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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 earn...

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...

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'...

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 Americ...

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...

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 circ...

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!

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-...

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 Osc...

Journalist-author/Alabama native Bill Plott ( Black Baseball's Last Team Standing: The Birmingham Black Barons ) joins the show to help us discover more about the legendary Negro League franchise regarded by most baseball historians as the "jewel of Southern black baseball." The first Black Barons team began in 1920 as charter members of the Negro Southern League, an eight-member circuit that larg...

We mourn the unexpected passing of University of Arizona men's ice hockey media broadcaster & World Hockey Association history flamekeeper Tim Gassen - with our previous Episode 75 interview from August 18, 2018. RIP Tim - your passion for the WHA will be dearly missed!  

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" Schmi...

Author and unwitting pro football historian Joe Ziemba ( When Football Was Football: The Chicago Cardinals and the Birth of the NFL ) help us set the record straight on the often-misunderstood history of the first incarnation of pro football's oldest continuous club – now know as the Arizona Cardinals. Arguably the least successful franchise in National Football League history, the Chicago version...

Veteran Missouri-area sportswriter Troy Treasure ( Icing on the Plains: The Rough Ride of Kansas City's NHL Scouts ) joins the podcast this week to delve into the mostly forgotten (and woeful) two-season saga of the 1974 National Hockey League expansion franchise now known as the New Jersey Devils. Along with the Washington Capitals, the Scouts were the last additions in the NHL's aggressive expan...

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 an...

Marvin "Bad News" Barnes was considered a future Hall of Fame basketball player before he even graduated from college.  A standout at Providence (averaging 20.7 points and 17.9 rebounds a game, and leading the Friars to the NCAA Final Four in 1973), Barnes was a consensus 1974 All-American with the world at his fingertips. Although Barnes enjoyed two flamboyantly successful years in the American B...

We amp up the intellectual quotient this week with University of Illinois journalism professor emeritus Matt Ehrlich ( Kansas City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports Rivalry That Defined an Era ), who joins for a heady discussion around the most unlikely, yet intertwined of pro sports rivalries – and the turbulent 1960s from which it originated. Although Oakland, CA and Kansas City, MO are geographica...

We pick up where we left off in Episode 89 ( The NBA Buffalo Braves – With Tim Wendel ), with the continuing story of one of pro hoops' most forlorn franchises – today known as the Los Angeles Clippers. Author Mick Minas ( The Curse: The Colorful & Chaotic History of the LA Clippers ) joins the podcast from his home in Melbourne, Australia to help us go deep into the travails of a club labeled by...

By popular request, we begin our exploration of the enigmatic 1990s international experiment known (initially) as the World League of American Football with a deep dive into its first championship team – the London Monarchs – with author Alex Cassidy ( American Football's Forgotten Kings: The Rise and Fall of the London Monarchs ). Resurrected from an idea originated (but never launched) by the NF...

We "celebrate" the 2019 Miami Marlins' National League-worst 57-105 season with a look back to colorful 1950s-era Triple-A minor league franchise that laid the groundwork for South Florida's eventual ascension to the majors in 1993. Author and SABR historian Sam Zygner ( The Forgotten Marlins: A Tribute to the 1956-1960 Original Miami Marlins and Baseball Under the Palms: The History of Miami Mino...

Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame legend Dan Issel joins this week's 'cast to discuss his All-Star career in the American Basketball Association with two of the league's most (relatively) stable franchises – the Kentucky Colonels and the Denver Nuggets.  And a brief cup of coffee with one its shakiest, in between. After an outstanding, twice-named All-American collegiate career at the Univ...

Multi-talented singer-songwriter, photographer, and soon-to-be sports history documentarian Byron Motley joins the show this week to discuss his late father's colorful career as an umpire in baseball's legendary Negro Leagues – the subject of his 2007 collaborative oral history, Ruling Over Monarchs, Giants, and Stars . A child of Depression-era rural Alabama, a teenaged Bob Motley migrated north...

On August 20, 2019, the city of St. Louis, MO was officially awarded the 28th franchise in Major League Soccer, with an anticipated inaugural season beginning in 2022.  And while the club begins its efforts to get its team name, new downtown stadium and initial soccer operations in place, we take some time this week to reflect on the city's deep and rich soccer history – perhaps unmatched by any l...

The American Basketball Association was not founder Dennis Murphy's original intent.  Thwarted in his attempt to get the fast-growing city of Anaheim, CA (he was mayor of nearby Buena Park) into the fledgling American Football League during the mid-1960s, Murphy quickly pivoted his attention to basketball – reasoning that with only 12 teams in the staid, yet long-established National Basketball As...

Prolific Chicago Tribune sportswriter Mike Conklin ( Goal Fever! ; Transfer U. ) joins the podcast to help us go deep into the story of the North American Soccer League's twice-champion Chicago Sting – a club he covered extensively and exclusively from its little-noticed launch in late 1974 all the way through its breakthrough Soccer Bowl '81 title. The personal passion project of prominent Chicag...