Good Seats Still Available

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 unwi...

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 – th...

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 t...

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 recor...

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 ex...

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 hometow...

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 pla...

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...

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...

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 mor...

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 w...

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...

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 futuris...

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.

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, passio...

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 pa...

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...

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...

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 19...

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...

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 trac...

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 talen...

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,...

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 Se...

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 fledgli...