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 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 257: New York's Shea Stadium - With Matthew Silverman

It's the 60th year of New York Mets baseball, and we celebrate this week with a look back at the transformational multipurpose facility they called home for 45 seasons - including three of the club's four NL pennants and its only two World Series championships - Shea Stadium.

Matthew Silverman (Shea Stadium Remembered: The Mets, The Jets, and Beatlemania) takes us back to the origin story behind the conceptually named "Flushing Meadow Park Municipal Stadium" - which began almost immediately after the Dodgers' and Giants' relocation to California in 1958 as a lure for a new expansion franchise to replace them.

Through the combined political efforts of New York City mayor Robert Wagner, city urban planning power broker Robert Moses, and Continental League founder (and future stadium namesake) William Shea, the Queens-based facility opened in 1964 as the mutual home of not only the NL expansion Mets, but also the newly reincarnated AFL football New York Jets (née Titans).

We delve into more than four decades of Shea memories, including the 1969 "Miracle Mets," the Jets' 1968 AFL Championship, Bill Buckner's ill-fated error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, and the insane year of 1975 - when the AL Yankees and football Giants also called the stadium home.

And, of course, the iconic first stop on the Beatles' 1965 tour of North America - the biggest-ever grossing concert of the era that became synonymous with "Beatlemania."

Shea Stadium Remembered: The Mets, The Jets, and Beatlemania - buy book here

EPISODE 252: "A False Spring" - With Pat Jordan

Pat Jordan grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut where, in the mid-1950s, he became a highly pursued pro baseball prospect as a young pitching phenom in local Little League and as a high school ace at Fairfield Prep.

On July 9, 1959, after being pursued by more than a dozen Major League Baseball organizations (MLB's first amateur draft didn't start until 1965), Jordan signed a then-record $36,000 "bonus baby" bounty to join the National League's Milwaukee Braves - where he reported to the McCook Braves of the Class D Nebraska State League, playing alongside future big leaguers Phil Niekro and Joe Torre.

Despite being one of the minors' hardest-throwing pitchers at the time, Jordan floundered through three seasons across obscure Braves posts such as Waycross (GA), Davenport (IA), Eau Claire (WI) and Palatka (FL), and by the end of 1961, was out of the game for good - a victim of injury, hubris and the realities of adulthood.

Baseball's loss was ultimately sports journalism's gain, as Jordan pivoted hard into a prolific, long-form, non-fiction writing career that began in earnest with the publishing of 1975's clear-eyed memoir "A False Spring" - which Time magazine called “one of the best and truest books about baseball, and about coming to maturity in America,” and Sports Illustrated has consistently listed as one of the best sports books of all time.

Like his brusque, straight-ahead writing style, Jordan holds back nothing in this wide-ranging conversation - featuring a multitude of stories featuring some of modern-day sports' most fascinating characters such as softballer Joan Joyce, Tom Seaver ("Tom Seaver and Me"), pro volleyballer/hoopster Mary Jo Peppler ("Broken Patterns"), Wilt Chamberlain, Renee Richards, and even the 56-year-old version of himself attempting a comeback with the the independent Northeast League's Waterbury Spirit in 1997 ("A Nice Tuesday: A Memoir").

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A False Spring - buy book here

Tom Seaver and Me - buy book here

Broken Patterns - buy book here

A Nice Tuesday: A Memoir - buy book here

EPISODE 237: Pro Sports in Atlanta - It's Complicated (With Clayton Trutor)

By the time you hear this week's episode, the Atlanta Braves just may be celebrating their second-ever World Series trophy since moving from Milwaukee in 1956. 

If so, it would be the team's first title in 26 years, and only the second time in the region's modern sports history - or fourth, if you include the titles won by the now-defunct NASL's Atlanta Chiefs in 1968 and Major League Soccer's Atlanta United three years ago - that "The ATL" has been able to boast of any true major pro sports championship. 

That kind of futility can make any sports fan question their sanity, and as this week's guest Clayton Trutor ("Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta―and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports") tells us - in Atlanta's case, that self-doubt dates all the way back to the mid-1970s when one of its major newspapers dubbed the city "Loserville, USA".

As Trutor describes it, Atlanta's excitement around the arrival of four professional franchises during a dynamic six-year (1966-72) period quickly gave way to general frustration and, eventually, widespread apathy toward its home teams.  By the dawn of the 80s, all four of the region's major-league franchises were flailing in the standings, struggling to draw fans - and, in the case of the NHL's Flames, ready to move out of town.

While that indifference/malaise has dissipated somewhat in the decades since then (save for a second attempt at the NHL with the short-lived Thrashers), the dearth of team titles continues to loom over Atlanta's pro sports scene.

The resurgent Braves and their paradigm-changing Truist Park complex may just help change all that.

Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta - And How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports - buy book here

EPISODE 229: US Soccer's First Pro Leagues - With Brian Bunk

Quiz any fan of soccer in the US as to the origin of the professional game on American soil, and you're likely to get a myriad of answers - usually rooted in generational identity.

​If you're under 30, the 1996 launch of Major League Soccer looks like a logical starting point - 25 years old, 29 teams strong, and dozens of soccer-specific stadiums befitting a "major" sports league.

Older MLS fans in places like Seattle, Portland, and San Jose point out the original versions of their current clubs being domiciled in something called the North American Soccer League - which featured a bevy of international stars and drew huge crowds in the late 1970s/early 1980s as the then-"sport of the future."

Others with longer memories (and often soccer-playing lineages) will recall the decades-long, ethnically-flavored heartbeat of the sport known as the American Soccer League - dating back to 1933, or even 1921, depending on your guideposts.

But, as soccer historian Dr. Brian Bunk ("From Football to Soccer: The Early History of the Beautiful Game in the United States") reveals to us this week, the true birth of the pro game dates all the way back to 1894 - when not one, but two leagues sought to bring England's popular fast-growing sport to the colonies - introduced (interestingly) with the financial backing and operational resources of baseball's National League.

From Football to Soccer: The Early History of the Beautiful Game in the United States - buy book here

EPISODE 228: Candlestick Park - With Steven Travers

Described as a "festive prison yard" by famed New Yorker baseball essayist Roger Angell during the 1962 World Series, San Francisco's famed Candlestick Park was equally loved and hated by sports teams and fans alike during its 43-year-long run as the dual home of baseball's Giants and the NFL's 49ers.

​Curiously (and perhaps illegally) built on a landfill ​atop​ a garbage dump ​at the edge of San Francisco Bay, the "'Stick"​ was notorious for ​its​ tornadic winds​, ​ominous fogs​​ ​and uncomfortably chilly temperatures - especially in its first decade as an open-facing, largely baseball-only park.

​Though fully enclosed in 1971 to accommodate the arrival of the football 49ers (replacing the stadium's grass surface with the more-dual-purpose Astroturf to boot), the aesthetics changed little - made worse by the elimination of the park's previously lovely view of San Francisco's downtown.

B​ut there were sports to ​be had. While the Giants only won two NL pennants during their time at Candlestick (despite some huge talent and multiple future Hall of Famers), the 49ers brought perennial playoff-caliber football to the venue - including five NFL titles and a record 36 appearances on ABC's "Monday Night Football" - before leaving for Santa Clara in 2014.

Sportswriter Steven Travers ("Remembering the Stick: Candlestick Par​k: ​1960–2013​")​ takes us back in time to recount the good, bad and downright bizarre of one of the Bay Area's most unique sports venues.

Remembering the Stick - Candlestick Park: 1960-2013 - buy book here

EPISODE 218: Baseball Goes to War - With Gary Bedingfield

In our Episode 104 with David Hubler & Josh Drazen, we examined the existential crisis faced by organized baseball during the first half of the 1940s, when America's heightened involvement in World War II threatened to shut down pro leagues entirely as the country focused its attention elsewhere.

While President Roosevelt's now-famous "Green Light Letter" to MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis on January 15, 1942 ensured the game would continue unimpeded Stateside, hundreds of major-league and thousands of minor-league players soon found themselves drafted into, or even volunteering for active wartime duty abroad - including some of baseball's biggest stars of the era, like Joe DiMaggio, Pee Wee Reese, Ted Williams, and Stan Musial.

Baseball-in-wartime expert Gary Bedingfield ("Baseball in Hawaii During World War II") joins the 'cast to discuss the travails of these professional players across the war's Pacific and European theaters, who balanced combat-related "day jobs" with surprisingly competitive military league play - especially in Hawaii, where many of the game's best found themselves stationed at one point or another.

Baseball in Hawaii During World War II - buy book here

EPISODE 212: Horace Stoneham & the New York Giants - With Steve Treder

Baseball historian Steve Treder ("Forty Years a Giant: The Life of Horace Stoneham") steps up to the plate this week to delve into the oft-overlooked contributions of influential San Francisco (née New York) Giants owner Horace Stoneham - who quietly stewarded the storied National League franchise through four turbulent decades of baseball history (1936-76).

Inheriting the club at the tender age of 32 from his father after his death in 1936, Stoneham actually began his tenure with the Manhattan-based Giants (and its sprawling multi-sport Polo Grounds venue) twelve years earlier as an apprentice - working his way up from lowly ticketing assistant to (legendary field manager) John McGraw confidante by the early 1930s.

Despite winning only four NL pennants (including the famous 1951 "Shot Heard 'Round the World") and just one World Series title (1954) while in New York, Stoneham more significantly impacted the team's legacy and the game's future off the field.

In the mid-1940s when the Pacific Coast League was angling to gain Major League status, few except Stoneham and Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey took it seriously; twelve years later, the Giants and Dodgers became the first teams to boldly relocate westward.

Stoneham was also an early pioneer in racial integration: he signed Negro League stars Monte Irvin and Hank Thompson in 1949 (enabling the Giants to become the second-ever MLB club to break the color barrier); and he hired the majors' first-ever Spanish-speaking scout to help find and develop Latin American players.

Forty Years a Giant: The Life of Horace Stoneham - buy book here

EPISODE 191: National League Baseball's 1900 Contraction - With Bob Bailey

We celebrate the Society for American Baseball Research's fiftieth anniversary with a look back at one of the most pivotal events in major league baseball history - and featured in the group's newly-released commemorative anthology "SABR: 50 at 50".

Longtime Society contributor Bob Bailey ("Four Teams Out: The National League Reduction of 1900") revisits his 1990 Baseball Research Journal article describing how a fledgling 12-team, 1890s-era National League pro baseball monopoly found itself on the brink of implosion - as financial imbalance, competitive disparity, self-dealing common ownership, and a pronounced national economic Depression collectively threatened the circuit's very survival by decade's end.

As a result, the NL eliminated four franchises for the 1900 season - all former refugees from the previous American Association:

• Ned Hanlon's "small ball"-centric (original) Baltimore Orioles (AA: 1882-92; NL: 1893-99);

• The Cy Young-led Cleveland Spiders (AA: 1887-88; NL: 1889-99);

• The woeful original Washington Senators (AA: 1891 as the "Statesmen"; NL: 1892-99); AND

• Louisville's first and only major league baseball team - the Colonels (née Eclipse)

By 1901, Baltimore, Cleveland and Washington each had new franchises in Ban Johnson's NL-challenging American League - with Louisville never returning to major league play.

SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game - buy book here

EPISODE 182: National League Baseball's Cleveland Spiders - With Eric Nusbaum

Writer/author (and Episode 158 guest) Eric Nusbaum (Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between) returns for a second visit, this time to help us obsess about the curious story of the National League's 1899 Cleveland Spiders - the worst major league baseball team of all time.

While today's current generation of baseball fans will swear that the 1962 NL expansion New York Mets (40-120 record; .250 winning percentage), the 2003 AL Detroit Tigers (43–119; .265), or even the 2018 AL Baltimore Orioles (47-115; .290) might each own the record for on-field futility - none come close to the stunningly woeful 20-134 (.130) performance turned in by Cleveland's first major league team, one that preceded and indirectly influenced today's AL Indians.

The Spiders were a consistently competitive team in the 1890s - loaded with eventual Hall of Fame talents like Bobby Wallace, Jesse Burkett and legendary pitching ace Cy Young. Attendance and ticket revenue, however, were terrible - hindered significantly by Ohio blue laws that prohibited lucrative games on Sundays.

So in the 1898 off-season, team owner-brothers Frank & Stanley Robison took advantage of the NL's liberal "syndicate" ownership rules, purchased the financially teetering but far better-drawing St. Louis Browns, and shipped their more talented Spiders roster to the Gateway City as the "Perfectos" - leaving their Cleveland franchise to founder for 1899, all by design.

Nusbaum takes us through the various layers of ignominy that beset the Spiders' last season of existence, including: losing 40 of their last 41 games (and 70 of their last 74); drawing so poorly by June (a mere 179 per game) that all home games were moved to either neutral sites or visiting teams' home parks; and even proffering a local hotel cigar stand clerk to pitch their final game in Cincinnati (a 19-3 loss).

Plus, how the Spiders helped today's Indians get their now increasingly controversial nickname.

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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 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 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?

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

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”!

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Home of the Braves: The Battle for Baseball in Milwaukee - buy here

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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The Polo Grounds: Essays and Memories of New York City’s Historic Ballpark, 1880-1963 - buy here

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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League Park: Historic Home of Cleveland Baseball 1891-1946 - buy here

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EPISODE #83: The Baltimore Orioles, Boston Beaneaters & the 1897 NL Pennant Race – With Bill Felber

Career journalist and baseball history author Bill Felber (A Game of Brawl: The Orioles, the Beaneaters, and the Battle for the 1897 Pennant) joins the big show to discuss the most cut-throat pennant race in American baseball history – a multi-level study in contrast that also symbolically set the course of how the modern-day game would ultimately be played.

On one side was the original incarnation of the Baltimore Orioles – a charter member of the 1882 American Association who migrated to the National League ten years later (and not genealogically connected to today’s current American League club).  Led by eventual baseball Hall of Famers John McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler, and managerial innovator “Foxy” Ned Hanlon (no relation to your humble host?), the original O’s had a reputation as the dirtiest team in baseball – though many of the tactics they employed (e.g., tight pitching, base-stealing, hit-and-run plays, and precise bunting) were simply edgy approaches to the rules that later became strategic staples of the modern game.

On the other, the comparatively saintly Boston Beaneaters – part of the longest lineage in baseball history dating back to the earliest days of the professional game and predecessors of today’s Atlanta Braves – and eight-time National League champs over the course of the late 1800s.  Boasting five of their own Cooperstown enshrinees – pitcher Kid Nichols, outfielders Hugh Duffy and Billy Hamilton, third baseman Jimmy Collins, and manager Franke Selee – the 1897 Beaneaters were the latest installment of a franchise that largely dominated the NL for most of the 1890s.

A hotly contested battle throughout the season, the pursuit of the pennant was the most intensely watched team sporting event in the country’s history to that time, right down to the dramatic final week that climaxed with a decisive three-game series.  The effective championship match on the last day of the season saw 30,000+ crazed Boston fans – including a rabid self-appointed supporters group known as the “Royal Rooters” – break down the gates of the 10,000-capacity South End Grounds to watch the Beaneaters grind out a win and bring down baseball’s first and most notorious “evil empire.”

PLUS: soap suds on the pitcher’s mound; the Temple Cup; late-Senator Ted Kennedy’s grandfather; the “Baltimore Chop,” and "Nuf Ced" McGreevy!

AND, we fire up the old Victrola to hear one of (if not) the earliest known recordings of the Boston “Royal Rooters” de facto fight song, that originated with the Beaneaters during this memorable season!

Thanks to 503 Sports, OldSchoolShirts.com, SportsHistoryCollectibles.com, Audible, and MyBookie for their support of this week’s episode!

A Game of Brawl: The Orioles, the Beaneaters and the Battle for the 1897 Pennant - buy here

EPISODE #72: Baseball’s “Miracle” Boston Braves with Historian Charlie Alexander

When you’re the oldest continuously operating franchise in baseball (or in all of American professional sports, for that matter), you’re bound to have some stories – and the proverbial dusty boxes of history sitting in the attic of the Atlanta Braves’ SunTrust Park are certainly full of them. 

This week, we rope in noted baseball historian Charlie Alexander (The Miracle Braves, 1914-1916) to delve into one of the more interesting and oft-forgotten periods of Braves baseball history, when the then-Boston version of the franchise shocked the baseball establishment by rising from last place in the National League on July 4, 1914 to win the league pennant by an astonishing 10 ½ games by regular season’s end (going 68-17 over their final 87 games – a winning percentage of .782), and then sweeping the heavily favored Connie Mack-managed Philadelphia A’s four games to none in the 1914 World Series.

Although also uncharacteristically competitive in the next two seasons (finishing second in 1915 and third in 1916), the “Miracle Braves” of 1914 remained the high-water mark for the Boston franchise over the three decades that followed – finishing no higher than fourth in the eight-team NL during that time, including four seasons in dead last.   It wasn’t until 1948 that the team won another pennant (losing in the World Series to Cleveland) – the last hurrah of the Braves’ run in Boston until absconding to Milwaukee during the 1954 preseason.

Buckle up for stories featuring umpire-baiting and platoon-pioneering manager George Stallings, the double-play infield (and eventual baseball Hall of Fame) duo of Johnny Evers and “Rabbit” Maranville, and the ferocious pitching trio of Dick Rudolph, Bill James, and Lefty Tyler – and the curious stadium swap between the Braves and the rival cross-town Red Sox during their respective 1914 and 1915 World Series championships.

Thank you SportsHistoryCollectibles.com, Podfly, and Audible for sponsoring this week’s show!

The Miracle Braves, 1914-1916 - buy book here