It's a holiday gift-wrapped conversation with American soccer pioneer and US National Soccer Hall of Famer Johnny Moore - whose professional career as a player and coach across the original versions of both the North American Soccer League (San Jose Earthquakes, Oakland Stompers), and Major Indoor Soccer League (Detroit Lightning, San Francisco Fog, Phoenix Inferno & a one-game/one-goal stint with the Kansas City Comets), and as General Manager of the original Major League Soccer incarnation of the 'Quakes (formerly Clash, now Houston Dynamo) - is the stuff of legend.

Also: the "outlaw" 1969 Oakland/California Clippers; San Francisco's infamous Cow Palace; the mid-70s US Men's National Team; the real origin story of the NASL 35-yard line (and Shootout); and how Mexico's Club America almost became another Chivas USA.

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Soccer Fever: A Year With the San Jose Earthquakes (Richard Lyttle) - buy here

Chicago sports fans of a certain age may remember the name Charles Evranian atop the masthead of the executive suite (behind inimitable owner Lee Stern, of course) of the 1981 outdoor version of the North American Soccer League's Chicago Sting - when that club delivered the first major pro championship to the Windy City since 1963's NFL Bears.

(Not to mention the team's first two barn-burning indoor NASL seasons at the former "Madhouse on Madison".)

But Evranian's time leading the Sting of the early 1980s was merely a brief mile-marker along a fascinatingly peripatetic 20+ year journey across a litany of (mostly forgotten) teams and leagues in both the majors and minors of professional sports management - laden with unbelievable twists and turns that only a podcast of a certain genre could love.

Charlie takes us on a wild ride alongside the likes of legendary front office figures like Bill Veeck, Ted Turner, Pat Williams, and Earl Foreman - for memorable stops including:

leading baseball's Class A Greenwood (SC) Braves to two league championships;
co-founding AHL hockey's minor league Richmond Robins;
reinventing the mid-70s' Chicago White Sox; AND
cleaning up an endless array of messes as the Major Indoor Soccer League's deputy commissioner.