EPISODE 147: The Dodgers & Giants Bolt West – With Lincoln Mitchell

Following the 1957 season, two of baseball's most famous teams – the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants – left the city they had called home since the 1880s and headed west to the Golden State of California.

The dramatic departure and bold reinvention of the Dodgers (to Los Angeles) and the Giants (to San Francisco) is the stuff of not only professional baseball lore, but also broader American culture – brash and (especially among generations of New Yorkers) unforgivable acts of betrayal committed by greedy owners Walter O'Malley and Horace Stoneham. 

But, as this week’s guest Lincoln Mitchell (Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues) argues, the broader chronological story of America’s biggest-ever pro sports franchise relocation was, and is, not a one-way narrative.

While a traumatic blow to the societal psyche of the New York metropolitan region, the transplanting of two longtime National League rivals was not only inevitable (as the nation’s economic and demographic profiles were rapidly changing), but ultimately crucial to the survival of the sport – as increasingly modern forces like air transportation, television and the automobile began to transform pre-War notions of leisure time and discretionary income.

A culturally and financially booming post-War California quickly proved to be not only fertile ground for baseball, but also a blueprint for US professional sports writ large in the decades that followed.

Thank you VisitArizona.com for sponsoring this week’s episode!

          

Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants and the Shaping of the Major Leagues - buy here

Will Big League Baseball Survive?: Globalization, the End of Television, Youth Sports, and the Future of Major League Baseball - buy here

San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team - buy here

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EPISODE 144: Year-End Holiday Spectacular – With Paul Reeths & Andy Crossley

We put the wraps on an event-filled 2019 with our first-annual holiday roundtable spectacular featuring the return of fellow defunct sports enthusiasts Paul Reeths (OurSportsCentral.com, StatsCrew.com & Episode 46) and Andy Crossley (Fun While It Lasted & Episode 2) – for a spirited discussion about the past, present and potential future of “forgotten” pro sports teams and leagues.

It’s a no-holds-barred look back on some of the year’s most notable events and discoveries, including:

• The short rise and quick demise of the Alliance of American Football;

• Major League Soccer’s (unsustainable?) expansion to thirty teams;

• The folding of the Arena Football League – again;

• Major League Baseball’s minor league contraction plan; AND

• Raiders NFL football moves on from Oakland for good.

As well as some predictions on what might transpire in 2020, as:

• The second coming of Vince McMahon’s XFL kicks off in February;

• Baseball celebrates the Negro Leagues’ 100th anniversary;

• Las Vegas takes its biggest sports gamble yet with the Raiders;

• The MLS Players’ Association flexes its pre-season bargaining muscles;

• The Chargers and Clippers grapple with second-fiddle status in LA; AND

• Mark Cuban’s Professional Futsal League . . . well, your guess is as good as ours!

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EPISODE 143: Negro League Superstar Oscar Charleston – With Jeremy Beer

Baseball biographer Jeremy Beer (Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player) joins the podcast this week to discuss the life and career of one of baseball’s greatest, though largely unsung, players – and provide us a convenient excuse for a deeper dive into the endlessly fascinating vagaries of the sport’s legendary Negro Leagues.

Buck O’Neil once described Oscar Charleston as “Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Tris Speaker rolled into one,” while baseball historian Bill James ranked him as the fourth-best player of all time – inclusive of the Major Leagues, in which he never played.  During his prime, he became a legend in Cuba as well one of black America’s most popular celebrities.  Yet even among serious sports fans, Charleston is virtually unknown today.

In a lengthy career spanning 1915-54, Charleston played against, managed, befriended, and occasionally brawled with baseball greats like Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Jesse Owens, Roy Campanella, and Branch Rickey – with a competitive “hothead” reputation that sometimes brought him trouble – but more often delivered victories, championships, and profound respect.

Charleston played for 11 clubs across at least five different Negro Leagues, and doubled as manager for a number of them – including the 1935 Negro National League pennant-winning Pittsburgh Crawfords – considered by many baseball scholars to be the best black baseball team of all time.

Though he never got the chance to play in the bigs, Charleston was still a trailblazer – becoming the first African-American to work as a Major League scout, when Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey hired him for to oversee his fledgling United Baseball League “Brown Dodgers” feeder club.

A National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee in 1976, Charleston’s combined record as a player, manager, and scout makes him the most accomplished figure in black baseball history – and, without question, beyond.

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EPISODE 142: Birmingham’s Black Barons – With Bill Plott

Journalist-author/Alabama native Bill Plott (Black Baseball's Last Team Standing: The Birmingham Black Barons) joins the show to help us discover more about the legendary Negro League franchise regarded by most baseball historians as the “jewel of Southern black baseball."

The first Black Barons team began in 1920 as charter members of the Negro Southern League, an eight-member circuit that largely mirrored the all-white minor-league Southern Association – right down to the sharing of ballparks.  Three years later, Birmingham made the leap to Rube Foster’s major league Negro National League, black baseball’s highest professional level at the time – soon to feature eventual All-Star legends like George “Mule” Suttles and Leroy “Satchel” Paige.

The team survived the Great Depression by bouncing between the major Negro National and minor Negro Southern leagues during the 1930s, finally returning to the bigs in 1940 via the newly ascendant Negro American League.

The 1940s was the zenith of the franchise's history, catalyzed by new owners Tom Hayes (a prominent Memphis funeral home operator) and sports entrepreneur Abe Saperstein – whose Harlem Globetrotters provided off-season employment to some of the players.  (Reese Tatum, the team’s popular centerfielder, joined the ‘Trotters as “Goose” Tatum, the “Clown Prince of Basketball” – eventually earning greater fame for his achievements on the hardwood than those on the diamond.)

The Black Barons were among the Negro Leagues’ elite teams, winning NAL pennants (though losing Negro World Series’) in 1943, 1944 and 1948 – and featured a who’s who of standout on-field talent such as Lorenzo "Piper" Davis, Lyman Bostock, Bill Powell, Bill Barnes, Joe Bankhead, Ed Steele, Bill Greason, Artie Wilson, Jehosie Heard, and a teenage sensation named Willie Mays – many of whom left for the soon-to-be integrated major leagues.

Birmingham soldiered on post-integration into the 1950s, striving to maintain professional relevance and outlasting most of the remaining Negro League teams in the process; by 1960, the Black Barons had been reduced to a barnstorming outfit, fading into obscurity against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement – giving up the ghost for good in 1963.

Still, the team’s legend – and original ballpark (Birmingham’s Rickwood Field) – live on.

PLUS: Charley Pride gets traded for a team bus!

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Black Baseball’s Last Team Standing: The Birmingham Black Barons - buy here

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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

EPISODE 133: Baseball’s Original Miami Marlins – With Sam Zygner

We “celebrate” the 2019 Miami Marlins’ National League-worst 57-105 season with a look back to colorful 1950s-era Triple-A minor league franchise that laid the groundwork for South Florida’s eventual ascension to the majors in 1993.

Author and SABR historian Sam Zygner (The Forgotten Marlins: A Tribute to the 1956-1960 Original Miami Marlins and Baseball Under the Palms: The History of Miami Minor League Baseball) joins the podcast to discuss the flamboyant, but little-remembered International League club that introduced Miami to its first taste of high-level regular season baseball. 

During their five years of existence, the original Marlins featured outsized personalities such as eccentric manager (and former St. Louis Cardinals’ “Gashouse Gang” member) Pepper Martin, hard-living lefty pitcher Mickey McDermott, maverick baseball promoter Bill Veeck, and even the mythically ageless Negro League hurler (and eventual Hall of Famer) Satchel Paige.   

In between, the Marlins featured a who’s who of battle-hardened veterans (like 18-year minor league journeyman Woody Smith; ex-New York Giants World Series-winning pitcher Rubén “El Divino Loco” Gómez; two-time MLB All-Star slugger Sid Gordon; former Brooklyn Dodger outfielder Cal Abrams; and major league All-Star fireballer Virgil Trucks) – as well as a parade of future big-league standouts such as infielder Jerry Adair; outfielders Whitey Herzog and Dave Nicholson; and pitchers Rudy Árias, Don Cardwell, Turk Farrell, Jack Fisher and Dallas Green.  

Enjoy a FREE MONTH of The Great Courses Plus streaming video service – including the just-released 24-chapter lecture series “Play Ball! The Rise of Baseball as America’s Pastime” – created in conjunction with the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum!

     

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EPISODE 131: Calling Balls & Strikes in Baseball’s Negro Leagues – With Byron Motley

Multi-talented singer-songwriter, photographer, and soon-to-be sports history documentarian Byron Motley joins the show this week to discuss his late father’s colorful career as an umpire in baseball’s legendary Negro Leagues – the subject of his 2007 collaborative oral history, Ruling Over Monarchs, Giants, and Stars.

A child of Depression-era rural Alabama, a teenaged Bob Motley migrated north in the early 1940s to his uncle’s home in Dayton, OH in search of work – and a tryout as a Negro League pitcher.  World War II intervened, and Motley was soon off to the front lines as one of the first African-Americans in the then-segregated (Montfort Point) Marines – receiving both a Purple Heart (shot in the foot during combat) and a Congressional Gold Medal of Honor for his service.

While recovering from his wounds, Motley caught wind of a baseball game outside his military hospital and volunteered to umpire – crutches and all.  Despite earning him an immediate trip back to the battlefield, it set the stage for his post-discharge career ambitions.

Relocated to Kansas City in 1946, Motley supplemented his day job at a local GM plant with persistent attempts to umpire games with KC’s fabled Monarchs, ultimately yielding a decade-long moonlighting career calling contests across the Negro Leagues.  Known for a flamboyant acrobatic style, Motley became nationally known as the most entertaining game-caller in the Negro majors – as much an attraction as the pioneering players and teams themselves.

Though a Major League call-up never came, Motley still broke barriers in Triple-A and NCAA ball, and was instrumental in helping usher in the eventual arrival of the first African-American umpire (his Pacific Coast League colleague Emmett Ashford) in 1966.  

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EPISODE #123: Ballpark Architecture and the American City – With Paul Goldberger

We amp up the intellectual quotient this week with Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger (Ballpark: Baseball in the American City), as we delve into the inextricable historical bond between the rise of America’s favorite pastime and the evolution of the American city.

From the first “saloons in the open air” of the late-1800s, such as Brooklyn, NY’s Union Grounds; to the  ornate turn-of-the century wooden structures of Chicago’s Lakefront Park, Boston’s South End Grounds, and St. Louis’ Sportsman Park; to the early-1900s’ steel-and-stone “Golden Era” ballparks headlined by Philadelphia’s Shibe Park, Cincinnati’s Crossley Field, Detroit’s Tiger Stadium, Boston’s Fenway Park, Chicago’s Wrigley Field, and Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field; to the suburban, multi-purpose (and exceedingly TV-friendly) “concrete donuts” of the 1960s; to the retro “urban renaissance” ushered in by Baltimore’s Camden Yards in 1992 – Goldberger discusses how baseball's architectural maturation is undeniably concurrent with and reflective of America’s cultural, geographic and economic history.

PLUS: The future of baseball’s ballparks, as well as how other sports’ arenas and stadiums are likely to evolve in similar and dissimilar ways.

Enjoy a FREE MONTH of The Great Courses Plus streaming video service – including the just-released 24-chapter lecture series “Play Ball! The Rise of Baseball as America’s Pastime” – created in conjunction with the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum!

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EPISODE #121: More Milwaukee Braves Baseball – With Patrick Steele

It’s been nearly two years since our first look at baseball’s still-revered Milwaukee Braves, and this week – courtesy of author/historian Patrick Steele (Home of the Braves: The Battle for Baseball in Milwaukee) – we finally get the chance to go deeper into the team that, in its brief 13-season run: never posted a losing season, won two National League pennants, and, in 1957, brought “Cream City” its first and only World Series championship. 

Featuring a stellar lineup of mostly Braves farm club-developed players (including eventual Hall of Famers Henry [Hank] Aaron, Warren Spahn, Eddie Matthews, Red Schoendienst, and Phil Niekro) the team immediately won the hearts of Wisconsin sports fans upon its hasty arrival from Boston in the midst of the 1953 pre-season – shattering then-modern-day attendance records, and ushering the city of Milwaukee into the world of America’s proverbial “big leagues.”

The Braves' surprising success in Milwaukee during the mid-1950’s prompted Major League Baseball to redefine itself as a big business, clearing the path for: franchises to relocate beyond the sport’s Northeast and Midwest strongholds; its two leagues to expand; and teams to leverage cities in high-stakes battles for local government-subsidized facilities.  

All of which, ironically, helped sowed the seeds for the club’s eventual relocation to Atlanta in 1966 – an acrimonious departure that generations of Milwaukee baseball fans still haven’t forgotten.  

PLUS: “There’s No Joy Left” – polka music king Frankie Yankovic’s song of “good riddance”!

Enjoy a FREE MONTH of The Great Courses Plus streaming video service – including the just-released 24-chapter lecture series “Play Ball! The Rise of Baseball as America’s Pastime” – created in conjunction with the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum!

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EPISODE #117: The Chicago Cubs Origin Story – With Jack Bales

University of Mary Washington research librarian and baseball historian Jack Bales (Before They Were the Cubs: The Early Years of Chicago's First Professional Baseball Team) joins the podcast to help us dig into the surprisingly rich history of Major League Baseball’s long-time North Side Chicago franchise well prior to 1903, when they formally adopted their now-signature nickname. 

While even some of the most ardent of Chicago Cubs fans unwittingly believe that year to be the team’s first season (it was actually their 28th in the National League, as well as 34th as a professional baseball club); and the “friendly confines” of Wrigley Field to be their original and only home (in fact, not until 1916 when they adopted the former Federal League Chicago Whales’ Weeghman Park, their sixth place of residence dating back to 1870) – the history of the “Cubs” long predates their apocryphal launch.

Bales touches on some of the cornerstones of primordial Cubs history including:

• Their actual start in 1870 as the Chicago White Stockings – one of the nation’s first professional baseball clubs – playing in the largely amateur National Association of Base Ball Players (and winning the championship);

• Segueing into a new, first-ever all-pro National Association (of Professional Base Ball Players) as a charter member the following year;

• Launching as a charter member of the 1876 National League – winning its first title behind ace pitcher (and future sporting goods baron) Albert Spalding, and capturing six of the league’s first ten pennants behind baseball’s first superstar Adrian “Cap” Anson;

• Becoming colloquially known as “Anson’s Colts” – until fully adopting the new nickname circa 1890;

• Anson’s abrupt firing in 1897, leaving sportswriters to rebrand the suddenly star-less Colts as the “Orphans”; AND

• The informal early 1900s origins of the now-iconic “Cubs” moniker, and how it officially stuck by the 1903 season.

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EPISODE #116: A Thinking Man’s Guide to Defunct Leagues – With Stephen Provost

This week, we offer a refresher course in the history of forgotten pro sports leagues with veteran newspaper editor, current long-form author and fellow defunct sports enthusiast Stephen Provost – whose recent book A Whole Different League is an essential primer for anyone seeking an entrée into the genre.

Provost serves up a smorgasbord of highlights gleaned from his personal memories of and research into the various nooks and crannies of what “used-to-be” in professional team sports, including:

• The curiosity of 9,000 Los Angeles Aztecs NASL soccer fans in a cavernous 100,000-seat Rose Bowl;

• The oft-forgotten Continental Football League of the late 1960s, operating in the shadows of the mighty NFL and colorful AFL;

• The enigmatic one-season wonder of the 1961-62 National Bowling League;

• Jackie Robinson’s almost pro football career;

• Federal League all-star Benny Kauff and the major league baseball career-ending auto theft he didn’t commit; AND

• The legend of the World Football League’s Jim “King” Corcoran – the “poor man’s Joe Namath.”

PLUS: we revisit the story of women’s pro basketball pioneer (and “Good Seats” episode #28 guest) “Machine Gun” Molly Bolin (Kazmer), the subject of Provost’s new biography, The Legend of Molly Bolin: Women's Pro Basketball Trailblazer.

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EPISODE #114: New York's Polo Grounds - With Stew Thornley

We cap off the long Memorial Day holiday weekend with a look back at one of the New York metropolitan area’s most memorable sports stadiums of yore – the Polo Grounds – with author and Minnesota Twins official scorer Stew Thornley (The Polo Grounds: Essays and Memories of New York City's Historic Ballpark, 1880-1963).

The “Polo Grounds” was actually the name of multiple structures across upper Manhattan during its history.  As its name suggests, the original venue (1876-1889) was built for, well, polo.  Located between Fifth and Sixth (Lenox) Avenues just north of Central Park, it was converted to a baseball stadium in 1880, soon becoming home to the city’s first major league pro teams – the Metropolitans of the American Association and the Gothams (later, Giants) of the National League.

Pushed out by a re-gridding of the borough in 1889, the Giants relocated northward to what became the second incarnation of the park in the Coogan’s Hollow section of Washington Heights in 1890.  Coincidentally, it was also the year that most of the team’s best players bolted to the upstart Players’ League – also called the Giants, playing in their own new (and larger) stadium (called Brotherhood Park) right next door. 

When the PL folded at the end of the season, the recombined NL Giants moved over to Brotherhood Park, rechristening it the “Polo Grounds.”  This third version – later renovated after a fire in 1911 (technically becoming the stadium’s fourth version) – became the structure most remembered by long-time baseball fans, especially for its distinctive “bathtub” shape, very short distances to the left and right field walls, and unusually deep center field.

While synonymous with the history of baseball’s Giants (including Bobby Thompson’s 1951 historic playoff “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” and Willie Mays’ dramatic over-the-shoulder catch during the team’s 1954 World Series run), the Polo Grounds was also home to the New York Yankees from 1913-1922 – and the first two seasons of the NL expansion New York Mets from 1962-63, while waiting for the new Shea Stadium in Queens to be completed.

The Polo Grounds was also the center of New York’s burgeoning professional football scene – notably the National Football League’s New York Giants from 1925-55 – but also the NFL’s oft-forgotten Brickley Giants (1922) and Bulldogs (1949).  

In later years, it also became the temporary home of the fledgling American Football League’s New York Titans from 1960-62, and the renamed “Jets” in 1963 – including the last-ever sporting event to be played there – a late-season (and typical) loss to the Buffalo Bills on December 14, 1963, in front of only 6,526 diehards.

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EPISODE #110: Cleveland’s Historic League Park – With Ken Krsolovic

Author Ken Krsolovic (League Park: Historic Home of Cleveland Baseball, 1891-1946) joins the podcast to go deep into the history and legacy of Cleveland’s first major league sports stadium.

Originally built for the National League’s Cleveland Spiders, team owner Frank Robison strategically built the wood-constructed League Park at the corner of Lexington Avenue and Dunham (now East 66th) Street in the city’s Hough neighborhood, where the streetcar line he owned conveniently stopped.  It debuted on 5/1/1891 with a Spiders 12-3 victory over the Cincinnati Reds, with the legendary Cy Young throwing the first pitch.  Despite being competitive during the decade (including a Temple Cup in 1895), the Spiders drew poorly, leading Robison to ship his best players to his new fledgling St. Louis Browns franchise in 1899 – and the Spiders to on-field (20-134) and off-field (6,088 fans for the season) collapse.

After a year of minor league play, League Park became the home of the Cleveland Bluebirds (aka Blues) of the new “major” American League in 1901 – the team that would ultimately evolve (1902: Broncos; 1903-14: Naps) into today’s Cleveland Indians.  The park was rebuilt in 1910 as a then-state-of-the-art concrete-and-steel stadium, debuting on 4/21/1910 (a 5-0 Naps loss to the Detroit Tigers before 18,832) – a game also started by Cy Young.

Though the Indians were League Park’s primary team, they were not the only tenants over the stadium’s later decades.  In 1914-15, the Naps/Indians shared the stadium with the minor league Cleveland Bearcats/Spiders (actually, the temporarily relocated minor league Toledo Mud Hens) to discourage the upstart Federal League from placing a franchise in Cleveland.  The Negro American League’s Cleveland Buckeyes held court at the park during much of the 1940s – including a Negro World Series title in 1945. 

And the fledgling sport of professional football also called League Park home during the NFL’s formative 1920s in the forms of the Cleveland Tigers (1920-22), Indians (1923), Bulldogs (1924-27) – and most famously with the Cleveland Rams of the late 1930s/early 1940s.

Like the Rams, the baseball Indians began moonlighting games and eventually full seasons with the larger, more modern (and lighted) Municipal Stadium during the WWII and post-war eras – ultimately sealing the venerable League Park’s fate by 1946. 

After years of neglect and urbanization, a modern restoration of League Park and its original ticket house was completed in 2014, where fans can now play on the original field where Cleveland’s pro players once roamed.

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EPISODE #108: The “Almost Yankees” of 1981 – With David Herman

We’re stuck in the minors again this week – this time with Microsoft News senior managing editor and former newspaper sportswriter David Herman (Almost Yankees: The Summer of ’81 and the Greatest Baseball Team You’ve Never Heard Of) – as we discuss the memorable story and unique circumstances of the 1981 championship season of the International League’s Columbus Clippers, the then-flagship farm club of the New York Yankees.

Longtime baseball fans will remember 1981, of course, as the year Major League Baseball experienced its first-ever mid-season interruption of play, as players took to the picket lines against ownership beginning on June 12th – just over two months into the schedule.

Once big-league play stopped, fans and sports reporters alike scrambled to fill the void – with organized baseball’s robust minor league system as the immediate beneficiary.  And suddenly, the heavily Yankee-influenced Triple-A Clippers found themselves basking in the unexpected spotlight of New York and national media attention, as the newfound best team in baseball.

The Clippers’ mix of raw recruits, MLB prospects, and minor league journeymen responded to opportunity by playing some of the greatest baseball of their lives – on what would be, arguably, the greatest team most of them would ever belong to.

Yet, almost as suddenly as the strike began, it ended (roughly two months later on August 9th) – leaving most of the Clippers to return to their ordinary aspirational lives and to be just as quickly forgotten.

Herman walks host Tim Hanlon through the previously untold story of a baseball team and its players (including the likes of once and future major leaguers like Steve Balboni, Dave Righetti, Buck Showalter, and Pat Tabler) performing in the shadow of one of the MLB’s most famous teams and infamous owners, George Steinbrenner – becoming a launching pad for some, a last chance for others, and the end of the major league dream for most.

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EPISODE #107: The Havana Sugar Kings & Cuban League Baseball – With César Brioso

Longtime USA Today sports writer/producer César Brioso (Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball in Cuba) joins the show to explore the rich parallel histories of America’s and Cuba’s shared national pastime – and the colorful period of the late 1950s/early 1960s when it appeared baseball in the island nation was mainstreaming its way into eventual US major league status.

During much of the ‘50s, baseball in pre‑Castro Cuba was enjoying a golden age. The Cuban League – founded in 1878, just two years after the formation of the National League – was thriving under the auspices of American organized baseball. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, players regularly came from the US major, minor and Negro leagues to play in what was the country’s wholly integrated winter baseball league.  In addition, native-born Cuban teams routinely dominated annual Caribbean Series regional tournaments.

In 1946, Havana’s El Gran Estadio del Cerro became home to its own “regular season” US-domiciled (Class C Florida League) minor league franchise called the Sugar Kings.  By 1954, the club had grown to become a competitive member of the AAA International League as an official affiliate of the National League’s Cincinnati Reds (featuring future major league standouts such as Leo Cárdenas, Mike Cuellar, Vic Davalillo, Julián Javier, and Cookie Rojas) – eventually culminating in league and Junior World Series (over the AAA American Association’s Minneapolis Millers) titles in 1959. 

The impact of the Sugar Kings’ championships that year went far beyond mere baseball titles; they became de facto moments of national civic pride, as well as indisputable evidence that Havana and Cuba were more than ready for and deserving of a place in America’s major leagues.

Of course, the club’s achievements fatefully coincided with – and were ultimately undermined by – the events that year of the Fidel Castro-led Communist revolution over Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. 

By the end of 1960, the baseball landscape in the country looked much different: professional play was converted to an amateur state-sponsored model; American players stopped participating in the winter Cuban League; and the International League extracted the Sugar Kings from Havana and moved them to US soil, where they became the soon-to-be forgotten (after the 1961 season) Jersey City (NJ) Jerseys. 

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EPISODE #104: Big League Baseball in WWII Wartime Washington – With David Hubler & Josh Drazen

On a cold and ominous Sunday, December 7, 1941, Major League Baseball’s owners were gathered in Chicago for their annual winter meetings, just two months after one of the sport’s greatest seasons. For the owners, the dramatic news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor earlier that morning was not only an assault on the United States, but also a direct threat to the future of the national pastime itself.

League owners were immediately worried about the players they were likely to lose to military service, but also feared a complete shutdown of the looming 1942 season – and perhaps beyond.  But with the carefully cultivated support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, organized baseball continued uninterrupted – despite numerous calls to shut it down.

Authors David Hubler and Josh Drazen (The Nats and the Grays: How Baseball in the Nation’s Capital Survived WWII and Changed the Game Forever) join host Tim Hanlon to discuss the impact of World World II on the two major professional teams in Washington, DC – the American League’s Senators (aka Nationals), and the Negro National League’s Homestead Grays – as well as the impact of the war on big league baseball as a whole, including:

• How a strong friendship between Senators owner Clark Griffith and Roosevelt kept the game alive during the war years, often in the face of strong opposition for doing so;

• The continual uncertainties clubs faced as things like the military draft, national resources rationing and other wartime regulations affected both the sport and American day-to-day life; AND

• The Negro Leagues’ constant struggle for recognition, solvency, and integration.

PLUS: The origin of the twi-night doubleheader!

AND: The ceremonial first-pitch ambidexterity of President Harry Truman!

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EPISODE #101: New York Yankees Broadcaster John Sterling

Legendary New York Yankees baseball play-by-play man John Sterling joins host Tim Hanlon for a cavalcade of career memories from his 50+ year journey in sports broadcasting – including a treasure trove of stops along the way with previously incarnated or otherwise defunct teams (and leagues).

Now celebrating his 30th consecutive season with the Bronx Bombers, Sterling’s unique vocal stylings have become synonymous with some of the Yankees’ most signature moments during that time – including the team’s dominant run of American League and World Series championships across the late 1990s and much of the 2000s. 

The path to becoming one of baseball’s marquee team broadcasters was far from direct, however, and we (naturally) obsess over some of Sterling’s more memorable “forgotten” gigs along the way, including:

• Falling into radio play-by-play with the NBA Baltimore Bullets as a late fill-in for Jim Karvellas;

• Becoming the almost-voice of the ABA Washington Caps (until a hasty move to Virginia to become the Squires);

• Hustling to secure radio rights to the upstart WHA New York Raiders for Gotham’s talk powerhouse WMCA - and the irony of later calling games for the NHL Islanders;

• The highs of the ABA New York, and lows of the NBA New Jersey Nets;

• “Phoning it in” for the World Football League’s short-lived New York Stars; AND

• The ahead-of-its-time Enterprise Sports Radio Network.

Check out all the great “forgotten sports” garb and gear from our awesome sponsors: SportsHistoryCollectibles.com, Streaker Sports, OldSchoolShirts.com, and 503 Sports!

Classic John Sterling audio clips courtesy of Eric Paddon; follow him on YouTube here

EPISODE #99: Sports Broadcaster Bob Carpenter

You know him today as the long-time television play-by-play voice of Major League Baseball’s Washington Nationals. 

But before becoming one of the baseball’s most admired and durable broadcasters, Bob Carpenter cut his professional teeth in the burgeoning (but ultimately fleeting) American pro soccer scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s as the lead “man-behind-the-mic” for such iconic teams as the NASL's Tulsa Roughnecks and the MISL's St. Louis Steamers – as well as some less-than-memorable ones, like 1983’s ill-fated US Soccer/NASL hybrid, Team America.

His springboard into TV sports broadcasting’s “big leagues” – including 15 years of nationally televised baseball with ESPN, plus lead announcing duties for the Texas Rangers, Minnesota Twins, New York Mets, and his hometown St. Louis Cardinals – is rich in anecdotes, and we (naturally!) drag the versatile Carpenter back to some of the more “forgotten” stops made along the way, including:

• A serendipitous segue from minor league baseball to “big time” pro soccer in Tulsa;

• The Roughnecks’ gritty road to the 1983 NASL title as the league’s smallest-market team;

• Leveraging national exposure from the NASL into soccer-centric gigs with the fledgling USA & ESPN cable networks;

• The “invisible hand” of Anheuser-Busch’s soccer-mad executive Denny Long & his Bud Sports production division;

• Returning home to call Steamers MISL indoor games at the often-packed St. Louis Arena (aka Checkerdome); AND

• Masquerading as the “local” voice of the Washington, DC-based Team America – the de facto US National Team that played as an NASL franchise. 

Thanks to OldSchoolShirts.com, 503 Sports, Streaker Sports & SportsHistoryCollectibles.com for their support of this week’s episode!

EPISODE #96: The National Pastime in the Nation's Capital – With Fred Frommer

We throw another chunk of firewood into our baseball hot stove this week, as we warm up with the surprisingly long and rich history of the National Pastime in the Nation’s Capital with sports PR veteran Fred Frommer (You Gotta Have Heart: A History of Washington Baseball from 1859 to the 2012 National League East Champions).

While historically smaller in population than its more industrial neighbors to its north and west, Washington, DC was regularly represented in the highest levels of baseball dating back to the earliest professional circuits – including the 1871-75 National Association’s Olympics, Blue Legs, and two named the “Nationals”; two new and separate Nationals clubs in the competing Union and American Associations of 1884; and two teams each in the American Association (another Nationals in 1884; Statesmen in 1891), and early National League (yet another Nationals from 1886-89; and “Senators” from 1892-99).

But it was the creation of the American League in 1901 that solidified the city’s place in baseball’s top echelon, as the (second) Washington Senators launched as one of the junior circuit’s “Classic Eight” charter franchises – establishing an uninterrupted presence for Major League Baseball in the District that endured for more than seven decades.  (Technically, the original AL Senators stayed until 1960, when the franchise moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN to become the Minnesota Twins – only to be immediately replaced by a new expansion Senators the next season, that lasted 11 more seasons until they moved to Arlington, TX to become the Texas Rangers in 1971.)

Frommer joins host Tim Hanlon to look back on DC’s deep and oddly curious relationship with baseball, including:  

• The Senators’ often-lamentable on-field performance that entrenched Washington as “First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League;"

• The advent of the ceremonial Presidential season-opening “first pitch” tradition;

• New York’s rival “Damn Yankees;”

• The Negro National League’s Homestead Grays’ second home; AND

• Why it took 33 years for Major League Baseball to finally return to the Nation’s Capital.

Thanks to our great sponsors: 503 Sports, SportsHistoryCollectibles.com, Streaker Sports, and OldSchoolShirts.com!

You Gotta Have Heart: A History of Washington Baseball from 1859 to the 2012 National League East Champions - buy here

EPISODE #94: Major League Baseball’s Seattle Pilots – With Bill Mullins

We kick off the New Year with our first-ever discussion about one of Major League Baseball’s most enduring enigmas – the ephemeral, one-season Seattle Pilots.

However, as we discover in our conversation with this week’s guest Bill Mullins (Becoming Big League: Seattle, The Pilots, and Stadium Politics), the story of the team’s 1969 American League misadventures has a much longer historical arc – one rooted in the decades-long success of the city’s minor league Rainiers prior – and extending years afterward, when a new expansion Mariners franchise took to the Kingdome turf in 1977.

In between, the story of the Pilots wends its way through the concentric worlds of pro sports economics (MLB’s blind zeal for expansion in the West Coast’s third-most populous market); municipal politics (Seattle’s quest for “major league” status, from the 1962 World’s Fair to a tortuous pursuit of a modern domed stadium); managerial challenges (an underfunded ownership group with limited resources and overly-optimistic revenue expectations); and logistical realities (a quaint-but-aging minor league Sicks’ Stadium, ill-prepared for the more pronounced demands of big league play and fan comfort).

And, oh yes, a surprisingly competitive on-field performance filled with memorable highs (winning both their first-ever game [at the California Angels, 4/8/69], and their home debut [vs. the Chicago White Sox, 4/11/69]); forgettable lows (three home runs by Reggie Jackson in a 5-0 loss to the Oakland A’s, 7/2/69); and a deceivingly last-place finish in a tightly-bunched AL West cellar, only a handful of games behind the Angels, Royals and White Sox.

Despite the Pilots’ woes, the legacy of this quixotic franchise remains remarkably endearing to the Seattle fans who got to experience the city’s first taste of big-time major league sports fifty years hence.

Be sure to visit our new sponsor Streaker Sports – where, fittingly, you can order a beautiful baby blue classic Seattle Pilots logo T-shirt to commemorate this episode (and the team’s 50th anniversary)!

Becoming Big League: Seattle, The Pilots and Stadium Politics - buy here