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 Mu...
Aug 29, 2022•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 274
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...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 273
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reimagined telling of the story of the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (and originally made famous in the 1992 Penny Marshall-directed motion picture of the same name) - with writer and executive producer Desta Tedros Reff.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 spino...
Aug 15, 2022•51 min•Ep. 272
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 - p...
Aug 08, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 271
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 nasc...
Aug 01, 2022•1 hr 53 min•Ep. 270
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 recount...
Jul 25, 2022•1 hr 48 min•Ep. 269
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 e...
Jul 17, 2022•1 hr 58 min•Ep. 268
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 Washingto...
Jul 11, 2022•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 267
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 fro...
Jul 04, 2022•1 hr 53 min•Ep. 266
[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 ...
Jun 27, 2022•1 hr 58 min
[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 p...
Jun 20, 2022•1 hr 46 min
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 H...
Jun 13, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 265
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 ...
Jun 06, 2022•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 264
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 Worl...
May 30, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 263
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...
May 23, 2022•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 262
"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...
May 16, 2022•1 hr 50 min•Ep. 261
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 mome...
May 09, 2022•1 hr 56 min•Ep. 260
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 h...
May 02, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 259
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...
Apr 25, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 258
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 af...
Apr 18, 2022•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 257
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 Br...
Apr 11, 2022•1 hr 57 min•Ep. 256
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...
Apr 04, 2022•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 255
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 ...
Mar 28, 2022•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 254
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 Ben...
Mar 21, 2022•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 253
[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 ...
Mar 14, 2022•1 hr 18 min
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 Bra...
Mar 07, 2022•2 hr 9 min•Ep. 252
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 Assoc...
Feb 28, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 251
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 Ar...
Feb 21, 2022•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 250
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-...
Feb 14, 2022•2 hr 8 min•Ep. 249
[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 determi...
Feb 07, 2022•1 hr 25 min
