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UK sportswriter Tom Scholes ( Stateside Soccer: The Definitive History of Soccer in the United States ) joins host Tim Hanlon to discuss the surprisingly long, colorfully vibrant and regularly misunderstood history of the world's most popular sport in America. While even the most erudite of the game's international scholars mistakenly (though understandably) define the US pro game's epicenter as t...

After extraordinary listener response to our Episode #118 with David Levine a few months back, we bounce-pass our way back to the endlessly intriguing Continental Basketball Association for this week's conversation – this time with a focus on the league's travails during the 1990s, courtesy of the Fort Wayne (IN) Fury and its former radio voice/media relations director Rob Brown. More than forty y...

Before embarking on his incredible 29-year (and counting) run as play-by-play lead for NHL hockey's San Jose Sharks, NBC Sports California sportscaster Randy Hahn was first known to 1980s pro soccer audiences as the versatile radio and TV voice behind the short-lived Edmonton Drillers of the North American Soccer League as well as the dynastic San Diego Sockers of both the NASL and the Major Indoo...

Sportswriter Ron Synder ( The Baltimore Stallions: The Brief, Brilliant History of the CFL Champion Franchise ) joins to delve into the story of the mostly-forgotten team that revitalized Baltimore's pro football history and viability. When the National Football League's Baltimore Colts secretively absconded to Indianapolis in the wee hours of March 29, 1984, three decades of pro football history...

We amp up the intellectual quotient this week with Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger ( Ballpark: Baseball in the American City ), as we delve into the inextricably historical bond between the rise of America's favorite pastime and the evolution of the American city. From the first "saloons in the open air" of the late-1800s, such as Brooklyn, NY's Union Grounds; to the  or...

Brooklyn College women's soccer head coach and former NASL (Memphis Rogues, New England Tea Men) and ASL (New Jersey Americans) pro player Patrick Horne ( Black Pioneers of the North American Soccer League ) joins the podcast to help shine a light on the largely unrecognized contributions of black players to both the success of North America's first major foray into pro soccer, and the growth of t...

It's been nearly two years since our first look at baseball's still-revered Milwaukee Braves, and this week – courtesy of author/historian Patrick Steele ( Home of the Braves: The Battle for Baseball in Milwaukee ) – we finally get the chance to go deeper into the team that, in its brief 13-season run: never posted a losing season, won two National League pennants, and, in 1957, brought "Cream Cit...

As the 2019 version of the Portland Timbers celebrates its 10th season in Major League Soccer, we spin the WABAC Machine dial back 44 years earlier to 1975 – when the club's original namesake became an overnight sensation (figuratively and literally) in the then-20-team North American Soccer League.  The last of the NASL's five newly announced sides for that season (along with Chicago, San Antonio...

We veer back this week into the still-unfolding mess that is (or was) the Alliance of American Football with ESPN.com "NFL Nation" reporter Michael Rothstein – who, along with ESPN Senior Writer Seth Wickersham – has been chronicling the demise of the once-promising league ( Inside the Short, Unhappy Life of the Alliance of American Football ), dating back to its curious pre-season earlier this wi...

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 o...

University of Mary Washington research librarian and baseball historian Jack Bales ( Before They Were the Cubs: The Early Years of Chicago's First Professional Baseball Team ) joins the podcast to help us dig into the surprisingly rich history of Major League Baseball's long-time North Side Chicago franchise well prior to 1903, when they formally adopted their now-signature nickname.  While even s...

This week, we offer a refresher course in the history of forgotten pro sports leagues with veteran newspaper editor, current long-form author and fellow defunct sports enthusiast Stephen Provost – whose recent book A Whole Different League is an essential primer for anyone seeking an entrée into the genre. Provost serves up a smorgasbord of highlights gleaned from his personal memories of and rese...

After more than 40 years of covering the "beautiful game," Newsday sportswriter and FrontRowSoccer.com editor Michael Lewis ( Soccer for Dummies ) knows more than a thing or two about the evolution of soccer in this country.  A self-professed "Zelig of soccer," the NYC-based Lewis has covered some of the sport's most important events, including eight World Cups, seven Olympic tournaments, and all...

We cap off the long Memorial Day holiday weekend with a look back at one of the New York metropolitan area's most memorable sports stadiums of yore – the Polo Grounds – with author and Minnesota Twins official scorer Stew Thornley ( The Polo Grounds: Essays and Memories of New York City's Historic Ballpark, 1880-1963 ). The "Polo Grounds" was actually the name of multiple structures across upper M...

Just weeks after its sudden collapse, we take our first look at the brief life of the Alliance of American Football with Sports Illustrated football writer and MMQB NFL podcast host Conor Orr ( The Curious Rise and Spectacular Crash of the Alliance of American Football ; More Strange Tales from the Collapse of the AAF ). Inspired by his work producing the 2017 documentary This Was the XFL for ESPN...

Long-time South Florida Sun-Sentinel soccer columnist Jeff Rusnak joins to discuss the rich past, transitional present and promising future of one of American pro soccer's most venerable, yet historically underrated venues – Ft. Lauderdale, Florida's Lockhart Stadium. Originally built in 1959 as an American football and track venue for four high schools in the region and named after a former city...

WKKY-FM radio personality and sports author Gary Webster ( The League That Didn't Exist ) helps us return to the curious story of the All-America Football Conference – the well-funded upstart that competed directly with the NFL in the late 1940s for supremacy of the still-fledgling sport of US pro football. After being rebuffed by the NFL to expand, influential Chicago Tribune sports editor (and b...

Author Ken Krsolovic ( League Park: Historic Home of Cleveland Baseball, 1891-1946 ) joins the podcast to go deep into the history and legacy of Cleveland's first major league sports stadium. Originally built for the National League's Cleveland Spiders, team owner Frank Robison strategically built the wood-constructed League Park at the corner of Lexington Avenue and Dunham (now East 66th) Street...

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 h...

We're stuck in the minors again this week – this time with Microsoft News senior managing editor and former newspaper sportswriter David Herman ( Almost Yankees: The Summer of '81 and the Greatest Baseball Team You've Never Heard Of ) – as we discuss the memorable story and unique circumstances of the 1981 championship season of the International League's Columbus Clippers, the then-flagship farm...

Longtime USA Today sports writer/producer César Brioso ( Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball in Cuba ) joins the show to explore the rich parallel histories of America's and Cuba's shared national pastime – and the colorful period of the late 1950s/early 1960s when it appeared baseball in the island nation was mainstreaming its way into eventual US ma...

Documentary filmmakers Jason Reid and Adam Brown ( Sonicsgate: Requiem for a Team ) join host Tim Hanlon to discuss the long, tortuous and acrimoniously messy departure of the NBA's iconic Seattle SuperSonics to Oklahoma City in the summer of 2008 – a story newly relevant as the "Emerald City" prepares to welcome a new NHL expansion franchise, and as former owner (and Starbucks CEO Emeritus) Howar...

In a league uniquely rich in comic misadventures and financial disasters, perhaps no one franchise from the World Football League's inaugural 1974 season stood out more for its own brand of woeful ineptitude than the Detroit Wheels. Saddled from inception by an unwieldy ownership group of 33 different founding investors – including Motown Records superstar Marvin Gaye and Little Caesar's Pizza fou...

On a cold and ominous Sunday, December 7, 1941, Major League Baseball's owners were gathered in Chicago for their annual winter meetings, just two months after one of the sport's greatest seasons. For the owners, the dramatic news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor earlier that morning was not only an assault on the United States, but also a direct threat to the future of the national pastime...

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...