EPISODE 343: Baseball History Landmarks - With Chris Epting

We reach back into the vaunted Good Seats library stacks this week for a deep dive into one of Tim's favorite sports reference books - Roadside Baseball: The Locations of America's Baseball Landmarks - with its (prodigious non-fiction) author Chris Epting.

Now in its third edition, Roadside is everything you'd imagine from the title: a detailed, geographic cataloging of over 500 important events in North American baseball history, including historical data, trivia, photographs, and lore - highlighting birthplaces of baseball legends, ballparks, museums and halls of fame, final resting places, and dozens of former locations no longer standing.

Join us for an aural road trip across some of baseball's most recognizable landmarks and forgotten out-of-the-way points of interest!

Roadside Baseball: The Locations of America's Baseball Landmarks - buy book here

EPISODE 340: Baseball's "New York Game" - With Kevin Baker

Harper's Contributing Editor and novelist/historian extraordinaire Kevin Baker ("The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City") brings his blended affection for (and evocative portrayals of) both "The Big Apple" and the "National Pastime" — to make a compelling case for New York City as the rightful center of the baseball universe.

From Alan Moores' review in Booklist:

Baseball fans beyond Gotham’s gravitational pull might bristle at the notion that New York was the epicenter of the creation and growth of the game. But Baker’s raucous, revelatory, lovingly detailed account will win them over from the first pitch. Baker lays out the early history of the game in the city, then seamlessly weaves together the vibrant origin stories of the New York Yankees, New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers, and the city’s Cuban and African American teams, right up to the eve of Jackie Robinson’s 1945 signing with the Dodgers.

He vividly recreates the recklessly ambitious, breathtakingly corrupt, alcohol-fueled world of Tammany Hall politics—which were followed by the reforms of Fiorello La Guardia—that steered, and were sometimes even steered by, the game. Dozens of near-mythic and also too-human figures parade through the pages, from John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Fred Merkle, Carl Hubbell, Mel Ott, Leo Durocher, Casey Stengel, Red Barber, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Branch Rickey, to an array of crime bosses, team owners, and mayors. 

Then there was Babe Ruth, whose gaudy statistics, irrepressible personality, and seismic impact on the game, the city, and the entire nation outshone even his legend, as Baker convincingly argues here. A spellbinding history of a game and the city where it found itself.

The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City - buy book here

EPISODE 335: On the Diamonds of Des Moines - With Steve Dunn

Iowa baseball chronologist Steve Dunn ("'Pug,' 'Fireball,' and Company: 116 Years of Professional Baseball in Des Moines, Iowa") joins for a surprisingly rich journey into the history of professional baseball in the Hawkeye State's largest city - currently home to the Diamond Baseball Holdings-owned Triple-A affiliate of the National League's Chicago Cubs.

Besides today's Iowa Cubs, the city of Des Moines has been home to minor league baseball in various forms since 1887 - featuring a long list of stars that have played or managed clubs there, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Feller, Satchel Paige, Red Faber, Buck O'Neil, Ryne Sandberg, Tony LaRussa, Charlie Grimm, and Stan Hack.

Dunn walks us through some of Des Moines baseball's most noteworthy ballparks (such as Western League Park, home of the first night game featuring a permanent lighting system on 5/2/1930); circuits (like the long-forgotten Three–I [Class B] League featuring the reborn 1959-61 Des Moines Demons); barnstormers (the Negro League "All Nations" club); and eyebrow-raising team names - from Midgets to Prohibitionists to Undertakers.

‘Pug,’ ‘Fireball,’ and Company: 116 Years of Professional Baseball in Des Moines, Iowa - 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 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 319: The 1994-95 Baseball Players' Strike - With Bob Cottrell

We explore the traumatic events of Major League Baseball's notorious 1994-95 players' strike - with Chico State history professor Bob Cottrell ("The Year Without a World Series: Major League Baseball and the Road to the 1994 Players' Strike").

More than 900 regular season games, the entirety of the playoffs, and, for the first time in 90 years, the sport's signature World Series - were all lost to the work stoppage, which began on August 12, 1994.  

The strike ended late into the 1995 preseason, when then-US District Court judge Sonia Sotomayor granted an injunction sought by the players' association to prevent club owners from using replacement players.  The ruling forced both sides to come to an agreement, and regular-season play resumed with a delayed and truncated 144-game schedule at the end of April. (Ironically, MLB umpires decided to go on strike just as the two sides settled their dispute, so the 1995 season opened with regular players - but replacement umpires!)

Among the strike's biggest victims (besides the fans!):

• The Montreal Expos had the best record in baseball when the strike was called in 1994. They were forced to dismantle their expensive squad in a fire sale before the 1995 season, a decision that ultimately led to the franchise's relocation within a decade.

• Tony Gwynn missed his best chance to achieve a .400 batting average in 1994. He was hitting .394 for the season and had maintained a .417 pace in the 25 games leading up to the suspension of play.

• Matt Williams had a legitimate opportunity to break Roger Maris' single-season home run record of 61 in 1994. Williams had hit 43 home runs when the strike halted the season, ending his pursuit of the record.

• The Colorado Rockies, in their final season at Mile High Stadium in 1994, were drawing impressive crowds, averaging 57,570 fans per game. They were on track to potentially break baseball's attendance record of 4.48 million, set by the team the previous year.

• Michael Jordan, known for his basketball career, was playing for the Double-A affiliate Birmingham Barons when the MLB strike began in 1994. There was speculation that he might have been given the opportunity to play for the Chicago White Sox, his major league parent team, that September if the strike had not occurred.

The strike also marked the end of the "independent Commissioner" era, as the owners, hesitant to contend with an arbiter who might challenge their unwavering stances, opted to appoint one of their own, Bud Selig, as acting Commissioner.

the Year Without A World Series: Major League Baseball and the Road to the 1994 Players’ Strike - Buy Book Here

EPISODE 316: “A League of Their Own” - With Erin Carlson

Hollywood history maven Erin Carlson ("No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of "A League of Their Own": Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood") stops by the podcast to help celebrate the 30th anniversary of the iconic motion picture that comically (and lovingly) brought the largely forgotten story of the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League to the big screen - simultaneously preserving and making history in the process.

No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of “A League of Their Own” - Buy Book Here

EPISODE 310: "Mallparks" - With Michael Friedman

University of Maryland physical cultural studies professor Michael Friedman ("Mallparks: Baseball Stadiums and the Culture of Consumption") cozies up to the pod machine this week for a thinking man's look into the evolution of the grand old American ballpark - and a provocative thesis of how designers of this generation of baseball stadiums are embracing theme park and shopping mall design to prioritize commerce and consumption over the game played inside them.

Mallparks: Baseball Stadiums and the Culture of Consumption - Buy Book Here

EPISODE 309: Minor League Monikers - With Tim Hagerty

El Paso Chihuahuas Triple-A baseball play-by-play broadcaster Tim Hagerty ("Root for the Home Team: Minor League Baseball's Most Off-the-Wall Team Names and the Stories Behind Them" and "Tales from the Dugout: 1,001 Humorous, Inspirational and Wild Anecdotes from Minor League Baseball") joins the show this week to spotlight some of the most memorable names and events in "forgotten" minor league history.

When Hagerty isn't calling games for the San Diego Padres top minor league affiliate, he can usually be found digging deep down a variety of research rabbit holes, in a never-ending quest to refine his encyclopedic "double-asterisk" knowledge of baseball factoids and historical lore.

For us, it's a callback to minor-league teams of yore like the: Tucson Toros, Huntsville Stars, Mobile (AL) BayBears, Portland Beavers, Hutchinson Salt Packers, Ilion (NY) Typewriters, Montpelier (VT) Goldfish, Kalamazoo Celery Pickers, Saskatoon Berrypickers, Greenville (MS) Cotton Pickers, Porterville (CA) Orange Pickers, New Orleans Baby Cakes, New Orleans Pelicans, Midland (TX) Cubs, Texarkana (TX & AR!) Casket Makers, Agua Prieta (Sonora, MX & Douglas, AZ!) Charros, Corsicana (TX) Oil Citys, Bluefield (WV) Blue Jays, Princeton (WV) Rays, and Pittsfield (MA) Astros - among others.

And, of course, we get Hagerty's take on the current state of MiLB, now that Major League Baseball is fully in charge - and where it's likely headed in the years to come.

          

Tales From the Dugout: 1,001 Humorous, Inspirational & Wild Anecdotes from Minor League Baseball - Buy Book Here

Root for the Home Team: Minor League Baseball’s Most Off-the-Wall Team Names and the stories behind them - Buy Book Here

EPISODE 307: "Baseball's Wildest Season" - With Bill Ryczek

Sports historian Bill Ryczek (Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball's National Association; Crash of the Titans: The Early Years of the New York Jets and the AFL) returns after a five-year absence to help us unpack the intriguing story of 1884 - arguably the wildest season in major league baseball history.

In his latest tome, "Baseball's Wildest Season: Three Leagues, Thirty-Four Teams and the Chaos of 1884," Ryczek details a fragile professional game pioneered by a still-fledgling National League that found itself not only challenged by a two-year-old lower-priced, Sunday-playing, beer-allowing American Association - but also an upstart third circuit called the Union Association whose president just happened to also own its most dominant franchise.

1884 saw the first incarnation of an inter-league "World Series" (the NL Providence Grays defeating the AA New York Metropolitans); the majors' first-ever African-American player (the AA Toledo Blue Stockings' Moses Fleetwood Walker); a (still-standing) record start to a season (the UA's 20-0 St. Louis Maroons) - and more drunken brawls, mid-season team relocations, player league-jumping, and underhand pitching than any time in big league history.

Baseball’s Wildest Season: Three Leagues, Thirty-Four Teams and the Chaos of 1884 - 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 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 301: "Last Comiskey" - With Matt Flesch

Long-time Chicago White Sox fan and unwitting basement documentarian Matt Flesch joins the pod this week to discuss the story behind his extraordinary new three-part YouTube documentary "Last Comiskey" - a video love letter to the South Siders' final 1990 season in the venerable park once known as the "Baseball Palace of the World.”

From Dan Day Jr.'s review on "The Hitless Wonder Movie Blog":

"The 1990 Chicago White Sox were not a championship team - they didn't even make the playoffs. But the 1990 season was one of the most notable and dramatic in White Sox history. It was the last season the team would play in venerable Comiskey Park, and it was a season that saw the Sox go beyond low expectations and challenge the defending champion Oakland Athletics for supremacy in the Western Division of the American League. 

"The scrappy Sox of 1990 didn't have overwhelming stats, or a roster filled with All-Stars--their most famous player was 42 year old veteran catcher Carlton Fisk. The team only hit a total of 106 home runs (their leading power hitter was Fisk, with only 18). But they played a brand of baseball that focused on "Doin' the Little Things" (the team's slogan for that year). The team also had budding young stars Robin Ventura, Jack McDowell, Ozzie Guillen, Sammy Sosa, and Frank Thomas, who made his Major League debut that season. 

"The exciting division chase between the White Sox and the Athletics coincided with the season-long celebration of the original Comiskey Park, a legendary ball yard that sadly didn't get its proper respect until it was getting ready to be torn down. 

"'Last Comiskey' covers all of this in spectacular and entertaining fashion, by featuring talks with Sox players, team & stadium employees, fans, and local journalists who covered what went on in the 1990 season. The series gives a 'regular guy' view of what happened with the White Sox in 1990, along with recreating the sights, sounds, and ambiance of Old Comiskey Park."

Last Comiskey - Watch Here

EPISODE 299: Charles Stoneham's New York (Baseball) Giants - With Rob Garratt

We point the Good Seats Wayback Machine back a hundred years to the Roaring '20s - for a look at baseball's then-New York Giants and their larger-than-life owner Charles Stoneham - with baseball biographer Rob Garratt ("Jazz Age Giant: Charles A. Stoneham and New York City Baseball in the Roaring Twenties"). 

From the dust jacket of Jazz Age Giant:

"Short, stout, and jowly, Charlie Stoneham embodied a Jazz Age stereotype—a business and sporting man by day, he led another life by night. He threw lavish parties, lived extravagantly, and was often chronicled in the city tabloids.

"Little is known about how he came to be one of the most successful investment brokers in what were known as 'bucket shops,' a highly speculative and controversial branch of Wall Street. One thing about Stoneham is clear, however: at the close of World War I he was a wealthy man, with a net worth of more than $10 million.

"This wealth made it possible for him to purchase majority control of the Giants, one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. Stoneham, an owner of racehorses, a friend to local politicians and Tammany Hall, a socialite and a man well-placed in New York business and political circles, was also implicated in a number of business scandals and criminal activities.

"The Giants’ principal owner had to contend with federal indictments, civil lawsuits, hostile fellow magnates, and troubles with booze, gambling, and women. But during his sixteen-year tenure as club president, the Giants achieved more success than the club had seen under any prior regime."

Jazz Age Giant: Charles A. Stoneham & New York City Baseball in the Roaring Twenties - Buy book here

EPISODE 298: The Asheville Tourists - With Ryan McGee

ESPN multi-platform writer/reporter/host Ryan McGee ("Welcome to the Circus of Baseball: A Story of the Perfect Summer at the Perfect Ballpark at the Perfect Time") joins us this week to reminisce about his early-career experiences as a $100-a-week intern with 1994's Class A South Atlantic League Asheville Tourists - a proud minor league baseball team in the heart of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

Asheville's history with minor league ball dates all the way back to 1897 (think Moonshiners, Redbirds and Mountaineers), and its venerable 99-year-old (and twice-renovated) McCormick Field has seen multiple teams across numerous leagues sport the Tourists nickname - with legendary future Hall of Famers like Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Robinson in the club's rosters at one time or another.

In 1994, however, the "Sally League" Tourists were a consolation prize of a job for the newly minted University of Tennessee communications grad McGee, who, after bombing an interview for an entry-level gig with his long-coveted ESPN, instead settled in for a life-altering and lesson-teaching summer of literal "inside baseball" - with often hilarious results.

Join us for a look back at a quintessentially classic old-school minor league baseball season - and hear how McGee ultimately parlayed the experience into a second chance at the "Worldwide Leader in Sports" - with very different results.

Welcome to the Circus of Baseball: A Story of the Perfect Summer, At the Perfect Ballpark, At the Perfect Time - Buy book here

EPISODE 296: "Bill & Sue's Excellent Adventure" - With Bill Craib

In 1991, twenty-something baseball fanatics Bill Craib and Sue Easler did something no one else had ever done before - they went to a game at all 178 major and minor league baseball parks in one season.

Craib and Easler drove nearly 54,000 miles and shot home-movie-style video (remember VHS?) at each stop - selected footage of which was featured on a segment that became known as "Bill & Sue's Excellent Adventure" on ESPN's weekly "Major League Baseball Magazine" program.

The couple became celebrities of the moment long before social media - spotlighted in major outlets of the day like ABC's "Good Morning America", Sports Illustrated, CNN, The New York Times - and prominently featured in local media wherever they stopped.

30+ years later, Craib ("In League With America: The Story of an Excellent Adventure") has finally written the book he intended to write then; a story about more than just baseball parks, but a tale about what it's like to chase a dream and have it come true - and, more deeply, a tableau of 1990s America as seen through the lens of its official pastime.

In League With America: The Story of an Excellent Adventure - 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 292: Minor League Baseball's New York-Penn League - With Michael Sokolow

On the eve of the most significant changes to Major League Baseball's rules and scheduling, we continue our lament of 2021's radical streamlining of the minor leagues and obsess about the demise of its oldest circuit - the New York-Penn League - with City University of New York history/philosophy/political science professor Michael Sokolow ("Bush League: The Brooklyn Cyclones, Staten Island Yankees, and the New York-Penn League").

A staple of upstate New York and interior Pennsylvania summers dating back to 1939, the Class D-turned-Short-Season-Class-A NYPL represented 82 years of small-market America's pastime in the cradle of its historical birthplace - until MLB's grand realignment plan led to its disbandment in 2020. 

We talk about the league's history, what led to its ultimate demise, as well as explore two of the NYPL's most curious teams - the New York Mets-owned Brooklyn Cyclones (originally the St. Catherines [ON] Blue Jays, and now part of MiLB's High-A South Atlantic League), and the former Oneonta, NY-relocated Staten Island Yankees (now reincarnated as the independent Atlantic League FerryHawks) - in an attempt to bring the "big time" minor league game to New York City's outer boroughs.

+ + +

PRE-ORDER "Bush League: The Brooklyn Cyclones, Staten Island Yankees, and the New York-Penn League" from SUNY Press/Excelsior NOW!

Bush League: The Brooklyn Cyclones, Staten Island Yankees, and the New York-Penn League - Pre-Order book here