Good Seats Still Available

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...

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...