Good Seats Still Available
375 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 days ago - ★★★★★ - 98 ratings“Good Seats Still Available” is a curious little podcast devoted to the exploration of what used-to-be in professional sports. Each week, host Tim Hanlon interviews former players, owners, broadcasters, beat reporters, and surprisingly famous "super fans" of teams and leagues that have come and gone - in an attempt to unearth some of the most wild and woolly moments in (often forgotten) sports history.
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Episodes
345: From Vancouver to Memphis - With Łukasz Muniowski
April 22, 2024 06:30 - 1 hour - 79.4 MBIt's a special mea culpa episode this week, as we welcome back Szczecin University (Poland) history professor and Episode 289 guest Łukasz Muniowski (Turnpike Team: A History of the New Jersey Nets 1977-2012) for a deep dive into the drama of the NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies move to Memphis in 2001 - and an assessment of the winners and losers some 23+ years since. While Muniowski's current title on the topic (The Grizzlies Migrate to Memphis: From Vancouver Failure to Southern Success...
344.5: The NFL’s 1943 “Steagles” - With Matt Algeo [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE]
April 14, 2024 06:30 - 56 minutes - 52.6 MB[A dip into the archives for a one of our first-ever episodes from 2017 - by request!] Author Matt Algeo (Last Team Standing: How the Steelers and the Eagles – "The Steagles" – Saved Pro Football During World War II) joins Tim Hanlon all the way from Maputo, Mozambique to discuss the marriage of convenience that literally saved the National Football League from collapse in 1943. Algeo describes how a desperate Art Rooney scrambled to save his Pittsburgh Steelers franchise, depleted by war...
344: The Evolution of Sports Media - With David Bockino
April 08, 2024 06:30 - 1 hour - 80.3 MBFormer ESPN ad researcher, and current Elon University professor of communications and sport management David Bockino (Game On: How Sports Media Grew Up, Sold Out, and Got Personal with Billions of Fans) helps us trace the evolution of the sports media industry - with historical points of interest both obvious (e.g., the 1958 NFL Championship Game; "Sports Illustrated" magazine; ABC's "Monday Night Football;" the 1979 launch of cable's ESPN); and subtle (1967's live multinational "Our Worl...
343: Baseball History Landmarks - With Chris Epting
April 01, 2024 06:30 - 1 hour - 73.5 MBWe reach back into the vaunted Good Seats library stacks this week for a deep dive into one of Tim's favorite sports reference books - Roadside Baseball: The Locations of America's Baseball Landmarks - with its (prodigious non-fiction) author Chris Epting. Now in its third edition, Roadside is everything you'd imagine from the title: a detailed, geographic cataloging of over 500 important events in North American baseball history, including historical data, trivia, photographs, and l...
342.5 [PROMO DROP] "Ways To Win"
March 26, 2024 06:30 - 51 minutes - 47.6 MBSharing something special, an episode of the new podcast "Ways to Win" - where coaches Craig Robinson and John Calipari use their on-court wisdom to solve off-court problems. In this first episode (recorded before the start of the NCAA basketball tournament!), there's no better way to kick off March Madness than with President Barack Obama (and Craig’s favorite brother-in-law), who drops by to break down his bracket. Find out who’s in his Final Four and how far he thinks Coach Cal’s Wildca...
342: "Boston Ball" - With Clayton Trutor
March 25, 2024 06:30 - 1 hour - 85.6 MBWe bust some brackets this week in honor of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, with a look back at the old East Coast Athletic Conference and the coaching cradle of city of Boston - with return (Episode 237) guest Clayton Trutor ("Boston Ball: Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams, and the Forgotten Cradle of Basketball Coaches"). Before the formation of the original Big East Conference in 1979, much of DI college basketball in the US Northeast and Mid-Atlantic was pa...
341: "Pro" Wrestling's Origin Story - With Jon Langmead
March 18, 2024 06:30 - 1 hour - 73.1 MBWe squint hard this week for a look into the story of American "professional" wrestling's formative years - with pop culture writer Jon Langmead (Ballyhoo! The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling). Langmead takes us inside the raucous period roughly between the mid-1870s to the early-1940s - where genuine competitive wrestlers and opportunistic amusement-minded promoters (both heavily influenced by the country's booming carnival circuit) together...
340: Baseball's "New York Game" - With Kevin Baker
March 11, 2024 06:30 - 1 hour - 63 MBHarper's Contributing Editor and novelist/historian extraordinaire Kevin Baker ("The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City") brings his blended affection for (and evocative portrayals of) both "The Big Apple" and the "National Pastime" - to make a compelling case for New York City as the rightful center of the baseball universe. From Alan Moores' review in Booklist: "Baseball fans beyond Gotham’s gravitational pull might bristle at the notion that New York was the epice...
339: Early-Day WNBA - With Marie Ferdinand-Harris
March 04, 2024 07:30 - 1 hour - 72.5 MBIt's a celebration of women's hoops this week, as we look back at the "early days" of the Women's National Basketball Association - including stops with the oft-forgotten Utah Starzz and San Antonio Silver Stars - with three-time league all-star Marie Ferdinand-Harris (Transformed: The Winning Side of Losing). A first-round pick in the WNBA's fifth-ever draft in 2001, Ferdinand was a dominant shooting guard at LSU prior to her 8th-overall selection by Utah - a formidable presence ins...
338: 50 Years of San Jose Earthquakes Soccer - With Gary Singh
February 26, 2024 07:30 - 1 hour - 86.1 MBIt's a "retcon" special this week, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the most colorful and persistent franchises in American pro soccer history - with a return visit from Episode 40 guest Gary Singh (The Unforgettable San Jose Earthquakes: Momentous Stories On & Off the Field). As one of four West Coast expansion teams (along with the Los Angeles Aztecs, Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps) added for the North American Soccer League’s breakthrough 1974 season, the origin...
337: The 1990-91 Minnesota North Stars - With Kevin Allenspach
February 19, 2024 07:30 - 1 hour - 104 MBVeteran Minnesota sportswriter Kevin Allenspach (Mirage of Destiny: The Story of the 1990-91 Minnesota North Stars) takes to the ice with us this week, as we look back at one of the most improbable playoff runs in NHL history - one that came the closest to giving the self-professed "State of Hockey" its first Stanley Cup championship - a title that still eludes the region to this day. Throughout much of the 1990-91 season, the Minnesota North Stars were among the worst-performing clubs in...
336: Lost Tales of the MISL - With Tim O'Bryhim
February 12, 2024 07:00 - 1 hour - 68.3 MBWe celebrate the launch of the new "MISL 1980s: The Story of Indoor Soccer" Substack series with its author and return (Episode 31) guest Tim O'Bryhim ("Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings" & "God Save the Wings"). O'Bryhim's long-form pieces promise to bring to light myriad stories from the legendary original Major Indoor Soccer League - a pioneering pro soccer circuit that remains surprisingly under-chronicled, despite its outsized influence on the game's h...
335: On the Diamonds of Des Moines - With Steve Dunn
February 05, 2024 07:30 - 1 hour - 75.5 MBIowa baseball chronologist Steve Dunn ("'Pug,' 'Fireball,' and Company: 116 Years of Professional Baseball in Des Moines, Iowa") joins for a surprisingly rich journey into the history of professional baseball in the Hawkeye State's largest city - currently home to the Diamond Baseball Holdings-owned Triple-A affiliate of the National League's Chicago Cubs. Besides today's Iowa Cubs, the city of Des Moines has been home to minor league baseball in various forms since 1887 - featuring a lon...
334.5: The National Bowling League – With Dr. Jake Schmidt [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE]
January 29, 2024 07:30 - 1 hour - 89.2 MB[A dip into the archives for a fan favorite from 2019 - featuring a show-closing ode to the late, great 70s' TV game show "Celebrity Bowling"!] + + + 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. B...
334: Atlanta's "White Ice" - With Tom Aiello
January 22, 2024 07:00 - 1 hour - 78.5 MBValdosta State University history professor (and Episode 244 guest) Tom Aiello ("Dixieball: Race and Professional Basketball in the Deep South") returns after a two-year absence - for an enlightening look at the curious cultural history of the city of Atlanta's awkward relationship with professional hockey. In his new book "White Ice: Race and the Making of Atlanta Hockey," Aiello interestingly juxtaposes the National Hockey League's aggressive expansion in the late 1960s/early 1970s (in...
333: "Soccer Tom" Mulroy
January 15, 2024 07:30 - 1 hour - 109 MBWe buckle up this week for a wild and revelatory ride across 50+ years of big-time soccer in the United States with one of the biggest unsung heroes of the American game - and unquestionably, one of its most prominent "keepers of the flame." The professional and personal life journey of "Soccer Tom" Mulroy ("90 Minutes with the King: How Soccer Saved My Life") virtually parallels the 1970s-to-1990s boom-bust-and-boom-again roller coaster of soccer's early modern history in the US - and to...
332: Super Series '76 - With Ed Gruver
January 08, 2024 09:00 - 1 hour - 68.7 MBWe turn back the clock 48 years ago this week for a revisit of one of the most consequential contests in the history of the National Hockey League - with sports historian Ed Gruver ("The Game That Saved the NHL: The Broad Street Bullies. the Soviet Red Machine, and Super Series '76"). The dust jacket of Gruver's new book sums it up thusly: "In late 1975 and early 1976, at the height of the Cold War, two of the Soviet Union’s long-dominant national hockey teams traveled to North America ...
331: The NASL's San Antonio Thunder (+ More!) - With Derek Currie
January 01, 2024 07:30 - 1 hour - 76.7 MBIt's the adventure-filled story of how a late-60s-era Scottish top-league footballer helped start the first-ever professional soccer circuit in the then-British colony of Hong Kong - punctuated by an unexpected off-season loan to one of the most forgotten franchises in North American Soccer League history. Derek Currie ("When 'Jesus' Came to Hong Kong: The Remarkable Story of the First European Football Star in Asia") joins us live and direct from his home in Bangkok,Thailand for an anecdo...
330: The 4th Annual(-ish) Year-End Holiday Roundtable Spectacular!
December 25, 2023 07:00 - 1 hour - 96.7 MBWe press the rewind button on a most interesting 2023, and peer ahead into the uncharted waters of 2024 with our fourth-annual(-ish) Holiday Roundtable Spectacular - featuring three of our favorite fellow defunct sports enthusiasts: Andy Crossley (Fun While It Lasted & Episode 2); Paul Reeths (StatsCrew.com, OurSportsCentral.com & Episode 46); and Steve Holroyd (Crossecheck, Philly Classics & Episodes 92, 109, 149, 188 & 248). Takes of varying temperatures fly as we review some of the mo...
329: The 1963 AFL San Diego Chargers - With Dave Steidel
December 18, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 84.3 MBAfter last week's ugly, team-record 63-21 drubbing by the Las Vegas Raiders, and the subsequent dismissal of its head coach and general manager - it's been a (yet another) rough season for the NFL's Los Angeles Chargers. While family owner/scion Dean Spanos tries (again) to plot a plan forward, we look nostalgically back to the franchise's early years in San Diego as one of the charter entries in the iconoclastic American Football League - an era that produced the club's (still) one-and...
328: Raycom Sports - With Founders Rick & Dee Ray
December 11, 2023 07:30 - 1 hour - 102 MBWe adjust our TV antenna rabbit ears back to the late 1970s for the origin story of one of the most influential firms in modern-day sports media - with Rick and Dee Ray, the founders of televised college sports juggernaut Raycom Sports. In their new George Hirthler-penned memoir "Unstoppable: A Story of Love, Faith and the Power Couple Who Ignited the College Sports Broadcasting Boom," the Rays rewind the videotape to a time when a new technology called "cable" was still in its infancy, ...
327: Scottish Soccer Summer Dalliances - With Mark Poole
December 04, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 74.1 MBThe 1960s were a tumultuous, but crucial period in the development of professional soccer in the United States and Canada - with teams from Scotland, of all places, playing a particularly interesting role. The dividing line for the modern North American pro game, of course, was the breakthrough, near-live (two-hour-delayed) NBC-TV network telecast of the 1966 World Cup final between eventual champion England and West Germany - the first-ever national standalone broadcast of the sport. ...
326.5: Lamar Hunt & the American Football League - With Michael MacCambridge [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE]
November 27, 2023 06:30 - 1 hour - 111 MB[By popular demand, an archive re-release of Episode 321 guest and "The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America" author Michael MacCambridge - from his first appearance on the show from March 2017!] Sports author/historian Michael MacCambridge ("Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports") joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the legacy of Lamar Hunt – the most unlikely of sports executive pioneers – and the outsized role he played in modernizing 1960s pro football into the enduring American sports...
326: NFL/USFL Football "Survivor" Steve Wright
November 20, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 71.1 MB11-year pro football offensive lineman and budding Renaissance man Steve Wright ("Aggressively Human: Discovering Humanity in the NFL, Reality TV, and Life") helps us check off a few new boxes in our obsessive quest for forgotten sports franchise completism. Before his post-career exploits as the 10th-place finisher in the 22nd season of the CBS reality competition series "Survivor" ("Survivor: Redemption Island"), and as the inventor of pioneering sideline cooling-mist tech firms Cloudb...
325: Pro Tennis' Polychromatic 1970s - With Joel Drucker
November 13, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 91.2 MBVeteran Tennis.com writer, Racquet Magazine columnist & "Three - A Tennis Show" podcast host Joel Drucker ("Jimmy Connors Saved My Life") stops by to drop some serious knowledge on how the decade of the 1970s transformed the sport of professional tennis into the global juggernaut it is today - including pivotal turning points such as: The groundbreaking World Championship Tennis (WCT) and Virginia Slims Circuit tours that brought standardized scheduling, big-time media exposure and unprec...
324: Football's Enigmatic Coach George Allen - With Mike Richman
November 06, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 93.1 MBFootball biographer Mike Richman ("George Allen: A Football Life") joins us for a decades-long journey back into the old-school NFL (and USFL) exploits of one of pro football's most intense and enigmatic sideline characters. From the dust-jacket of "A Football Life": "George Allen was a fascinating and eccentric figure in the world of football coaching. His remarkable career spanned six decades, from the late 1940s until his sudden death in 1990 at the age of seventy-three. Although he...
323: Play-By-Play Pioneer Marty Glickman - With Jeffrey Gurock
October 30, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 62.9 MBIt's an episode that's hopefully as "Good! Like Nedicks!" - as we take a biographical look back at the rich and influential life of pioneering New York City sports broadcaster Marty Glickman - with biographer/Yeshiva University history professor Jeffrey Gurock ("Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend"). From the "Marty Glickman" dustjacket: "For close to half a century after World War II, Marty Glickman was the voice of New York sports. His distinctive style of bro...
322: The New York Cosmos' "Pelé Years" - With Charles Cuttone
October 23, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 84.9 MBVeteran New York-based sports writer/public relations pro Charles Cuttone has seen just about everything in his nearly 50 years of promoting professional sports across the Gotham sports scene - dating all the way back to 1974 as a fresh-faced elementary school intern with the World Football League's ill-fated New York Stars. While the WFL gig (and team, for that matter) didn't last long, it was his next experience that following spring - with a rag-tag but ambitious pro soccer outfit cal...
321: The 1970s - With Michael MacCambridge
October 16, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour - 69.2 MBAfter an absence of over six years and more than 300+ episodes, sportswriter extraordinaire Michael MacCambridge ("Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports"; "America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation"; "Chuck Noll: His Life's Work") makes his triumphant return to the podcast - this time to celebrate the release of his brand new, instant sports history classic, "The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America." It's just about everything you'd expect from the aut...
320: Fox Sports/MSG Networks Broadcaster Kenny Albert
October 09, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 65.6 MBVeteran Fox Sports and MSG Networks play-by-play man Kenny Albert ("A Mic for All Seasons") joins host Tim Hanlon for a cornucopia of career memories from his 30+ year journey in sports broadcasting – including, of course, obligatory stops along the way for various "forgotten" teams, events and even TV networks of yore. Now celebrating his third decade with Fox, the Emmy Award-winning Albert has regularly called Sunday games for every season of the network's NFL coverage - as well as for...
319: The 1994-95 Baseball Players' Strike - With Bob Cottrell
October 02, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 72.8 MBWe explore the traumatic events of Major League Baseball's notorious 1994-95 players' strike - with Chico State history professor Bob Cottrell ("The Year Without a World Series: Major League Baseball and the Road to the 1994 Players' Strike"). More than 900 regular season games, the entirety of the playoffs, and, for the first time in 90 years, the sport's signature World Series - were all lost to the work stoppage, which began on August 12, 1994. The strike ended late into the 1995...
318: The WHA & Original NHL Winnipeg Jets - With Geoff Kirbyson
September 25, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 81.5 MBWe head "True North" to the Canadian province of Manitoba this week in search of heretofore undiscovered historical nuggets from the WHA and original NHL versions of hockey's Winnipeg Jets - with veteran journalist/author Geoff Kirbyson. Kirbyson's accounts of the Jets' early years in the revolutionary World Hockey Association from 1972-79 ("The Hot Line: How the Legendary Trio of Hull, Hedberg and Nilsson Transformed Hockey and Led the Winnipeg Jets to Greatness"), and the club's origin...
317.5: The International Volleyball Association - With Jay Hanseth [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE]
September 18, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 143 MB[A scheduling snafu this week gives us a perfect excuse to re-release this hidden gem from November 2019 - enjoy!] You can be forgiven if you never heard of the International Volleyball Association – the mid-1970s co-ed pro circuit that aimed to draft off the rising popularity of Olympic and beach volleyball during America’s wildest sports decade – but the high-wattage media and entertainment moguls behind its creation at the time certainly cannot. The IVA was the brainchild of prolific H...
317: Before the NFL - With Gregg Ficery
September 11, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBThe National Football League is back in full swing, and what better way to celebrate than with a deep dig into the primordial ooze from which it and the broader endeavor of professional football evolved - with Gregg Ficery, author of the new and immediately essential tome "Gridiron Legacy: Pro Football's Missing Origin Story." From the revelatory new book's dust jacket: Professional football's backstory was lost, until now. In the beginning, in 1892, pro football was born. Then it e...
316: “A League of Their Own” - With Erin Carlson
September 04, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 65 MBHollywood history maven Erin Carlson ("No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of "A League of Their Own": Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood") stops by the podcast to help celebrate the 30th anniversary of the iconic motion picture that comically (and lovingly) brought the largely forgotten story of the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League to the big screen - simultaneously preserving and making history in the process. + + + ...
315: The Junior Basketball Association - With Brandon Williams
August 28, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 75.8 MBWhile the NCAA is still the predominant pipeline for rookie basketball talent looking to break into pro hoops, the 2023 NBA Draft showed just how far legitimate alternate pathways have come - especially for eager high school players unwilling (or unable) to go the traditional college route. Three of this year's top-five first-round picks came from two relatively new entities - Overtime Elite (brothers Amen [4th overall, Houston Rockets] & Ausar [5th, Detroit Pistons] Thompson); and NBA G...
314: The UK (Hearts) the NFL - With Ben Isaacs
August 21, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 82.7 MBDomestically, American football has never been more popular (or prosperous) than it is today - yet questions continue to circle among the ownership class of the NFL as to how the pro game can continue to grow outside the confines of its current 32-team franchise structure. While the feasibility of pursuing more club expansion within the US is hotly debated, there is no denying that the true future of the league's fortunes rests on its ability to more reliably tap into the massive fan f...
313.8: The Continental Basketball Association – With David Levine [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE]
August 14, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 135 MB[We round out our last week of summer vacation with a re-release of this listener-favorite episode from June 2019 - enjoy!] 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 iterat...
313.7: The Major Indoor Soccer League – With Co-Founder Ed Tepper [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE]
August 07, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 144 MB[A summer vacation re-release of a fan favorite episode from March 2019!] 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 the world’s most po...
313.6: The NBA Buffalo Braves – With Tim Wendel [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE]
July 31, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 108 MB[A summer vacation re-release of a fan favorite episode from September 2018!] The Buffalo Braves were one of three NBA expansion franchises (along with the Portland Trail Blazers and Cleveland Cavaliers) that began play in the 1970–71 season. Originally owned by a wobbly investment firm with few ties to Buffalo, the Braves eventually found a local backer in Freezer Queen founder Paul Snyder – who, by the end of the first season, had inherited a team that was neither good (penultimate le...
313.5: The United Football League – With Michael Huyghue [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE]
July 24, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 115 MB[A summer vacation re-release of a fan favorite episode from January 2020!] It's 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 circuit by high-wattage investors like San Franc...
313: The NFL's Minneapolis Marines & Red Jackets - With R. C. Christiansen
July 17, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 77.4 MBWe discover the story of the Twin Cities' forgotten, but undeniably first, NFL franchise(s) with the help of football writer/historian R. C. Christiansen ("Mill City Scrum: The History of Minnesota's First Team in the National Football League"). From the "Mill City Scrum" book jacket: "In the flour milling city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, a group of first-generation American teenagers team up to play football in the sandlots. They call themselves the Marines, and with no high school or col...
312: The Vancouver Grizzlies - With Kat Jayme
July 10, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 66.5 MBYounger fans of today's Memphis Grizzlies can be forgiven for thinking the NBA franchise has spent the entirety of its 28-year existence playing its still-evolving brand of pro hoops in the FedExForum. But this week's guest - documentary filmmaker and Vancouver, BC native Kat Jayme ("The Grizzlie Truth;" "Finding Big Country") - is here to remind us that the "Grizz" actually got its start as one of two 1995 Canadian expansion teams (the other: the still-vibrant Toronto Raptors), scratchi...
311: Bob Whitsitt
July 03, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 79.3 MBom groundbreaking trades to team-saving negotiations, Bob Whitsitt ("Game Changer: An Insider's Story of the Sonics’ Resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ Turnaround, and the Deal that Saved the Seahawks") has been in the captain's seat for some of the most pivotal moments in Pacific Northwest pro sports franchise history. But before helping rebuild Seattle's SuperSonics into an NBA Finals team in the mid-90s, tame the combustible personalities of the late 90s/early 2000s Portland Trail Blazers,...
310: "Mallparks" - With Michael Friedman
June 26, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 75.9 MBUniversity of Maryland physical cultural studies professor Michael Friedman ("Mallparks: Baseball Stadiums and the Culture of Consumption") cozies up to the pod machine this week for a thinking man's look into the evolution of the grand old American ballpark - and a provocative thesis of how designers of this generation of baseball stadiums are embracing theme park and shopping mall design to prioritize commerce and consumption over the game played inside them. + + + BUY EARLY...
309: Minor League Monikers - With Tim Hagerty
June 19, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 72.5 MBEl Paso Chihuahuas Triple-A baseball play-by-play broadcaster Tim Hagerty ("Root for the Home Team: Minor League Baseball's Most Off-the-Wall Team Names and the Stories Behind Them" and "Tales from the Dugout: 1,001 Humorous, Inspirational and Wild Anecdotes from Minor League Baseball") joins the show this week to spotlight some of the most memorable names and events in "forgotten" minor league history. When Hagerty isn't calling games for the San Diego Padres top minor league affiliate, ...
308: Soccer Sojourns - With Thomas Rongen
June 12, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 76.7 MBAmerican followers of the "beautiful game" undoubtedly know the name Thomas Rongen - but can easily be forgiven for not remembering just exactly how. Of course, there's his current color commentary work for today's Major League Soccer Inter Miami CF - but fans of a certain age will recall the Dutch-born, mop-topped midfielder from his on-field (and in-arena) antics during the halcyon days of the old North American Soccer League alongside international greats like Johan Cruyff, George Best ...
307: "Baseball's Wildest Season" - With Bill Ryczek
June 05, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 78.1 MBSports historian Bill Ryczek (Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball's National Association; Crash of the Titans: The Early Years of the New York Jets and the AFL) returns after a five-year absence to help us unpack the intriguing story of 1884 - arguably the wildest season in major league baseball history. In his latest tome, "Baseball's Wildest Season: Three Leagues, Thirty-Four Teams and the Chaos of 1884," Ryczek details a fragile professional game pioneered by a still-...
306: Miami Fusion Roundtable - With Joe Shaw, Jim Rooney & John Trask
May 29, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour - 209 MBWith the 28th season of Major League Soccer well under way - featuring the debut of the league's 29th franchise (St. Louis CITY SC) and the expansion announcement of its soon-to-be 30th (San Diego) - it's hard to believe that the entirety of MLS was on the verge of collapse after just its sixth campaign in 2001. Instead of pulling the plug entirely in 2002, two clubs - the charter 1996 Tampa Bay Mutiny and expansion 1998 Miami Fusion - were sacrificed, leaving Florida bereft of top-level p...
305: "Goodbye Oakland" - With Andy Dolich
May 22, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour - 118 MBIf anyone's qualified to weigh in with authority on the current Oakland A's relocation imbroglio, it is our guest this week - long-time professional sports marketing executive and Bay Area-based industry consultant Andy Dolich ("Goodbye, Oakland: Winning, Wanderlust, and A Sports Town's Fight for Survival"). Dolich spent 15+ years in the Athletics' front office from 1980-94 during the Walter Haas era - inheriting the remnants of Charlie Finley's parsimonious ownership, helping usher in "Bi...