EPISODE 165: Pioneers of AAGPBL Baseball – With Kat Williams

It’s our deepest dive yet into the legendarily one-of-a-kind All-American Girls Professional Baseball League with Marshall University Professor of Women’s Sport History Kat Williams (The All-American Girls After the AAGPBL: How Playing Pro Ball Shaped Their Lives).

Widely acknowledged as the forerunner of women's professional league sports in the United States, the pioneering AAGPBL featured more than 600 female players over the course of its twelve seasons between 1943-54 – spanning 15 mid-sized markets across the American Midwest, and drawing sizable crowds – including nearly a million fans at its peak in 1948.

In its first season, the league played a game that resembled more softball than baseball: the ball was regulation softball size (12 inches) and the pitcher's mound was only 40 feet from home plate – a third closer than that of men’s baseball.  Pitchers threw underhand windmill (as in softball) and the distance between bases was 65 feet – a full 25 feet shorter than in the men’s game. 

But, over the AAGPBL’s history, the rules gradually evolved to approach those of full-fledged men’s baseball; by the league’s final season in 1954: the ball was regulation baseball size, the mound distance was 60 feet (a mere six inches closer than the men’s game), and the basepaths were 85 feet long (just five feet shy of those of the men). 

To prove its competitive seriousness, the league peppered its on-field managerial ranks with male skippers of substantial major league baseball pedigrees – including eventual National Baseball Hall of Famers Max Carey and Jimmy Foxx.

The quality of play was consistently high, convincing even the most purist of traditional baseball fans that “the Girls could play.”  By 1947, the AAGBPL was even emulating the majors in identifying and recruiting talent from the fertile playing fields of baseball-mad Cuba – a story Williams helps illustrate with her new profile (Isabel “Lefty” Alvarez: The Improbable Life of a Cuban American Baseball Star) of one of the handful of émigrés who ultimately came to the US to become “All-American.”

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Red Lightning Books imprint of Indiana University Press – who offer our listeners a FREE CHAPTER of pioneering sportswriter Diana K. Shah’s new memoir A Farewell to Arms, Legs and Jockstraps!

     

The All-American Girls After the AAGPBL: How Playing Pro Ball Shaped Their Lives - buy book here

Isabel “Lefty” Alvarez: The Improbable Life of a Cuban American Baseball Star - buy book here

EPISODE 164: Negro League Baseball’s Atlantic City Bacharach Giants – With Jim Overmyer

The curious story of baseball’s Atlantic City (NJ) Bacharach Giants originates from a unique intersection of racism, tourism, and politics.

In 1915, an independent semi-pro “Atlantic City Colored League” was formed to provide an entertainment outlet for the city’s 11,000+ black residents – with the hope being they would attend the games and stay off the boardwalk, a then-booming summer haven for white tourists.  

Two black businessmen active in the local Republican political machine asked an existing area team to join the league and promotionally rename itself after politician Harry Bacharach, the once-and-future mayor of Atlantic City.  When the team refused, the duo travelled south and convinced eight members of the Duval Giants, a black amateur team in Jacksonville, Florida, to venture north and create the foundation for a new independent club instead.

The “Bacharach Giants” largely dominated whatever opponents came their way during the late 1910s, despite persistent financial wobbliness.  In 1920, the team began a three-year stint as an associate member of Rube Foster’s new Negro National League (NNL) – allowing them to retain official independence, but also to coordinate non-league games with the teams from Foster’s largely Midwest-based circuit. 

In 1923, Atlantic City broke from the NNL to help start the rival Eastern Colored League (ECL), where they achieved their greatest success – including winning two league pennants in 1926 and 1927 – though losing both times in subsequent Negro League World Series play to the NNL’s Chicago American Giants.

Beset by rancorous squabbles over player contracts, the ECL folded in 1928.  Five of its clubs – including the Bacharach Giants – formed the bulk of a new American Negro League for 1929, only to see both the league and its team from Atlantic City fold by the end of the season. 

Author/historian Jim Overmyer (Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City) joins to discuss the history of the club, and some of the legends that emanated from it, including Negro League standouts Dick Lundy, Oliver Marcell, Dick Redding, “Nip” Winters, Chanel White, “Rats” Henderson, Claude Grier, and Luther Farrell – and National Baseball Hall of Famer John Henry "Pop" Lloyd.

Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City - buy book here

EPISODE 163: Once Again, The XFL is Done (Or Is It?) – With ESPN’s Kevin Seifert

ESPN.com NFL Nation reporter Kevin Seifert stops by to help us perform a preliminary autopsy on the surprisingly sudden death of the XFL – WWE founder Vince McMahon’s second attempt at creating a viable alternative professional football league to that of the mighty NFL.

A confident, but visibly mellower McMahon announced the league’s unlikely rebirth at a video press conference on January 28, 2018 (two months before a similar launch by the rival Alliance of American Football) – with resolute commitments to professionalism, innovation and fan-friendliness noticeably absent in the XFL’s farcical first incarnation 17 years earlier.

Even after the abrupt collapse of the AAF midway through its first season last April, hopes were still high for “XFL 2.0” as its season kicked off in Washington, DC on February 8, 2020 in front of a near-sellout crowd of hometown Defenders fans at the previously “soccer-specific” Audi Field.

Like the Alliance, the quality of football was high, initial TV ratings were strong, and enthusiastic crowds approached 30,000 in markets like St. Louis and Seattle.  But it would not last. 

On March 8, after five weeks of play, the XFL announced its inaugural season would be suspended because of growing COVID-19 pandemic concerns and social distancing mandates.  On April 10, the league fully halted day-to-day operations and laid off all its employees – except for Commissioner Oliver Luck, who was terminated the day before.  The league (technically, McMahon’s sole-purpose LLC, Alpha Entertainment) then filed for bankruptcy three days later and put itself up for sale.

We chat with Seifert on the lead-up to the league’s launch, the current state of affairs, and what might further transpire in the months ahead.

EPISODE 162: Les Expos de Montréal – Avec Danny Gallagher

We journey north of the border this week to get our first at-bats with the 35-year adventure formerly known as the Montreal Expos, with author and de facto team historian Danny Gallagher (Always Remembered: New Revelations and Old Tales About Those Fabulous Expos).

Created in expansionary haste by the National League in 1969, MLB’s first-ever Canadian franchise was named after the city’s futuristic “Expo 67” World’s Fair, and expected to be domiciled in a new domed stadium by 1972 after a temporary stint at a barely-minor-league field in the city’s Jarry Park.  Chronically delayed and reshaped by preparations for the 1976 Summer Olympics, that permanent home (a cavernous, drafty and still-unfinished Olympic Stadium) didn’t formally arrive until 1977 – with its promised roof not in place until a full decade later.   

The Expos’ locational challenges were only slightly overshadowed by their mediocre play on the field – which, while competitive at times (they had the best cumulative winning percentage in the NL from 1979-83, for example) – netted just one post-season appearance (in a convoluted strike-shortened 1981 season) in the team’s 35-year stay in Montreal.  (The strike-abandoned season of 1994, when the team led the NL East by six games with eight weeks to play, literally and figuratively didn’t count.)

Still, the Expos had their share of talent (buttressed by a reliably prolific farm system) – boasting 11 MLB Hall of Famers (including fan favorites Gary Carter, Andre Dawson and Tim Raines) – and a panoply of memorable characters like Rusty Staub, Warren Cromartie, Steve Rogers, and Tim Wallach. 

When Major League Baseball voted to contract two clubs in 2001, the Expos were targeted as one of them – beset by dwindling attendances and cellar-dwelling records during the latter half of the 1990s.  A ham-handed league takeover that year led to three final lame-duck seasons – including a bizarre relocation of “home games” in 2003-04 to San Juan, Puerto Rico – before moving to Washington to become the Nationals.

Always Remembered: New Revelations and Old Tales About Those Fabulous Expos - buy book here

Ecstasy to Agony: The 1994 Montreal Expos - buy book here

Blue Monday: The Expos, The Dodgers and the Home Run That Changed Everything - buy book here

EPISODE 161: Jim Bouton: Baseball Original – With Mitch Nathanson

From the day he first stepped into the New York Yankee clubhouse in 1962 at the age of 23, Jim Bouton was baseball’s deceptive revolutionary.  Behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks and formidable fastball, lurked an unlikely maverick with a decidedly signature style – both on and off the diamond.

Whether it was his frank talk about MLB front office management and player salaries, passionate advocacy of progressive politics, or efforts to convince the Johnson Administration to boycott the 1968 Summer Olympics, “Bulldog” Bouton fearlessly – and seemingly effortlessly – confronted a largely conservative sports world and compelled it to catch up with a rapidly changing American society.

On the field, Bouton defied tremendous odds to reach the majors – first with the champion Bronx Bombers (making 1963’s AL All-Star team in his second season, and winning two World Series games in 1964) – and later, with an improbable post-retirement comeback at age 39 with the Atlanta Braves.

But in between, it was his memorable 1969 season with the woeful one-year Seattle Pilots – and his groundbreaking tell-all account called Ball Four – that literally and figuratively changed the game (not to mention Bouton’s career) by reintroducing America to its national pastime in a profound and traditional-altering way.

Author Mitch Nathanson (Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original) joins the show for a look at Bouton’s unconventional life, and how – in the cliquey, bottom‑line world of professional baseball, Bouton managed to be both an insider and an outsider all at once.

     

Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original - buy book here

EPISODE 160: “Soccertown USA” – With Tom McCabe & Kirk Rudell

Film producers Tom McCabe and Kirk Rudell (“Soccertown USA”) join the podcast this week to discuss their newly released documentary about the modest working-class New Jersey town with an outsized influence on the history of the sport of soccer in the United States.

In the mid-1980s, as the domestic pro game began to fade with the demise of the once-hot North American Soccer League, and FIFA’s passing over of the US as potential replacement host for the 1986 World Cup – it was three kids from largely-unheralded Kearny, NJ who helped save it.

Native sons Tab Ramos, John Harkes, and Tony Meola – who formed the backbone of a Men’s National Team that willed its way to breakthrough success in both the 1990 and 1994 World Cups, and laid the groundwork for the pro game’s rebirth in 1996 with the launch of Major League Soccer – were products of a uniquely rich soccer-passionate culture dating back to the town’s Scottish immigrant influx in the 1870s.

Kearny’s storied heritage as a fertile American soccer hotbed – spirited factory-sponsored leagues, ASL cup-winning “pro” teams, strong youth programs, a vibrant street-soccer scene, and even local heroes in the 1970s NASL (including a member of the mighty New York Cosmos virtually next door) – not only nurtured these three pioneers of the game, but also continue to help inspire future generations to play and support the “beautiful game.”

EPISODE 159: Chronicling Pro Sports’ “Major” Leagues – With Tom Brucato

Industrial writer and fellow defunct sports enthusiast Tom Brucato (Major Sports Leagues) joins this week’s installment of the podcast to delve deep into his all-new update of what can only be described as the Encyclopedia Britannica of forgotten pro sports teams and leagues.

The ultimate reference work for the discriminating sports historian, the Second Edition of Major Sports Leagues features the most comprehensive listing of (over 1600) “major league” teams to have ever played across 100+ top-tier US/North American professional leagues in 22 distinct sports: baseball, basketball, bowling, cricket, cycling, football (outdoor & Arena), golf, hockey (ice & roller), lacrosse (outdoor & box), martial arts, polo, rodeo, rugby, soccer (outdoor & indoor), softball, tennis, ultimate disc & volleyball.

Brucato walks us through some of the highs and lows of his 20+ year (and counting) odyssey of chronicling the seemingly impossible, including:

• The self-imposed criteria set out for the project – and the “tough calls” of who to include (and not) made along the way;

• How the historical sleuthing process has (and hasn’t) changed from 1990s-era microfiche to today’s broadband;

• A boundless continuum of sports history trivia – ranging from the obvious to the fascinatingly obscure; AND

• The inevitability of a Third Edition, as new discoveries about old/forgotten leagues and teams continue to be made.

PLUS: Your chance to win a copy of Major Sports Leagues for your own reference library!

Major Sports Leagues - buy book here

EPISODE 158: “Stealing” Dodger Stadium – With Eric Nusbaum

LA’s Dodger Stadium – opened in April 1962, and now the third-oldest home ballpark in Major League Baseball – is an American icon. But the story of how it came to be goes far beyond baseball.

The hills that cradle the stadium were once home to three vibrant semi-rural Mexican American communities – Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop – collectively known as Chavez Ravine.  In the early 1950s, all was condemned via eminent domain to make way for a utopian public housing project called Elysian Park Heights.  Then, in a remarkable political turn, the entire idea of public housing in Los Angeles was defeated amidst a Red Scare conspiracy.

Instead of getting their homes back, the area’s remaining residents saw the city sell the land to Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley – in an opportunistic effort to finally lure big league baseball to the City of Angels – and definitively confirm its status as a “major league” American metropolis. 

But before the Dodgers’ new home could be built, municipal officials would have to face down the neighborhood's last holdouts – including the defiant Aréchigas family, who fiercely refused to yield their home.

Author Eric Nusbaum (Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between) joins to discuss the sordid backstory of Dodger Stadium’s birth, the ensuing confrontation that stunned the nation, and the divisive outcome that still taints the team’s legacy and haunts the city’s modern history.

Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between - buy book here

EPISODE 157: The NASL’s Chicago Sting – With Willy Roy (Part Two)

When 32-year-old Willy Roy and two of his NASL St. Louis Stars teammates were acquired by the still-yet-to-play expansion Chicago Sting in February 1975, the club had just four signed players and a hit movie-inspired logo to its name. 

No one knew what to expect, and Chicago’s twin pro soccer flame-outs less than a decade earlier – the White Sox-owned USA/NASL Mustangs (1967-68) and the Roy-led 1967 NPSL Spurs – didn’t exactly inspire confidence the Sting would be any different.

Indeed, the passion project of prominent Chicago commodities trader and youth soccer parent/convert Lee Stern floundered early and often during its first few seasons under first-time coach (but Manchester United playing legend) Bill Foulkes. 

Despite a division title in 1976 – the first with the retired Roy as Assistant Coach – the Sting was largely uncompetitive during its first few seasons.  Crowds were abysmal, as the team shuffled games between Soldier Field, Comiskey Park, and Wrigley Field each summer.  By early-season 1978, the Sting was off to a ten-game losing streak and the worst attendance in the entire 24-team NASL – averaging just 4,188 fans a match.

Over the objections of then-GM Clive Toye, owner Stern elevated Roy to interim, then permanent head coach – and the rest, as they say, is history.

National Soccer Hall of Famer Roy joins for Part Two of our extended conversation – as we focus on the rise of the Sting into one of the NASL’s most exciting, attractive and memorable sides – and an indelible part of Chicago’s rich pro sports history.

EPISODE 156: National Soccer Hall of Famer Willy Roy

Though he was born in Germany and still retains the distinctive vocal stylings to prove it, National Soccer Hall of Fame player/coach great Willy Roy has always been a Chicago kid in both heart and heritage.   

A post-WWII transplant to the Windy City at the age of six, Roy became a standout youth and young adult player in his adopted hometown – and by the mid-1960s, was honing his scoring skills and drawing national attention in the hard-nosed, Chicago-based National Soccer League with the multi-title winning club Hansa.

A few call-ups to a rag-tag US National Team soon followed (eventually notching nine goals in 20 caps over nine years and two World Cup qualifying cycles) – and, ultimately, an invitation to play with the Soldier Field-domiciled Chicago Spurs of the new 1967 National Professional Soccer League.  One of only eight US citizens across ten franchises, Roy became the NPSL’s second-leading scorer (17 G, 5 A), made the league All-Star team and won Rookie of the Year honors.

When the NPSL merged with the rival United Soccer Association to form the successor North American Soccer League the following year, Roy followed the relocated Spurs to Kansas City – and by 1971 had cemented an anchor role with the NASL’s American-heavy St. Louis Stars, commuting regularly from Chicago to do so.

But it was an eventual move to the league’s expansion Chicago Sting in 1975 – first as a player, then as an assistant coach, and finally as head coach (ten games into the 1978 season) – where Roy cemented his legacy as one of the NASL’s winningest coaches, including two memorable championship seasons (1981, 1984) that long-time Second City sports fans still fondly remember today.

EPISODE 155: The Continental Basketball Association’s Albany Patroons – With Brendan Casey

With the entirety of pro sports in unprecedented lock-down mode, we offer some respite with a rewind back to the curiously borderline major league Continental Basketball Association (1946-2009), and one of its most successful franchises – the original Albany Patroons (1982-92).

Video production firm owner/sports doc filmmaker/Cap City native Brendan Casey (“The Minor League Mecca”) helps us trace the story arc of a team that spent ten memorable seasons punching above its weight both on and off the hardwood.

On the court, the Patroons won two CBA titles (1984, 1988), five Eastern Division crowns and complied a league-smashing 50-6 regular season record (28-0 in home games) in its penultimate season – becoming a launching pad for eventual NBA coaching standouts like Phil Jackson, George Karl and Bill Musselman  And a weigh station for notable big-league players past and future such as: Scott Brooks, Tod Murphy, Tony Campbell, Sidney Lowe, Mario Elie, Vincent Askew, and Micheal Ray Richardson.

In the stands, the Pats routinely squeezed sellout crowds into the city’s 1890s-era Washington Avenue Armory – a reliably intimidating environment where Albany’s rabid fans found themselves intimately part of the action. 

The team’s quick success at the gate became the aspirational force for the construction of a new region-defining 15,000-seat Knickerbocker Arena (today’s Times Union Center) in 1990 – only to see attendances dwindle and the franchise eventually drown against a backdrop of rising costs and CBA expansion.

The Minor League Mecca - see trailer & order here

EPISODE 154: The National Women’s Football League’s Houston Herricanes – With Olivia Kuan

Hollywood cinematographer and documentary filmmaker Olivia Kuan (Brick House) joins to discuss the revealing story of the Houston "Herricanes" of the pioneering National Women’s Football League (1974-88) – and their overlooked role in the historically rich and surprisingly resilient world of women’s pro football.

The modern women’s pro game started innocently enough in 1967, when Cleveland talent agent Sid Friedman launched a barnstorming “Women’s Professional Football League” in which a team (later nine) of women toured the country playing men’s clubs in exhibitions and charity events – sometimes even as NFL and CFL game halftime entertainment.

Led by the breakaway Toledo Troopers, the decidedly (and competitively) legit NWFL began play in 1974 with six teams; by 1976, the league had ballooned to 14 franchises from coast-to-coast, including three in football-mad Texas – led by the “Herricanes” of Houston.

Though devoid of sustainable budgets, major media coverage or appreciable crowds, the Herricanes (and the league itself) featured a passionate breed of player – drawn to an unprecedented opportunity to play real men’s-style tackle football for pay – buttressed by emerging progressive era of Title IX, the Equal Rights Amendment and rampant sports league entrepreneurialism.  

Most were ecstatic simply to play “for the love of the game” – a common theme that emerges quickly in Kuan’s early research and principal production for Brick House, beginning with the Herricanes’ starting safety – her own mother Basia.

It’s not too late to plan your baseball Spring Training getaway at VisitArizona.com!

EPISODE 153: The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League – With Anika Orrock

Award-winning illustrator, cartoonist and unwitting baseball historian Anika Orrock (The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League) joins to discuss her delightfully visual take on the pioneering circuit that not only helped save America’s pastime – but also became the forerunner of women's professional league sports in the United States.

With the US deep into WWII, attendance at Major League Baseball games by 1943 was dwindling and minor leagues were suspending operations as the nation’s war effort siphoned able-bodied men from pro baseball diamonds across the country.  To keep interest in the sport alive, Chicago Cubs owner Philip Wrigley spearheaded the formation of an all-female league that featured a spirited blend of competitive moxie and girl-next-door femininity that delighted hundreds of thousands of fans throughout the Midwest and garnered significant national publicity.

The quality of play was surprisingly competitive, aided by ex-big league managers like Jimmy Foxx and Max Carey.  The AAGPBL also doubled as a kind of finishing school for its players – all of whom were expected to maintain high moral standards, rules of conduct and even a Helena Rubinstein-contracted beauty regimen – in an effort to project positive and patriotic female images both on and off the field.

Orrock’s Incredible Women blends funny, charming, yet powerful vignettes told by the players themselves, with a whimsically stylized graphic design that delivers a remarkably detailed (and all-ages-accessible) oral history of the pioneering league’s 12-year run – and unique place in baseball history.

PLUS:  The grocery-list stylings of San Francisco Giants’ radio voice Jon Miller!

It’s not too late to plan your own baseball Spring Training getaway at VisitArizona.com!

The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League - buy book here

Original AAGPBL art courtesy of Anika Orrock (https://www.anikaorrock.com)

EPISODE 152: The Senior Professional Baseball Association – With Peter Golenbock

Spring training is finally under way, and we celebrate the National Pastime with a return visit to the 1989-90 curiosity known as the Senior Professional Baseball Association – with one of its few dedicated chroniclers, prolific sports author Peter Golenbock (The Forever Boys).

The brainchild of real estate developer (and former college player) Jim Morley, the SPBA was envisioned as a kind of Senior PGA golf-type circuit for ex-Major League Baseball players aged 35 and older (32+ for catchers), played at Spring training facilities throughout Florida during the traditional baseball off-season. 

Featuring former All-Star player/labor pioneer Curt Flood as commissioner – and a talent roster that included future Hall of Fame players and managers, Major League batting champions, and Cy Young-winning pitching aces – the “Senior League” drew in big names and sizable media attention, but minuscule crowds.

The eight inaugural teams — the Bradenton Explorers, Fort Myers Sun Sox, Gold Coast Suns, Orlando Juice, St. Lucie Legends, St. Petersburg Pelicans, West Palm Beach Tropics, and Winter Haven Super Sox — averaged just 921 fans per game, roughly half of what Morley and his fellow owners envisioned.

The Dick Williams-managed Tropics were the league’s 72-game regular season leaders, but it was the Pelicans – the team Golenbock just happened to be following for Forever Boys – who won the step-laddered post-season playoffs to capture what ultimately became the SPBA’s first- and last-ever champion.    

Plan your own baseball Spring Training getaway at VisitArizona.com!

     

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EPISODE 151: “God Save the (Wichita) Wings” – With Adam Knapp & Mike Romalis

We gear up for this week’s world premiere of God Save the Wings – the long-awaited documentary about one of the original Major Indoor Soccer League’s most improbable success stories – with co-producers Adam Knapp (Out Here in Kansas) and Mike Romalis (Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings).

The Wichita Wings were the smallest-market franchise of not only the fledgling MISL, but also of any major US pro sports circuit when they joined the league in its second season (1979-80) – becoming the first-ever major league professional sports team in Kansas history, and, ultimately, the MISL’s most durable.

The Wings defied conventional logic, as world-class soccer players from places like England, Denmark, Argentina, and Ecuador treated sold-out Kansas Coliseum crowds with spirited play that made them a perennial playoff contender and one of the league’s most successful franchises.

Although they never captured a championship in their 13 MISL seasons (nor during nine subsequent seasons in the successor NPSL), the Wings were still the perennial darlings of their “Orange Army” of rabid fans – much to the chagrin (and envy) of their big-city rivals.

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

Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings - buy book here

EPISODE 150: Major League Baseball Expansion – With Fran Zimniuch

Baseball writer Fran Zimniuch (Baseball's New Frontier: A History of Expansion, 1961-1998) help us sketch out a nearly forty-year survey of the major leagues’ fitful journey from a regional set of 16 teams confined to just ten US Northeast and Midwest cities, to the 30-club colossus that today stretches across 27 markets across North America.

While the sport’s modern-day wanderlust began in earnest during the 1950s as the Braves moved to Milwaukee, the Browns left for Baltimore (new name: Orioles), the A’s traded Philadelphia for Kansas City, and New York’s Giants and Brooklyn’s Dodgers made haste for California – Major League Baseball entered the 1960s with an urgent need to expand into new markets as the rival Continental League threatened to beat them to the punch.

In 1961, the American League added its own Los Angeles franchise with the Angels, and a new expansion version of the Washington Senators hastily replaced their original predecessors, having absconded to the Twin Cities.  Two more teams joined the following year – New York’s Mets and Houston’s Colt .45’s (later renamed Astros). 

The addition of four new clubs in 1969 pushed the boundaries even further: the San Diego Padres, Kansas City Royals, Montreal Expos, and (ultimately one-year wonder) Seattle Pilots.

Seattle’s MLB redemption came in 1977 when the expansion Mariners joined the American League roster, along with Canada’s second franchise – the Toronto Blue Jays.

Baseball’s last expansion push came in the 1990s, when Colorado and Florida (now Miami) joined the National League in 1993, and Arizona and Tampa Bay were added the NL and AL respectively in 1998.

While rumors of potential relocation of big-league baseball’s current members is always fodder for the off-season Hot Stove (the fate of the Rays in Tampa-St. Pete, in particular), Zimniuch and host Tim Hanlon ponder if further expansion to new markets is in the cards – and if so, where and when?

What better reason to plan your Spring Training getaway at VisitArizona.com!

Baseball’s New Frontier: A History of Expansion, 1961-98 - buy here

EPISODE 149: “America's” Soccer League – With Steve Holroyd

Society for American Soccer History board director Steve Holroyd returns to help us decipher the last decade of the enigmatic second incarnation of the American Soccer League (1933-83) – the longest-lasting “professional” soccer circuit in US history prior to today’s MLS.

A smaller-scaled reboot of the original ASL (1921-33) that, for a time, rivaled the fledgling sport of pro football in terms of fan interest – “ASL II” began its more-modest life playing in the urban centers of the Eastern Seaboard during the height of the Great Depression. 

For much of its 50-year existence, the ASL was a relatively loose but heartily competitive amalgam of ethnically-identified clubs concentrated primarily in the immigrant-heavy neighborhoods of the industrial Northeast.  Teams came and went with regularity – and changing identities or even folding in the middle of a season was not uncommon.

As the “big league” NASL gained popularity in the early 1970s, the American Soccer League began to expand its geographic footprint and more professionally emulate its younger cousin.  By 1972, the league had mostly abolished its ethnic team names (out: Newark Ukrainian Sitch, New York Greeks; in: New Jersey Brewers, New York Apollo), and league president Eugene Chyzowych began steering the ASL to a more pronounced embrace of American players, while aggressively pursuing national expansion.

The league even hired former Boston Celtics basketball legend Bob Cousy as commissioner in a bid to raise the ASL’s national PR profile.  Freely admitting he knew little about soccer, Cousy nevertheless elevated the league’s ambitions – adding franchises to the West Coast by 1976 and relocating league headquarters to media-friendly Manhattan.

Still, “America’s Soccer League” was mostly relegated to de facto second division status vs. the bigger-budgeted NASL; it was not uncommon for ASL teams to lose top players to the freer-spending NASL – though a number of aging marquee players like Eusebio, Rildo, and Phil Parkes found the reverse path just as remunerative.

Ultimately, the ASL’s major league aspirations were financially unsustainable (just like the NASL’s), and the league collapsed after the 1983 season – ushering in a dark period for the pro game that lasted until the launch of Major League Soccer in 1996.    

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

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EPISODE 148: The NHL’s Atlanta Flames (& More!) – With Dan Bouchard

For 1970s-era NHL hockey fans who remember the eight-year adventure known as the Atlanta Flames, few are likely to forget Dan Bouchard.  A tenacious, slightly eccentric and occasionally fight-prone French-Canadian goalie, “Bouch” was an immediate standout between the pipes for the NHL’s first-ever Deep South franchise (platooning with fellow Quebecois & expansion draftee Phil Myre during the club’s first five seasons) – and a survivor in a league where hard-nosed hockey was the norm and where good goalies were at a premium.

Bouchard’s big-league call-up to the Flames in 1972 came amidst a frantic period of NHL franchise expansion and relocation driven in large part by the arrival of the challenger World Hockey Association – which debuted alongside Atlanta (and the NY Islanders) that season. 

And while the collective memory of the original Flames remains muddied by a woeful post-season record (reliably exiting the playoffs in the first round, despite qualifying six out of their eight seasons), as well as a then (and still?) persistent narrative of Southerners’ native distaste for ice hockey – Bouchard and Atlanta were actually more competitive and popular than many of the NHL’s other 1970s forays in places like Kansas City, Oakland, Denver, and Cleveland.

When Nelson Skalbania bought the Flames and moved them to Calgary in 1980, most in Atlanta and around the league assumed that the well-publicized financial struggles of the team and owner Tom Cousins (who also controlled the Omni arena and the NBA Hawks) were to blame.

But as Bouchard outlines in this revealing conversation, an explosive league-wide issue was festering behind the scenes – of which he was uniquely aware and determined to address – regardless of the potential consequences to his playing career.

Bouch walks us through an eye-opening story that wends its way through the defunct Quebec Nordiques (including the infamous “Good Friday Massacre” vs. the Montreal Canadiens in 1984), the original Winnipeg Jets, the scandalous downfall of a pro hockey Hall of Famer, and fighting for legendary player/coach Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion both on – and off – the ice.

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

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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 146: The NY Cosmos Theme Song – With Musician Steve Ferrone

Prolific rock/R&B drummer/musician Steve Ferrone (Average White Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) joins to delve into the backstory of helping write/craft the official theme song for the New York Cosmos – the latest chapter in our irregular series devoted to Tim’s longstanding fascination with the North American Soccer League’s most famous franchise.

Pop music aficionados know Ferrone as part of the “classic” mid-70s lineup of AWB (along with Hamish Stuart, Alan Gorrie, “Onnie” McIntyre, Roger Ball, and “Molly” Duncan); as a two-decade+ member of the Heartbreakers (1994-2017); and from a prodigious body of studio session work with a literal who’s-who of pop music’s biggest talent (Chaka Khan, Rick James, Eric Clapton, Stevie Nicks, and the Bee Gees, just to name a few). 

But long-time Cosmos soccer fans may also remember Ferrone’s semi-invisible hand in the creation and performance of the club’s rhythmic anthem that blared from the Giants Stadium PA system after goals and anchored the team’s WOR-TV telecasts – recorded under the AWB nom de plume of the “Cosmic Highlanders” via Warner Communications corporate sister Atlantic Records.

Besides the circumstances of the song’s origins, Ferrone regales Tim with stories of: how he stepped into the Average White Band during a critical time in the group’s then-young life; the musical magic of Atlantic and its founder-brothers Ahmet & Nesuhi Ertegun; how the “Cosmos Clap” came about; and the original song idea Cosmos management had in mind for the club’s official theme!

Support for this week’s episode comes from the VisitArizona.com and ExpressVPN.

     

Once in a Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos (documentary) - buy here

Once in a Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos (book) - buy here