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We conclude our conversation with WFL researcher Mark Speck ( WIFFLE: The Wild, Zany and Sometimes Hilariously True Story of the World Football League ; World Football League Encyclopedia ; . . .And a Dollar Short: The Empty Promises, Broken Dreams, and Somewhat-Less-Than-Comic Misadventures of the 1974 Florida Blazers ), as we find the league limping its way through an inaugural 1974 campaign tha...

Perhaps no defunct league in modern-day professional sports history endured a more ignominious storyline and spectacular demise than that of the World Football League – a uniquely disastrous attempt to establish a summer-into-autumn rival to the National Football League during the mid-1970's. Brimming with confidence from his co-founding exploits with two previous (and at the time, still very-much...

While the Detroit Tigers hold the record as the oldest continuous one-name, one-city franchise in the American League (debuting as one of the league's "Classic Eight" charter clubs in 1901), they were not the first team to play major league baseball in the Motor City.  That distinction actually goes to the Detroit Wolverines of the late 19th-century National League, which took to the field for the...

By many accounts, the North American Soccer League was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon in the history of the world game – and, during its 1970s heyday (although it began shakily in 1968 and ended in shambles after the 1984 season) – a league years ahead of its time.  More than just Pelé and the star-studded, bigger-than-life New York Cosmos, the NASL lured international soccer's biggest names like Joha...

Four-time American Basketball Association All-Star Bob Netolicky and former Indianapolis Star sportswriter Robin Miller join host Tim Hanlon to share some of their most memorable (and heretofore untold) first-person accounts of playing and traveling with the thrice-ABA-champion Indiana Pacers – and promote their upcoming book We Changed the Game , penned in partnership with original team co-founde...

The history of professional soccer in the United States is richer and far more complex than today's generation of Major League Soccer fans might realize.  Multiple ethnically-infused pro leagues existed as far back as the early 1900s – but when the American Soccer Association collapsed in Depression-Era 1933, it wasn't until the mid-1960s when the next serious attempt to bring full-fledged, top-fl...

For the first time since Episode #11 , we return to the brief, but unforgettable streak of pro football lightning known as the United States Football League, with the author of its definitive history, Paul Reeths ( The United States Football League, 1982-1986 ).  The brainchild of New Orleans plywood manufacturer/car dealer/World Championship Tennis co-founder/Superdome director/art-and-antiques d...

Veteran sportswriter Mark Montieth ( Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis ) returns to the podcast ( Episode #41 ) to help complete the story of the Indiana Pacers' nine-year sojourn through the American Basketball Association – including its shaky transition into a merger-expanded NBA in 1976.   Arguably the most stable and successful franchise in the ABA's short bu...

We conclude our two-part journey into the early history of the Arena Football League with founder and inventor Jim Foster, who recounts some of the most notable events of the league's formative years – including a memorable 1987 "demonstration season" featuring: The February debut "Showcase Game" in suburban Chicago's Rosemont Horizon between the hometown Bruisers and the Miami Vise – highlights o...

As the new year beckons, the fate of the Arena Football League – one of America's most innovative modern-day professional sports concepts – hangs in the balance.  With only four teams (the mutually-owned Washington Valor and Baltimore Brigade, defending champion Philadelphia Soul, and a still-unnamed Albany, NY squad) confirmed for the upcoming 2018 season, the AFL will play with exactly the same...

We usher in the holidays and round out our debut season with the inimitable Pat Boone – an American entertainment legend and inveterate business entrepreneur, with a life-long passion for the sport of basketball.  In a career spanning over six decades (and counting!), the incomparable Boone has just about done it all in the fields of music, film, television, and stage, as well as the pursuit of a...

We usher in the holidays and round out our debut season with the inimitable Pat Boone – an American entertainment legend and inveterate business entrepreneur, with a life-long passion for the sport of basketball.  In a career spanning over six decades (and counting!), the incomparable Boone has just about done it all in the fields of music, film, television, and stage, as well as the pursuit of a...

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...