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Long-time Indianapolis pro hoops beat reporter Mark Montieth ( Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis ) joins host Tim Hanlon to delve into the intriguing story behind the efforts of late-1960s civic leaders to re-establish a top-tier professional franchise in the capital city of basketball-mad Indiana after a curious 14-year absence.    One of eleven charter franchise...

Long-time Metro Silicon Valley columnist and San Jose, California native Gary Singh ( The San Jose Earthquakes: A Seismic Soccer Legacy ) joins host Tim Hanlon to discuss the confusing journey and three distinct incarnations of one of American soccer's most colorful and persistent professional franchises.   As one of four West Coast expansion teams (along with the Los Angeles Aztecs, Seattle Sound...

Former sportscaster and fellow defunct pro sports enthusiast Kenn Tomasch joins host Tim Hanlon to dig deep into the two-season saga of the Indiana (née Indianapolis) Twisters of the Continental Indoor Soccer League – the mid-90s summertime indoor soccer circuit hatched by a collective of team and arena owners from the NBA and NHL to keep their facilities humming during their respective "off"-seas...

Documentary film producer/director Jon Leonoudakis ( The Wrecking Crew! ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss Season Three of his digital video series The Sweet Spot: A Treasury of Baseball Stories – devoted to the plight of women in the pursuit of playing America's pastime.  Over this season's nine episodes, Shutout! The Battle American Women Wage to Play Baseball tackles the tortuous journey of women in...

Ice hockey makes its long-awaited return to the podcast, as host Tim Hanlon revisits the legendarily forlorn California Golden Seals franchise of the late 1960s/early 1970s National Hockey League, with author Steve Currier ( The California Golden Seals: A Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL's Most Outlandish Teams ).   Part of the NHL's "Great Expansion" of 1967, the Seals never post...

 Author/historian Bill Young ( John Tortes "Chief" Meyers: A Baseball Biography ) returns to the podcast to discuss the life and legacy of one of Major League Baseball's most intriguing personalities from the sport's "dead-ball era" of the 1900s/10s.  The sturdy, hard-hitting battery-mate (and eventual vaudeville stage partner) of Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Matthewson – as well as a fixture in s...

Former NASL, MISL, CISL (and even ASL) soccer great Paul Child becomes the fifth National Soccer Hall of Famer to join the podcast – and regales host Tim Hanlon with a bevy of eyebrow-raising anecdotes from a 25+ pro career as a player and coach across teams and leagues in both the outdoor and indoor versions of the game, including:  •         Taking a chance to get first-team play as a 19-year-ol...

Basketball historian and Penn State professor emeritus Murry Nelson ( The National Basketball League: A History ) returns to the podcast – this time to dive into the deep end of one of the modern-day NBA's  most important formative tributaries.   The National Basketball League was forged out of an industrial collective of independent "company teams" that dotted the Midwest in the mid-1930s – and t...

Author Bill Ryczek ( Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball's National Association ) makes a return visit to the podcast – this time to regale host Tim Hanlon in the intriguing story of the raucous early days of organized baseball's first attempt at forming and sustaining a true professional league.  Birthed in early 1871 from a hodgepodge, post-Civil War-era amalgam of amateur teams...

The lineage behind what is today's Atlanta Braves is one of the longest, deepest and most uniquely enduring in all of professional baseball.  With early roots dating back to the launch of 1871's National Association (when they were based in Boston, and known simply as the "Red Stockings"), the later-renamed Braves franchise boldly moved to the greener pastures of Milwaukee in 1953 – where for 13 y...

Wichita, Kansas natives Mike Romalis and Tim O'Bryhim (Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings) join host Tim Hanlon to talk about their current book – and upcoming documentary – focused on the improbable story of the Major Indoor Soccer League's smallest-market (Nielsen-ranked #66) club that became the first major league professional sports team in Kansas history. The MI...

Inc. Editor-at-Large David Whitford ( Extra Innings: A Season in the Senior League ) joins host Tim Hanlon to retrace his journalistic odyssey covering the inaugural season of the short-lived, Florida-based Senior Professional Baseball Association (SPBA) in the winter of 1989-90.  Whitford recalls the early-career events leading up to his plum writing assignment, and the process by which he went a...

While the meteoric rise of the United Soccer League's FC Cincinnati franchise caught many pro sports observers by surprise, keen observers of soccer's unique history in the Queen City note that the foundation of the team's current success actually dates back to 1972, when an ambitious little club called the Cincinnati Comets won the American Soccer League championship in the team's inaugural seaso...

The history of women's professional basketball in the US pre-dates the modern-day WNBA by at least two decades, when inveterate pro sports entrepreneur Bill Byrne launched the Women's Professional Basketball League (WBL) in 1978.  Taking cultural cues from the Equal Rights Amendment movement, the adoption of Title IX, Billie Jean King's landmark victory in tennis' "Battle of the Sexes," and a surp...

At the dawn of the Roaring Twenties, the National Football League was a mere footnote in the American sports scene, when matchups were played on dirt fields by vagabond athletes who would beat up or punch out their opponents for fifty bucks a game.  But one team during that era was different – the Oorang Indians.  Founded by an ambitious dog breeder, comprised only of Native American players, and...

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 gate, it was the first-ever college game to be televised nationally in prime time – and it...

The Memphis Tigers professional football team of the late 1920s and early 1930s never played a down in the National Football League, but that didn't stop them from becoming one of the era's most successful clubs – including laying a legitimate claim as the sport's national champions in 1929.  Author/historian Wylie McLallen ( Tigers by the River: A True and Accurate Tale of the Early Days of Pro F...

Fox Sports soccer rules analyst and newly minted National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee Dr. Joe Machnik has done just about everything across the American soccer landscape in his 60+ year career.  As a player, coach, referee, administrator, match commissioner, and soccer camp (No.1 Soccer Camps) pioneer, "Dr. Joe" has had a direct hand in helping achieving some of the sport's major milestones in th...

Before the modern-day New York Jets of today's NFL – before Joe Namath, before the infamous "Heidi Game," before the guaranteed Super Bowl III victory – there were the New York Titans.  A charter member of the upstart American Football League in 1960, the underfunded Titans played for three seasons to meager crowds in Upper Manhattan's decrepit Polo Grounds, flirting with bankruptcy and collapse f...

Award-winning British documentarian Daniel Gordon ( Hillsborough; 9.79*; The Game of Their Lives ) joins Tim Hanlon from London to discuss his new ESPN Films 30 for 30 feature George Best: All By Himself – and the enigmatic soccer star whose life story it depicts.   Gordon reveals: Why he was attracted to the story of George Best, despite others' previous attempts to tell it; How Best's early-care...

Author/historian David Jordan ( The Athletics of Philadelphia: Connie Mack's White Elephants ; The A's: A Baseball History ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the first incarnation of one of Major League Baseball's most enigmatic franchises.  Jordan discusses how the Philadelphia As: Helped launch the American League as a charter franchise in 1901; Dominated the majors with six league pennants, three Wo...

Award-winning Cleveland Plain Dealer sports columnist Bill Livingston ( George Steinbrenner's Pipe Dream: The ABL Champion Cleveland Pipers ) joins Tim Hanlon to delve deeper into the history of the ill-fated 1960s American Basketball League – this time through the lens of one of its (and ultimately, one of pro sports') most combustible figures.  Livingston describes how Pipers owner (and future N...

National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee and three-time ABC-TV "Superstars" champion Kyle Rote, Jr. joins Tim Hanlon from his home in Memphis for an in-depth and wide-ranging conversation about his trailblazing journey as America's first true native-born professional soccer star.   Along the way, Rote, Jr. reveals: How a fortuitous heart-to-heart with his famous football star-father helped convince h...

Pro Football Researchers' Association president Ken Crippen ( The Original Buffalo Bills: A History of the All-America Football Conference Team ; The All-America Football Conference: Players, Coaches, Records, Games & Awards ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the upstart pro football circuit that gave the war-weary NFL a formidable challenge in the late 1940s.  Crippen describes: How a newspaper sports...

Penn State University professor emeritus Murry Nelson ( Abe Saperstein and the American Basketball League, 1960–1963: The Upstarts Who Shot for Three and Lost to the NBA ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the oft-forgotten second incarnation of the ABL – and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer who willed it into being.  In this hidden gem of an episode, Nelson describes:  How the master prom...