Good Seats Still Available

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, thoroughbred horse racing, boxing, 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 "blazer" 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!

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SPONSOR THANKS:

• Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN:

• A Mic for All Seasons: My Three Decades Announcing the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, and Olympics (2023): https://amzn.to/3ZNZ8Cb

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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.

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SPONSOR THANKS:

• Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN:

• The Year Without a World Series: Major League Baseball and the Road to the 1994 Players' Strike (2023): https://amzn.to/3rsfPXc

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

[A scheduling snafu this week gives us a perfect excuse to re-release this hidden gem from November 2019 - enjoy!]

You can be forgiven if you never heard of the International Volleyball Association – the mid-1970s co-ed pro circuit that aimed to draft off the rising popularity of Olympic and beach volleyball during America's wildest sports decade – but the high-wattage media and entertainment moguls behind its creation at the time certainly cannot.

The IVA was the brainchild of prolific Hollywood television and film producer David Wolper ("Roots," "The Thorn Birds" and "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" to name a mere few) – who became smitten with the sport while filming documentary footage of the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Wolper quickly recruited a who's who of well-connected LA-based investors – including ABC-TV (later Paramount and Fox) chief Barry Diller, as well as Motown music studio founder/movie producer aspirant Berry Gordy – and by 1975, a five-team California and Southwest-centric league bowed before modest, but enthusiastic crowds.

Ironically, with nary a television contract in sight (despite players Mary Jo Peppler and Linda Fernandez appearing on ABC's "Superstars" competition, and coverage of 1977's IVA All-Star Game on CBS' "Sports Spectacular"), most of the big-name investors had pulled out by 1976.

Volleyball magazine publisher Jim Bartlett stepped in to quietly stabilize the league, with legendary basketball big man and beach enthusiast Wilt Chamberlain joining for various roles as player, coach, commissioner, and publicity magnet. But neither could ultimately overcome the PR disaster of a 1979 mid-match police bust of Denver Comets owner-brothers Robert and David Casey (for drug trafficking), nor the promotion-deflating boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics where the US women's team was expected to medal.

IVA standout and beach volleyball legend Jay Hanseth joins the podcast to help "dig" into one of pro sports' most enigmatic and endlessly fascinating leagues.

FIND & FOLLOW:

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Domestically, American football has never been more popular (or prosperous) than it is today - yet questions continue to circle among the ownership class of the NFL as to how the pro game can continue to grow outside the confines of its current 32-team franchise structure.

While the feasibility of pursuing more club expansion within the US is hotly debated, there is no denying that the true future of the league's fortunes rests on its ability to more reliably tap into the massive fan fervor for pro pigskin building in international markets.

Ben Issacs ("The American Football Revolution: How Britain Fell in Love with the NFL") makes the case that the UK might be one of the most logical regions to put on the league's shortlist - buttressed by a surprisingly strong history of interest in and support for the game - especially in London, where nearly three dozen regular season games have been played since 2007.

In fact, the British Isles have been fascinated with American football for much longer than that - and Isaacs takes us through some of the evidence, including: the NFL's American Bowl pre-season exhibition series during the 1980s; the post-season 1984 USFL Wembley Stadium matchup between the champion Philadelphia Stars and the Burt Reynolds/Tim Bassett-owned Tampa Bay Bandits (for the long-forgotten "Jetsave Challenge Cup"); the ill-fated NFL-sponsored World League of American Football (with the 1991 World Bowl champion London Monarchs); and the reconstituted NFL Europe/Europa and its still-revered Scottish Claymores.

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BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN:

• The American Football Revolution: How Britain Fell in Love with the NFL (2023; US pre-order): https://amzn.to/3seLF9D

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
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• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

[We round out our last week of summer vacation with a re-release of this listener-favorite episode from June 2019 - enjoy!]

Author and former SPORT magazine writer David Levine (Life on the Rim: A Year in the Continental Basketball Association) joins the 'cast to give us our first taste of the quirky minor league basketball circuit that began as a Pennsylvania-based regional outfit in 1946 (predating the NBA's formation by two months), and meandered through a myriad of death-defying iterations until whimpering into oblivion in 2009.

Often billed throughout its curious history as the "World's Oldest Professional Basketball League," the colorful Continental Basketball Association rocketed into the national sports consciousness during the 1980s – when expansion into non-traditional locales (e.g., Anchorage, AK; Casper, WY; Great Falls, MT; Atlantic City, NJ); innovative rule changes (e.g., sudden-death overtime, no foul-outs, a seven-point game scoring system); and headline-grabbing fan promotions (e.g., "1 Million Dollar Supershot," "Ton-of-Money Free Throw," "CBA Sportscaster Contest") – garnered its first national TV coverage, and even grudging respect from the staid, top-tier NBA.

Levine recounts his time chronicling the 1988-89 season of the CBA's Albany (NY) Patroons, and the real-world stories of the realities of playing, coaching (including a young and hungry George Karl), traveling, and endlessly hoping in a league that sometimes rewarded its members with opportunities at the next level of pro basketball – but more often, did not.

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BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN:

• "Life On the Rim: A Year in the Continental Basketball Association" (1990)

FIND & FOLLOW:

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• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable

[A summer vacation re-release of a fan favorite episode from March 2019!]

We celebrate our second anniversary with the intriguing background story of the original Major Indoor Soccer League, with the man who started it all – Ed Tepper.

A commercial real estate developer by trade, Tepper actually got his start in pro sports ownership as the owner of the original National Lacrosse League's Philadelphia Wings – only to switch allegiances to an inchoate indoor offshoot of the world's most popular sport after a chance exhibition (between the 1973 NASL champion Atoms and the Russian CSKA "Red Army" team) at Philadelphia's Spectrum on February 11, 1974.

Originally interested in the game's bespoke Astroturf-covered surface as a potential improvement for his fledgling box lacrosse club, Tepper (along with 11,700+ enthusiastic curiosity-seekers) instead became instantly attracted to the fast-paced action and high scoring of "indoor soccer" – and quickly resolved to make a professional sport out of it.

In this illuminating interview, Tepper recounts some of the notable events and influential people along the journey from concept to the MISL's official debut kick (by Cincinnati Kids part-owner Pete Rose, no less) on December 22, 1978 at Uniondale, Long Island's Nassau Coliseum – including:

• Convincing ABA Virginia Squires owner (and eventual MISL commissioner) Earl Foreman of the game's potential;

• The instant credibility boost of signing American superstar goalkeeper Shep Messing;

• NASL commissioner Phil Woosnam's on-again, off-again interest in the indoor game;

• How (and why) NFL owners Carroll Rosenbloom and Al Davis wanted in; AND

• The unsung role of TV executive Bob Wussler in garnering attention for the fledgling circuit.

PLUS: The untold tale of Tepper's very own (barely one-season long) MISL franchise – the New Jersey Rockets!