Pittsburgh-native sports historian (and previous Episode 242 guest) Dave Finoli ("Where Pittsburgh Played: Oakland’s Historic Sports Venues") returns to the pod for a deep dive into the notable histories of the Steel City's important first generation of modern-day sports venues.

We dig into some of the memorable (and many not-so) professional teams and leagues that called the city's Oakland neighborhood home, in places like: Pitt Stadium (NFL football's Steelers); the Duquesne Gardens (the early NHL Pirates & numerous minor-league hockey clubs; the BAA basketball Ironmen); and of course, the legendary Forbes Field - which not only housed baseball's Pirates, but also the same-named (pre-Steelers) sister football franchise, two WWII-era NFL contractions (1943's "Steagles" & 1944's "Card-Pitt"), the Negro Leagues' iconic Homestead Grays, and even the 1967 one-and-only season of the NPSL soccer Phantoms.

PLUS: we "send in" a special collegiate nod to the still in-use Fitzgerald Field House !

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AND: Get up to $100 in matching deposit credit when you sign up to try PrizePicks - and use promo code GOODSEATS!

Where Pittsburgh Played: Oakland’s Historic Sports Venues - buy book here

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Author Matthew Algeo (Last Team Standing: How the Steelers and the Eagles – "The Steagles" – Saved Pro Football During World War II) joins Tim Hanlon all the way from Maputo, Mozambique to discuss the marriage of convenience that literally saved the National Football League from collapse in 1943. Algeo describes how a desperate Art Rooney scrambled to save his Pittsburgh Steelers franchise, depleted by wartime military call-ups; how a hastily assembled squad of ragtag draft rejects practiced football at night while maintaining defense jobs by day (including one player who worked on the eventual war-ending Manhattan Project); why the "Phil-Pitt Combine" wore Eagles colors and played more home games in Philadelphia than in Pittsburgh; and, in a PODCAST EXCLUSIVE, why the story of the Steagles just might soon be coming to a theater near you.

Where Pittsburgh Played: Oakland’s Historic Sports Venues - buy book here

Last Team Standing: How the Steelers and the Eagles - "The Steagles" - Saved Pro Football During World War II - buy book here