles franchise with the Angels, and a new expansion version of the Washington Senators hastily replaced their original predecessors, having absconded to the Twin Cities. Two more teams joined the following year – New York’s Mets and Houston’s Colt .45’s (later renamed Astros).

The addition of four new clubs in 1969 pushed the boundaries even further: the San Diego Padres, Kansas City Royals, Montreal Expos, and (ultimately one-year wonder) Seattle Pilots.

Seattle’s MLB redemption came in 1977 when the expansion Mariners joined the American League roster, along with Canada’s second franchise – the Toronto Blue Jays.

Baseball’s last expansion push came in the 1990s, when Colorado and Florida (now Miami) joined the National League in 1993, and Arizona and Tampa Bay were added the NL and AL respectively in 1998.

While rumors of potential relocation of big-league baseball’s current members is always fodder for the off-season Hot Stove (the fate of the Rays in Tampa-St. Pete, in particular), Zimniuch and host Tim Hanlon ponder if further expansion to new markets is in the cards – and if so, where and when?

What better reason to plan your Spring Training getaway at VisitArizona.com!

View Details

Society for American Soccer History board director Steve Holroyd returns to help us decipher the last decade of the enigmatic second incarnation of the American Soccer League (1933-1983) – the longest-lasting “professional” soccer circuit in US history prior to today’s MLS.

A smaller-scaled reboot of the original ASL (1921-33) that, for a time, rivaled the fledgling sport of pro football in terms of fan interest – “ASL II” began its more-modest life playing in the urban centers of the Eastern Seaboard during the height of the Great Depression.

For much of its 50-year existence, the ASL was a relatively loose but heartily competitive amalgam of ethnically-identified clubs concentrated primarily in the immigrant-heavy neighborhoods of the industrial Northeast. Teams came and went with regularity – and changing identities or even folding in the middle of a season was not uncommon.

As the “big league” NASL gained popularity in the early 1970s, the American Soccer League began to expand its geographic footprint and more professionally emulate its younger cousin. By 1972, the league had mostly abolished its ethnic team names (out: Newark Ukrainian Sitch, New York Greeks; in: New Jersey Brewers, New York Apollo), and league president Eugene Chyzowych began steering the ASL to a more pronounced embrace of American players, while aggressively pursuing national expansion.

The league even hired former Boston Celtics basketball legend Bob Cousy as commissioner in a bid to raise the ASL’s national PR profile. Freely admitting he knew little about soccer, Cousy nevertheless elevated the league’s ambitions – adding franchises to the West Coast by 1976 and relocating league headquarters to media-friendly Manhattan.

Still, “America’s Soccer League” was mostly relegated to de facto second division status vs. the bigger-budgeted NASL; it was not uncommon for ASL teams to lose top players to the freer-spending NASL – though a number of aging marquee players like Eusebio, Rildo, and Phil Parkes found the reverse path just as remunerative.

Ultimately, the ASL’s major league aspirations were financially unsustainable (just like the NASL’s), and the league collapsed after the 1983 season – ushering in a dark period for the pro game that lasted until the launch of Major League Soccer in 1996.

Thank you VisitArizona.com for sponsoring this week’s episode!

View Details

For 1970s-era NHL hockey fans who remember the eight-year adventure known as the Atlanta Flames, few are likely to forget Dan Bouchard. A tenacious, slightly eccentric and occasionally fight-prone French-Canadian goalie, “Bouch” was an immediate standout between the pipes for the NHL’s first-ever Deep South franchise (platooning with fellow Quebecois & expansion draftee Phil Myre during the club’s first five seasons) – and a survivor in a league where hard-nosed hockey was the norm and where good goalies were at a premium.

Bouchard’s big-league call-up to the Flames in 1972 came amidst a frantic period of NHL franchise expansion and relocation driven in large part by the arrival of the challenger World Hockey Association – which debuted alongside Atlanta (and the NY Islanders) that season.

And while the collective memory of the original Flames remains muddied by a woeful post-season record (reliably exiting the playoffs in the first round, despite qualifying six out of their eight seasons), as well as a then (and still?) persistent narrative of Southerners’ native distaste for ice hockey – Bouchard and Atlanta were actually more competitive and popular than many of the NHL’s other 1970s forays in places like Kansas City, Oakland, Denver, and Cleveland.

When Nelson Skalbania bought the Flames and moved them to Calgary in 1980, most in Atlanta and around the league assumed that the well-publicized financial struggles of the team and owner Tom Cousins (who also controlled the Omni arena and the NBA Hawks) were to blame.

But as Bouchard outlines in this revealing conversation, an explosive league-wide issue was festering behind the scenes – of which he was uniquely aware and determined to address – regardless of the potential consequences to his playing career.

Bouch walks us through an eye-opening story that wends its way through the defunct Quebec Nordiques (including the infamous “Good Friday Massacre” vs. the Montreal Canadiens in 1984), the original Winnipeg Jets, the scandalous downfall of a pro hockey Hall of Famer, and fighting for legendary player/coach Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion both on – and off – the ice.

Thank you VisitArizona.com for sponsoring this week’s episode!

View Details

Following the 1957 season, two of baseball's most famous teams – the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants – left the city they had called home since the 1880s and headed west to the Golden State of California.

The dramatic departure and bold reinvention of the Dodgers (to Los Angeles) and the Giants (to San Francisco) is the stuff of not only professional baseball lore, but also broader American culture – brash and (especially among generations of New Yorkers) unforgivable acts of betrayal committed by greedy owners Walter O'Malley and Horace Stoneham.

But, as this week’s guest Lincoln Mitchell (Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues) argues, the broader chronological story of America’s biggest-ever pro sports franchise relocation was, and is, not a one-way narrative.

While a traumatic blow to the societal psyche of the New York metropolitan region, the transplanting of two longtime National League rivals was not only inevitable (as the nation’s economic and demographic profiles were rapidly changing), but ultimately crucial to the survival of the sport – as increasingly modern forces like air transportation, television and the automobile began to transform pre-War notions of leisure time and discretionary income.

A culturally and financially booming post-War California quickly proved to be not only fertile ground for baseball, but also a blueprint for US professional sports writ large in the decades that followed.

Thank you VisitArizona.com for sponsoring this week’s episode!

View Details

Prolific rock/R&B drummer/musician Steve Ferrone (Average White Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) joins to delve into the backstory of helping write/craft the official theme song for the New York Cosmos – the latest chapter in our irregular series devoted to Tim’s longstanding fascination with the North American Soccer League’s most famous franchise.

Pop music aficionados know Ferrone as part of the “classic” mid-70s lineup of AWB (along with Hamish Stuart, Alan Gorrie, “Onnie” McIntyre, Roger Ball, and “Molly” Duncan); as a two-decade+ member of the Heartbreakers (1994-2017); and from a prodigious body of studio session work with a literal who’s-who of pop music’s biggest talent (Chaka Khan, Rick James, Eric Clapton, Stevie Nicks, and the Bee Gees, just to name a few).

But long-time Cosmos soccer fans may also remember Ferrone’s semi-invisible hand in the creation and performance of the club’s rhythmic anthem that blared from the Giants Stadium PA system after goals and anchored the team’s WOR-TV telecasts – recorded under the AWB nom de plume of the “Cosmic Highlanders” via Warner Communications corporate sister Atlantic Records.

Besides the circumstances of the song’s origins, Ferrone regales Tim with stories of: how he stepped into the Average White Band during a critical time in the group’s then-young life; the musical magic of Atlantic and its founder-brothers Ahmet & Nesuhi Ertegun; how the “Cosmos Clap” came about; and the original song idea Cosmos management had in mind for the club’s official theme!

Support for this week’s episode comes from the VisitArizona.com and ExpressVPN.

View Details

We kick off the new year with a return to the gridiron, and a revealing behind-the-scenes look at the brash, but ultimately ill-fated United Football League of 2009-12 – with its only commissioner, Michael Huyghue (Behind the Line of Scrimmage: Inside the Front Office of the NFL).

Formed in 2007 out of big-budget dreams to establish a national top-tier, Fall-season minor league pro football circuit by high-wattage investors like San Francisco investment banker Bill Hambrecht, Google executive Tim Armstrong and Dallas Mavericks owner/firebrand Mark Cuban (who later backed out, along with initially-rumored financier T. Boone Pickens) – the UFL was also conveniently timed to capitalize on fallout from any potential labor/owner strife prior to the 2011-12 NFL season, when the league’s collective bargaining agreement with its players expired. The bet backfired when a correctly-anticipated owner lockout of players quickly ended in July of 2011, ensuring no regular season disruption or drama.

Over the course of its history, five teams played in the league: the Las Vegas Locomotives, Hartford Colonials (originally the New York Sentinels), Omaha Nighthawks, Sacramento Mountain Lions (née California Redwoods), and Virginia Destroyers (successors to the Florida Tuskers). The Locomotives were historically the best of the franchises, winning two of the UFL’s three championship games, and possessing an undefeated regular season record when the league suspended operations (ultimately for good) in mid-Fall 2012. Big-name NFL coaches like Jim Haslett, Jay Gruden, Dennis Green, Marty Schottenheimer, and Jim Fassel were featured attractions, as were recognizable pro talent like Simeon Rice, Josh McCown, Daunte Culpepper, and Jeff Garcia – to name just a few.

Huyghue walks host Tim Hanlon through the numerous ups, frequent downs and multiple sideways’ of the UFL’s brief lifespan, including: how early-career front office experiences in the NFL (Lions, Jaguars), WLAF (Birmingham Fire), and NFL Players’ Association uniquely prepared him to the UFL commissioner’s role; league ownership’s original intention to play as a Spring league; the allure of then-untapped pro markets like Omaha, Las Vegas Sacramento; and lessons learned that could have helped last year’s AAF and this year’s soon-to-launch XFL.

Support the show with Dollar Shave Club’s “Ultimate Shave Starter Set” for just $5!

View Details

We celebrate the arrival of 2020 with an archive re-release of one our favorite interviews of 2019 - New York Yankees broadcaster John Sterling.

Strap in for a rollicking revisit to forgotten pro sports stops like the NBA Baltimore Bullets, WHA New York Raiders/Golden Knights, ABA New York Nets, the WFL New York Stars/Charlotte Hornets - and even the long-lost Enterprise Sports Radio network!

View Details

We put the wraps on an event-filled 2019 with our first-annual holiday roundtable spectacular featuring the return of fellow defunct sports enthusiasts Paul Reeths (OurSportsCentral.com, StatsCrew.com & Episode 46) and Andy Crossley (Fun While It Lasted & Episode 2) – for a spirited discussion about the past, present and potential future of “forgotten” pro sports teams and leagues.

It’s a no-holds-barred look back on some of the year’s most notable events and discoveries, including:

• The short rise and quick demise of the Alliance of American Football;
• Major League Soccer’s (unsustainable?) expansion to thirty teams;
• The folding of the Arena Football League – again;
• Major League Baseball’s minor league contraction plan; AND
• Raiders NFL football moves on from Oakland for good.

As well as some predictions on what might transpire in 2020, as:

• The second coming of Vince McMahon’s XFL kicks off in February;
• Baseball celebrates the Negro Leagues’ 100th anniversary;
• Las Vegas takes its biggest sports gamble yet with the Raiders;
• The MLS Players’ Association flexes its pre-season bargaining muscles;
• The Chargers and Clippers grapple with second-fiddle status in LA; AND
• Mark Cuban’s Professional Futsal League . . . well, your guess is as good as ours!

Support the show by getting the Ultimate Shave Starter Set from Dollar Shave Club for just $5!

View Details

Baseball biographer Jeremy Beer (Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player) joins the podcast this week to discuss the life and career of one of baseball’s greatest, though largely unsung, players – and provide us a convenient excuse for a deeper dive into the endlessly fascinating vagaries of the sport’s legendary Negro Leagues.

Buck O’Neil once described Oscar Charleston as “Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Tris Speaker rolled into one,” while baseball historian Bill James ranked him as the fourth-best player of all time – inclusive of the Major Leagues, in which he never played. During his prime, he became a legend in Cuba as well one of black America’s most popular celebrities. Yet even among serious sports fans, Charleston is virtually unknown today.

In a lengthy career spanning 1915-54, Charleston played against, managed, befriended, and occasionally brawled with baseball greats like Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Jesse Owens, Roy Campanella, and Branch Rickey – with a competitive “hothead” reputation that sometimes brought him trouble – but more often delivered victories, championships, and profound respect.

Charleston played for 11 clubs across at least five different Negro Leagues, and doubled as manager for a number of them – including the 1935 Negro National League pennant-winning Pittsburgh Crawfords – considered by many baseball scholars to be the best black baseball team of all time.

Though he never got the chance to play in the bigs, Charleston was still a trailblazer – becoming the first African-American to work as a Major League scout, when Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey hired him for to oversee his fledgling United Baseball League “Brown Dodgers” feeder club.

A National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee in 1976, Charleston’s combined record as a player, manager, and scout makes him the most accomplished figure in black baseball history – and, without question, beyond.