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 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 303: The Huntsville Stars - With Dale Tafoya

It's a reassignment back to the minors again this week, as baseball writer Dale Tafoya ("One Season in Rocket City") joins the 'cast for a look back at the unforgettable inaugural 1985 season of the Southern League's Huntsville Stars - the Oakland As' talent-laden, then-Double-A affiliate that took both the city and the sport by storm.

Named after Huntsville’s celebrated space industry, the Stars became one of the biggest attractions in all of Minor League Baseball that season - boasting a dugout full of top Oakland prospects who would ultimately fuel the Athletics' big-league success later in the decade, including a 1989 World Series title sweep of the San Francisco Giants. 

Led by hot prospects/future MLB notables like Tim Belcher, Stan Javier, Luis Polonia, Terry Steinbach, and José Canseco, the Stars also featured a solid cast of gutsy minor-league role players who, despite never getting called up to "The Show," proved crucial to the team's championship that magical first season.

Though merely an opening chapter in Huntsville's baseball history now (the Stars moved to Biloxi, MS in 2015 to become the Shuckers; the Southern League's Rocket City Trash Pandas brought minor league ball back to the nearby suburb of Madison in 2020), the team and their story is one worth remembering.

One Season in Rocket City: How the Huntsville Stars Brought Minor League Baseball Fever to Alabama - Buy book here

EPISODE 136: Kansas City vs. Oakland – With Matt Ehrlich

We amp up the intellectual quotient this week with University of Illinois journalism professor emeritus Matt Ehrlich (Kansas City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports Rivalry That Defined an Era), who joins for a heady discussion around the most unlikely, yet intertwined of pro sports rivalries – and the turbulent 1960s from which it originated.

Although Oakland, CA and Kansas City, MO are geographically distant and significantly different in numerous ways, their histories actually have more in common than meets the eye, Ehrlich argues, as both cities during the Sixties:

• Shared big-city inferiority complexes (blue-collar Oakland constantly overshadowed by the richer, more culturally diverse San Francisco across the Bay; bucolic Kansas City perceived as the quintessentially Midwestern “cow town”);

• Experienced contentious race and labor relations;

• Countered “white flight” suburbanization with ambitious urban renewal efforts; and, notably:

• Featured civic-championing newspaper sports editors and government officials eager to attract top-level pro franchises in a quest for “major league” status.

Ehrlich suggests that each city’s driving ambitions to secure professional sports teams – and the national attention and civic pride that came with them – helped mutually ignite fierce rivalries (AFL/NFL football’s Chiefs and Raiders; baseball’s first-Kansas City-then-Oakland As) that thrilled local fans.  But even with Super Bowl victories and World Series triumphs, major league sports proved little defense against the broader urban challenges roiling the country during the tumultuous 60s & 70s.

Ehrlich’s thesis features a cast of legendary sports characters like Len Dawson, Al Davis, Lamar Hunt, George Brett, Charlie Finley, and Reggie Jackson – and is a chronicle of two emergent major league cities forced to balance soaring civic aspirations with the harsh urban realities of racial turmoil, labor conflict, and economic crises.

Kansas City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports Rivalry That Defined an Era - buy here