EPISODE 345: From Vancouver to Memphis - With Łukasz Muniowski

It'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) has been out since October, your humble host not only lost track of the book's publishing date, but also the entire audio file of our conversation (originally recorded back in August 2023) - until a recent cloud backup surfaced a redundant version.

It's worth the wait, as we tackle the origin story of the Grizzlies' move from Vancouver's GM Place (now Rogers Arena) to Memphis' Pyramid (and eventually FedEx Forum), the numerous other destination cities rumored in the process, the outsized personalities involved, the motivations behind such a hasty move only six seasons after becoming an expansion franchise, and the aftermath - including whether the Memphis version of the club can be labeled a "success," despite winning only two division titles since bringing pro hoops to Beale Street.

The Grizzlies Migrate to Memphis: From Vancouver Failure to Southern Success - buy book here

EPISODE 342: "Boston Ball" - With Clayton Trutor

We 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 part of a loose patchwork of small conferences and independents that collectively fed into the not-really-a-conference ECAC umbrella for post-season playoffs, helping winnow at-large bids for a still-small NCAA tournament. 

Trutor helps set the stage through the early-career Boston exploits of three eventual Hall of Fame coaches:

"Before Pitino became the face of the Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville programs, before Calhoun turned UConn into a national power, and before Williams brought Maryland to its first national championship, all three of these coaches cut their teeth in front of modest-sized crowds in the crumbling college gymnasiums of Boston during the 1970s and early 1980s.

"'Boston Ball' charts how this trio of coaches, seemingly out of nowhere, started a basketball revolution: Pitino at Boston University, Calhoun at Northeastern University, and Williams at Boston College. Toiling in relative obscurity, they ignited a renaissance of the “city game,” a style of play built on fast-breaking up-tempo offense, pressure defense, and board crashing.  Pitino, Calhoun, and Williams took advantage of the ample coaching opportunities in 'America’s College Town' to craft their respective blueprints for building a winning program and turn their schools into regional powers, and these early coaching years served as their respective springboards to big-time college basketball."

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Boston Ball: Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams, and the Forgotten Cradle of Basketball Coaches - buy book here

EPISODE 339: Early-Day WNBA - With Marie Ferdinand-Harris

It'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 inside the paint and outside the arc, skills honed from leading title-winning teams at Edison High School, in the heart of Miami's historically poor "Little Haiti" neighborhood.

After a stellar 11-year pro career (including turns with the league-original LA Sparks and Phoenix Mercury), Ferdinand-Harris is one of the unsung pioneers of the WNBA, part of a first generation of players that helped solidify the foundation for an organization whose success was not guaranteed at the time - but now is firmly rooted in the American pro sports infrastructure.

Transformed: The Winning Side of Losing - buy book here

EPISODE 330: The 4th Annual(-ish) Year-End Holiday Roundtable Spectacular!

We 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 (OurSportsCentral.com, StatsCrew.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 most curious events of the past year, debate who and what might be next to wobble into obscurity, and conjecture about future scenarios for the next generation of defunct and otherwise forgotten pro sports teams and leagues - including:

• USFL 2.0 + XFL 3.0 = TBD 2024

• Oakland A's to Las Vegas (maybe)

• Major League Cricket

• Savannah Bananas

• MiLB ownership consolidation

• Premier Lacrosse League: from tour to teams

• Professional Box Lacrosse Association (RIP)

• Women's pro volleyball

• MLS vs. US Soccer

• NBA, NHL & MLB expansion/relocation rumors

• NWSL expansion & TV deal

• Women's hockey 3.0: PWHL

PLUS, we speculate on the dubious reincarnation of the Arena Football League!

EPISODE 328: Raycom Sports - With Founders Rick & Dee Ray

We 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, and the American television landscape was largely defined by a web of powerful broadcast network-affiliated stations - save for a handful of scrappy alternative "independent" signals in each market.

While pro sports filled plenty of prime/weekend network TV windows, and individual teams provided a steady slate of in-season games to local indie station audiences - regularly scheduled D-I college sports was virtually non-existent outside of limited national broadcasts featuring only big-name schools. 

It was against this backdrop that an entrepreneurially minded local station programmer and a never-say-no ad executive saw an opening for regularly scheduled regional broadcasts of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball that not only delighted rabid fans throughout the Southeast, but also laid the groundwork for a sports syndication force that would eventually rewrite the rules for college sports media - and beyond.

Unstoppable: A Story of Love, Faith, and the Power Couple Who Ignited the College Sports Broadcasting Boom - buy book here

EPISODE 323: Play-By-Play Pioneer Marty Glickman - With Jeffrey Gurock

It'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 broadcasting, on television and especially on the radio, garnered for him legions of fans who would not miss his play-by-play accounts. From the 1940s through the 1990s, he was as iconic a sports figure in town as the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, the Knicks’ Walt Frazier, or the Jets’ Joe Namath. His vocabulary and method of broadcasting left an indelible mark on the industry, and many of today’s most famous sportscasters were Glickman disciples. To this very day, many fans who grew up listening to his coverage of Knicks basketball and Giants football games, among the myriad of events that Glickman covered, recall fondly, and can still recite, his descriptions of actions in arenas and stadiums.

"In addition to the stories of how he became a master of American sports airwaves, Marty Glickman has also been remembered as a Jewish athlete who, a decade before he sat in front of a microphone, was cynically barred from running in a signature track event in the 1936 Olympics by anti-Semitic American Olympic officials. This lively biography details this traumatic event and explores not only how he coped for decades with that painful rejection but also examines how he dealt with other anti-Semitic and cultural obstacles that threatened to stymie his career. Glickman’s story underscores the complexities that faced his generation of American Jews as these children of immigrants emerged from their ethnic cocoons and strove to succeed in America amid challenges to their professional and social advancement."

          

Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend -  buy book here

Glickman -  buy DVD here

Sports on New York Radio: A Play-By-Play History -  buy book here

EPISODE 321: The 1970s - With Michael MacCambridge

After 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 author of what is arguably the most definitive look yet at the decade that undeniably shaped the modern trajectory of sports in America - including (of course) a bevy of challenger leagues, defunct teams, one-of-a-kind events that only the Seventies could produce!

The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America -  buy book here

EPISODE 320: Fox Sports/MSG Networks Broadcaster Kenny Albert

Veteran 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 its telecasts of Major League Baseball, college football, boxing, thoroughbred horse racing, and (between 1995-99) NHL hockey.

Simultaneously, the versatile Albert has been a fixture in New York local sports broadcasting as a regular TV and radio voice for the NHL Rangers and the NBA Knicks for MSG Networks - and is the lead play-by-play hockey announcer for TNT's national NHL broadcast package.

If that weren't enough, Albert has been a regular broadcast presence for NBC's network coverage of the Winter (since 2002) and Summer (since 2016) Olympics, and, since 2010, lead-announces Washington Commanders preseason NFL games on local DC television.

Despite all of those marquee assignments, we (naturally) obsess over some of Albert’s more memorable “forgotten” gigs along the way, including:

• College moonlighting with the United States Basketball League's (USBL) Staten Island Stallions;

• Fight song memories of the American Hockey League's Baltimore Skipjacks;

• His first "jacket" with DC's original regional sports network, Home Team Sports;

• Following the NHL national broadcast puck across a litany of now-defunct TV networks like Outdoor Life Network, Versus & NBC Sports Network; AND

• The national record for live play-by-play sportscasts in 3-D!

A Mic for all Seasons: My Three Decades Announcing the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, and the Olympics - Buy Book Here

EPISODE 315: The Junior Basketball Association - With Brandon Williams

While 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 League Ignite (Scoot Henderson [3rd, Portland Trail Blazers]) - with three others from Ignite chosen in Round Two.

Neither is more than three years old, yet their collective impact on professional player development has been immediate and undeniable.  But they weren't the first to attempt the model.

Brandon Williams ("The JBA League: A League of Our Own") joins the pod this week to both explain and dissect the inner workings of the true pioneer of the college-alternative route - 2018's Junior Basketball Association - the brainchild of Lonzo/LiAngelo/LaMelo-sired and Big Baller Brand founder/impresario LaVar Ball.

The JBA League: A League of Our Own - Buy Book Here

EPISODE 312: The Vancouver Grizzlies - With Kat Jayme

Younger 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), scratching out its initial six seasons of chaotic existence in Cascadia country.

Despite five coaches, a woeful .219 winning percentage, a raft of questionable draft picks, and an economically challenging US/Canadian exchange rate - Jayme fondly remembers a team from her late 1990s youth which Vancouver embraced with unbridled enthusiasm - yet wonders not only why they left GM Place for Beale Street, but also what might have been had they stayed put in Rain City.

The Grizzlie Truth - Watch Trailer Here

Finding Big Country - Watch Trailer Here

Finding Big Country - Stream Full Movie Here

EPISODE 311: Bob Whitsitt

From 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, and oversee the development of soccer-inclusive Seahawks Stadium (now Lumen Field) - "Trader Bob" cut his professional sports management teeth as an intern-turned-exec with the fledgling post-ABA Indiana Pacers, as well as a stabilizing behind-the-scenes front office force that guided a tenuous Kansas City Kings NBA club to a new home in Sacramento in the mid-80s.

In this first installment of an eventual two-parter, we grill Whitsitt on his early days climbing the sports exec ladder, and set the table for his eventual "game-changing" work in Cascadia country.

Game Changer: An Insider’s Story of the Sonics’ Resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ Turnaround, and the Deal that Saved the Seahawks - Buy Book Here

EPISODE 305: "Goodbye Oakland" - With Andy Dolich

If 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, ushering in "Billy Ball", nurturing a promising farm system, and ultimately, reaping the rewards with a 1989 World Series championship over the market's "other team" - the San Francisco Giants.

But before we get there, we take an important introductory detour into Dolich's other exploits, replete with notable stops of keen interest to a certain little podcast - like the NASL's Washington Diplomats, the original National Lacrosse League's Maryland Arrows, and the NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies.

Goodbye, Oakland: Winning, Wanderlust, And A Sports Town’s Fight For Survival - Buy Book Here

EPISODE 294: California Dreaming - With Dan Cisco

We head West this week to pay a visit to the "California Sports Guy" Dan Cisco ("California Sports Astounding: Fun, Unknown, and Surprising Facts from Statehood to Sunday"), and stir up a rich bouillabaisse of little-known factoids about defunct, previously domiciled and otherwise forgotten teams and leagues who once called the Golden State home.

Discover the reason why Oakland was chosen as an inaugural franchise in 1960's American Football League debut - and why its original name was  hastily changed to "Raiders" just weeks before its first game.

Follow the move of the Pacific Coast League's original Hollywood Stars to San Diego in 1936 to become the Padres - and how a talented young player named Ted Williams unceremoniously ended his pitching career there before making it to the bigs.

And learn which legendary NBA basketball helped launch the International Volleyball Association's Irvine-based charter Southern California Bangers franchise in 1975 - and ultimately become the league's commissioner two years later.

PLUS, we make a bevy of unsolicited suggestions for Cisco's inevitable revised edition (and you can too)!

California Sports Astounding: Fun, Unknown, and Surprising Facts from Statehood to Sunday - Buy book here

EPISODE 289: The New Jersey Nets - With Łukasz Muniowski

We point our GPS towards the Garden State this week, for a return to the days of pro hoops in places like the "RAC" (Piscataway's Rutgers Athletic Center), the "Rock" (Newark's Prudential Center), and the strangely iconic Meadowlands - as we look back at 35 seasons of the oft-forgotten New Jersey incarnation of NBA basketball's peripatetic Nets franchise with sports historian Łukasz Muniowski ("Turnpike Team: A History of the New Jersey Nets, 1977-2012").

Though replete with memorable moments both before (as the inaugural American Basketball Association's New Jersey Americans, and later the twice-champion, Julius Erving-led, Nassau Coliseum-based New York Nets) - and after (as the thoroughly rebranded, Barclays Center-domiciled Brooklyn Nets, since 2012) - it is the club's time as the New Jersey Nets that stands out to fans and scribes alike as the most colorful, bewilderingly forlorn and oddly endearing period of its existence.

Join us for memories of players like Bernard "Sky B.B." King, "Super John" Williamson, Buck Williams, Sam Bowie, Derrick Coleman, Stephon Marbury, Jason Kidd, and Vince Carter - and a team that twice came this close to an NBA Finals championship (2001-02; 2002-03), unwittingly solidifying a decades-old inferiority complex that arguably still permeates the franchise today.

Turnpike Team: A history of the New Jersey Nets - buy book here

EPISODE 278: Philly's "Last Sports Mogul" - With Alan Bass

We welcome budding sports historian - and previous Episode 190 guest - Alan Bass ("Ed Snider: The Last Sports Mogul") back to our microphones this week, this time to delve into the life and times of modern-day Philadelphia's patron saint of professional sports.

The dustjacket for The Last Sports Mogul makes the case:

"Most sports team owners make their money elsewhere and purchase a team as an extravagant hobby - but that is not the story of Ed Snider. One of the few owners in history to get control of a franchise by mortgaging nearly everything to his name, the longtime Philadelphia Flyers chairman would go on to form the billion-dollar empire of Comcast-Spectacor and cement his standing as one of the most influential businessmen in the city’s history. 

"Snider was ambitious and entrepreneurial, though extraordinarily demanding of those who worked for him. He was affectionate with his loved ones, yet often showed a surprising lack of emotional intelligence. His staunch capitalist beliefs contrasted his progressive-minded views on the business of hockey and in sharing his wealth with those in need. 

"The Last Sports Mogul embraces all sides of Snider to form a complex portrait of the unparalleled figure once named Philadelphia’s greatest mover and shaker of the millennium." 

+ + +

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Ed Snider: The Last Sports Mogul - buy book here

EPISODE 265: The Charlotte Hornets - With Muggsy Bogues

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 best known for his ten standout seasons of on-court wizardry with the 1988 expansion version of the Hornets - which lit up the league in attendance (highest in the NBA for seven seasons, including an unprecedented string of 364 consecutive sellouts in the 22,500-seat Charlotte Coliseum [aka "The Hive"]); dynamic up-tempo style (featuring a bevy of budding stars like Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson, Glen Rice, and Dell Curry, as well as future Naismith Basketball Hall of Famers Robert Parish and Vlade Divac); and unique, ahead-of-their-time Alexander Julian-designed purple and teal uniforms.

Bogues regales us with some of his most memorable moments from the OG Hornets - as well as other career highlights like: a rookie-of-the-year summer season with the 1987 USBL Rhode Island Gulls; two seasons of head coaching the WNBA Charlotte Sting; and stealing some scenes in the iconic 1996 film "Space Jam".

And, of course, we debate the vagaries of the original Hornets team history in relation to the "revived" Charlotte franchise narrative - despite the club's move to New Orleans (now today's Pelicans) in 2002, and the subsequent expansion Bobcats' retroactive bending of the time-space continuum.

Muggsy: My Life From a Kid in the Projects to the Godfather of Small Ball - buy book here

Space Jam - stream video here

EPISODE 262: The Cincinnati Royals - With Gerry Schultz

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 earlier - beginning as the primordial semi-pro "industrial league" Rochester (NY) Seagrams in the mid-1920s, and evolving into the NBL, BAA and eventually NBA versions of the Rochester Royals - historically confirm the Kings as one of the sport's oldest consecutively run professional outfits.

Gerry Schultz (Cincinnati's Basketball Royalty: A Brief History) joins the podcast this week to delve into the club's pivotal, and, at times, legendary, 15-year stint as the Cincinnati Royals (1957-72) - when the franchise and the league both came of age by virtue of the play of some of the NBA's greatest all-time performers.

Join us for a trek back to the old Cincinnati Gardens (and frequently, other "home" courts in Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus, and even Omaha, NE) - as we look back at the exploits of eventual basketball Hall of Famers like Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas, Maurice Stokes, Clyde Lovellette, Wayne Embry, and Jack Twyman - and ponder how today's Kings might better memorialize the legacy of the club's mostly forgotten time in the Queen City.

          

Cincinnati’s Basketball Royalty: A Look Back at 15 Years of Cincinnati Royals NBA Basketball, 1957-72 - buy paperback version here

Cincinnati’s Basketball Royalty: A Look Back at 15 Years of Cincinnati Royals NBA Basketball, 1957-72 - buy Amazon Kindle version here

Jerry Lucas: Mr. Ohio Basketball - buy book here

EPISODE 256: The Women's Professional Basketball League (WBL) Player Roundtable

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, Milwaukee Does, St. Louis Streak); Adrian Mitchell-Newell (Hustle, Streak; LPBA Southern California Breeze); and episode 28 guest "Machine Gun" Molly Bolin Kazmer (Iowa Cornets, San Francisco Pioneers; Breeze; WABA Columbus Minks), join for an intimate discussion about the rapid rise, untimely fall, and heartening modern-day rediscovery of the WBL - catalyzed by their collective involvement in Legends of the Ball, a new nonprofit dedicated to preserving the foundational history of the league and all that's come because of it.

Mad Seasons: The Story of the First Women’s Professional Basketball League, 1978-81 - buy book here

EPISODE 244: "Dixieball" - With Thomas Aiello

Valdosta State University Professor of History and African American Studies Thomas Aiello ("Dixieball: Race and Professional Basketball in the Deep South") joins our first podcast of the New Year - with an intriguing look into the tortuous history of pro hoops in America's Deep South.

While NBA fans take today's Hawks and Pelicans as historical "givens," their very existences belie the Sunbelt South's complicated economic and social relationship with professional sports during the modern era - especially with respect to basketball.

We dig into the sport's tenuous first professional incursions into both New Orleans (the ABA's charter Buccaneers) and Atlanta (the NBA's relocated St. Louis Hawks) during the culturally and politically charged late-1960s - as well as why it took so long for those franchises to even materialize in the first place.

​Aiello also takes us through the similarly challenged exploits of the NBA's New Orleans Jazz (today domiciled in Utah) of the 1970s - who, despite the dazzling on-court wizardry of adopted LSU native son Pete Maravich, found the going in the Big Easy to be anything but.

Dixieball: Race and Professional Basketball in the Deep South, 1947-1979 - buy book here

EPISODE 242: Pittsburgh's Civic Arena ("The Igloo") - With Dave Finoli

Our "tour" of lost pro sports venues continues with another stop in the Keystone State, this time for a loving look back at the life and times of Pittsburgh's legendary Civic Arena - aka "The Igloo" - with Steel City native Dave Finoli (editor, "Pittsburgh's Civic Arena: Stories from the Igloo").

Originally constructed in 1961 for the city's Civic Light Opera, the Arena was an ahead-of-its-time architectural marvel - distinctively adorned by a massive 3,000-ton retractable steel-roof dome that was world's first of its kind - making not just an attractive venue for music and entertainment, but big-time sports of all kinds.

Over time, the Igloo became synonymous with its longest-running tenant - the NHL's Penguins - who became the building's main occupant as an expansion franchise in 1967, and saw three (of its total five) Stanley Cup title runs.

But, of course, we remember the other teams that also called the Civic Arena home - including: basketball's Rens, Pipers & Condors; World Team Tennis' Triangles; soccer's Spirit & Stingers; arena football's Gladiators; lacrosse's Bulls & CrosseFire; and even roller hockey's oft-forgotten Phantoms.

And don't forget Dr. J's Pisces too!

Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena: Stories From the Igloo - buy book here