Good Seats Still Available

Fans of the original NHL version (1979-96) of the Winnipeg Jets, as well as the first ten seasons (1997-2007) of their subsequent incarnation as the Phoenix Coyotes, will surely remember the dulcet tones of team radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster Curt Keilback ( Two Minutes for Talking to Myself: Jets, Coyotes, Tales, Opinions ) . For 27 seasons - spanning some 2400+ games - ​K eilback was the...

​ Author/team biographer Steve Guinan ( We Are the Troopers: The Women of the Winningest Team in Pro Football History ) helps us celebrate the return of football this week - with a look back at ​​ the unheralded story of the most dominant women's team of the 1970s -the Toledo Troopers. Winners of seven consecutive championships across two different leagues - Sid Friedman's barnstorming Women's Pro...

As a young girl growing up in tiny, rural Throckmorton, Texas in the mid-1950s, memoirist Addie Beth Denton ( " 108 Stitches: A Girl Grows Up With Baseball ") had only a vague understanding of what her father and uncle did for a living - except that they seemed to always  be talking about baseball. Only as she grew older did she come to realize all that discussion - not to mention her bevy of annu...

The Athletic Major League Soccer staff writer Pablo Maurer steps into our vortex of what-used-to-be in professional sports this week, with a look back at some of the more confounding and overlooked stories of the not-so-distant past of US pro soccer. It's our deepest dives yet into memorable North American Soccer League gems like 1977's one-year wonder Team Hawaii ; 1983's divisive US Men's Nation...

Obscure trivia answers abound this week, as we return to the pro rinks of the 1970s with Twin Cities sports fan extraordinaire Dan Whenesota (" A Slap Shot in Time ") for a look back at the not one, but two World Hockey Association franchises known as the Minnesota Fighting Saints. The first team was one of the WHA's original twelve franchises, playing from 1972 until mid-1976; the second was the...

We spotlight the new Amazon Prime Video series " A League of Their Own " - an inventively reimagined telling of the story of the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (and originally made famous in the 1992 Penny Marshall-directed motion picture of the same name) - with writer and executive producer Desta Tedros Reff. Decidedly more "dramedy" in tone than the comedic app...

Life has come full circle for TV news reporter-turned-Triple-A baseball play-by-play broadcaster Mike Capps (" Grinders: Baseball's Intrepid Infantry ") - now the longtime radio voice of the Pacific Coast League's Round Rock Express. As a kid in early-1960s North Texas, Capps grew up immersed in the exploits of Dallas-Fort Worth's minor league Rangers, Cats and Spurs - intrigued by rotating roster...

It wasn't easy being a soccer fan in the United States in the 1980s.  While the 24-team North American American Soccer League ushered in the decade with an air of stability and momentum (the league even sold a pennant proclaiming the game the "Sport of the 80's"), it wasn't long before big-time American pro soccer was dangerously on the ropes (the NASL shrank to just nine franchises by 1984) – and...

Pro hockey history enthusiast/author Steve Currier ( Episode 37 ; " The California Golden Seals: A Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL's Most Outlandish Teams ") returns to the show after a five-year absence - this time to accompany us deep down the rabbit hole of one of the National Hockey League's most overlooked adventures of the 1970s.   In his new book " When the NHL Invaded Jap...

Chicago sports fans of a certain age may remember the name Charlie Evranian atop the masthead of the executive suite (behind inimitable owner Lee Stern, of course) of the 1981 outdoor version of the North American Soccer League's Chicago Sting - when that club delivered the first major pro championship to the Windy City since 1963's NFL Bears.   (Not to mention the team's first two barn-burning in...

Fresno Grizzlies baseball TV play-by-play broadcaster (and Episode 208 guest) Dan Taylor (" Lights, Camera, Fastball: How the Hollywood Stars Changed Baseball ") returns to the podcast - this time with the story of one of the most unheralded players in pro football history.   In his new book " Walking Alone: The Untold Journey of Football Pioneer Kenny Washington ," Taylor writes the first solo bi...

We're back from vacation with a 50th anniversary rewind of 1972's iconic "Summit Series" between "Team Canada" (featuring the NHL's best from north of the border) and the then-Soviet Union - with veteran sports journalist/hockey analyst Scott Morrison ( " 1972: The Series That Changed Hockey Forever ").   It's a deep dive into the curious, yet now-iconic battle between the hockey's two top superpo...

[We celebrate eminent North-of-the-border sportswriter Ed Willes' selection to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame's media wing last week - with a June 2018 archive re-release of one our most popular episodes!] As Johnny Manziel 's pro football comeback journey wraps up a promising pre-season with the Canadian Football League's Hamilton Tiger-Cats, we take a moment this week to reminisce on the app...

[A June 2017 archive re-release favorite with one of the true insiders behind the initial success of the legendary original 1970s/80s Major Indoor Soccer League!] This week, Tim Hanlon buckles up for a wild ride through the tumultuous early years of the original Major Indoor Soccer League with sports PR veteran Michael Menchel, in our longest and most anecdote-filled episode yet!  Menchel takes us...

It's a special " retcon " episode this week, as we dig into both the original and revisionist histories of the NBA's Charlotte Hornets - with the first incarnation's most recognizable player, and the second iteration's most logical keeper-of-the-flame: Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues.   Over a 14-year pro NBA career, Bogues (" Muggsy: My Life From a kid in the Projects to the Godfather of Small Ball ") was...

Society for American Baseball Research historian/chronicler Justin Mckinney ( Baseball's Union Association: The Short, Strange Life of a 19th-Century Major League ) joins the podcast this week to weigh in on the debate that continues to swirl around baseball's curious one-season Union Association - namely, was it a truly major league?   As first broached in our Episode 73 with Jon Springer , the N...

We're taking a few days of early summer vacation this week - but not before sitting down for a very fun interview with pro football enthusiast and friend-of-the-show Arnie Chapman - as a guest on his popular Sports History Network podcast " The Football History Dude ." Tim and Arnie dive into some of the most memorable football-related episodes of "Good Seats Still Available" thus far - and wax no...

While more than a few generations of NBA fans believe the Sacramento Kings franchise began its life when the team played (and lost) its very first exhibition game against the Los Angeles Clippers at the warehouse-converted ARCO Arena (I) on October 25, 1985 - serious students of the game know better.   Indeed, a very rich and colorful series of previous incarnations dating back to nearly a century...

"Dave Bancroft should not be in the Hall of Fame."   That's how this week's guest Tom Alesia's new book " Beauty at Short: Dave Bancroft, the Most Unlikely Hall of Famer and His Wild Times in Baseball's First Century " starts - a curious way to begin the first (and only) biography of one of Cooperstown's most underappreciated inductees.   A competent, if not unremarkable major league shortstop (Ph...

We revisit the endlessly fascinating World Football League - and its enigmatic founder/first commissioner Gary Davidson - with ESPN.com senior writer Ryan Hockensmith ( " The Renegade Who Took On the NFL [And the NBA and the NHL] " ).   Drawing on recent interviews with Davidson, former NFL defectors Larry Csonka & Paul Warfield, and previous podcast guests Howard Baldwin & Upton Bell , Hockensmit...

Hollywood film producer ( Ray ; The Game of Their Lives ; Sudden Death ) and original New England/Hartford Whalers founder/owner Howard Baldwin ( Slim and None: My Wild Ride from the WHA to the NHL and All the Way to Hollywood ) returns after a three-year absence to help fill in some of the gaps left over from Episode 100 , and to dish on "new" territory from his hard-to-believe career, including:...

With the rebooted (though still potentially trademark-infringing) USFL now in full swing, we take a look back at one of the clubs from the original version that didn't make the cut this time around - the Washington Federals.   Washington Post sports reporter Jake Russell ( " As the USFL Restarts, A Look Back at the Washington Federals " ) takes us inside his pursuit to decode the numerous curiosit...

It's the 60th year of New York Mets baseball, and we celebrate this week with a look back at the transformational multipurpose facility they called home for 45 seasons - including three of the club's four NL pennants and its only two World Series championships - Shea Stadium.   Matthew Silverman ( Shea Stadium Remembered: The Mets, The Jets, and Beatlemania ) takes us back to the origin story behi...

We take it hard to the tin this week, with a lively roundtable reminiscence of the oft-overlooked, but undeniably influential Women's Professional Basketball League (WBL) of 1978-81 - with four of its pioneering players that helped pave the way for today's flourishing female pro hoops scene.   Liz "Bandit" Galloway McQuitter (Chicago Hustle); Charlene McWhorter Jackson (Hustle, Washington Metros,...

Baseball historian, Minnesota Twins official scorer and Episode 114 guest Stew Thornley (" Metropolitan Stadium: Memorable Games at Minnesota's Diamond on the Prairie "), returns for a fond look back at the semi-iconic structure that helped secure "major league" status for the Twin Cities in the early 1960s.   Known simply as "The Met" by area locals (or even the "Old Met" to distinguish from the...