Good Seats Still Available

Society for American Baseball Research historian/chronicler Justin Mckinney (Baseball's Union Association: The Short, Strange Life of a 19th-Century Major League) joins the podcast this week to weigh in on the debate that continues to swirl around baseball's curious one-season Union Association - namely, was it a truly major league? As first broached in our Episode 73 with Jon Springer, the National League was less than a decade old back in 1884, and the rival American Association, which had been established two years earlier, was nipping at its heels. "Organized Baseball" had just been formed to help codify the still-gestating professional version of the game. But when a maverick millionaire and spurned team-owner aspirant named Henry Lucas established a new third major league that year - the Union Association - the pro game erupted into chaos. Come for the pennant-winning St. Louis Maroons (who won 94 of their 113 regular season games, and bested the second-place Cincinnati Outlaw Reds by a whopping 21 games), but stay for the litany of replacement teams (e.g., Wilmington Quicksteps, St. Paul Saints, Altoona Mountain Citys, Kansas City Cowboys, etc.) that folded just as soon as they arrived.

We're taking a few days of early summer vacation this week - but not before sitting down for a very fun interview with pro football enthusiast and friend-of-the-show Arnie Chapman - as a guest on his popular Sports History Network podcast "The Football History Dude."

Tim and Arnie dive into some of the most memorable football-related episodes of "Good Seats Still Available" thus far - and wax nostalgic on mutually favorite former circuits like the World Football League, the first XFL, the World League of American Football, and the original USFL, among others.

Please enjoy this conversation we recorded a few weeks back - and be sure to check out all the other great podcasts across the Sports History Network!

While more than a few generations of NBA fans believe the Sacramento Kings franchise began its life when the team played (and lost) its very first exhibition game against the Los Angeles Clippers at the warehouse-converted ARCO Arena (I) on October 25, 1985 - serious students of the game know better. Indeed, a very rich and colorful series of previous incarnations dating back to nearly a century earlier - beginning as the primordial semi-pro "industrial league" Rochester (NY) Seagrams in the mid-1920s, and evolving into the NBL, BAA and eventually NBA versions of the Rochester Royals - historically confirm the Kings as one of the sport's oldest consecutively run professional outfits. Gerry Schultz (Cincinnati's Basketball Royalty: A Brief History) joins the podcast this week to delve into the club's pivotal, and, at times, legendary, 15-year stint as the Cincinnati Royals (1957-72) - when the franchise and the league both came of age by virtue of the play of some of the NBA's greatest all-time performers. Join us for a trek back to the old Cincinnati Gardens (and frequently, other "home" courts in Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus, and even Omaha, NE) - as we look back at the exploits of eventual basketball Hall of Famers like Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas, Maurice Stokes, Clyde Lovellette, Wayne Embry, and Jack Twyman - and ponder how today's Kings might better memorialize the legacy of the club's mostly forgotten time in the Queen City. THANKS to OldSchoolShirts.com for their sponsorship of this week's show (promo code "GOODSEATS" for 10% off all orders!)

"Dave Bancroft should not be in the Hall of Fame." That's how this week's guest Tom Alesia's new book "Beauty at Short: Dave Bancroft, the Most Unlikely Hall of Famer and His Wild Times in Baseball's First Century" starts - a curious way to begin the first (and only) biography of one of Cooperstown's most underappreciated inductees. A competent, if not unremarkable major league shortstop (Philadelphia Phillies, New York Giants, Boston Braves, Brooklyn Robins), and manager (Braves; All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Chicago Colleens, South Bend Blue Sox) - Bancroft was well short on statistical credentials (e.g., .279 lifetime batting average; just 32 career HRs; .406 managerial winning percentage) to warrant obvious inclusion. But his solid play with the two-time World Series winning Giants in the early 1920s came in handy when two of his fellow players from those teams - Bill Terry and Frankie Frisch - became influential members of the Hall's Veterans' Committee in the late 1960s, and squinted hard to tap their collegial teammate for induction in 1971. Part of a stable of early 1970s enshrinees labeled as "Giant cronies" of Terry and Frisch (e.g., Jessie Haines, Chick Hafey, Ross Youngs, George Kelly, Jim Bottemley, Freddie Lindstrom), Bancroft was nonetheless one of his era's more prominent and popular figures - a "player's player," both on and off the field. By the end of this conversation with Alesia, you'll understand why Bancroft's membership in the Hall of Fame actually makes sense.

We revisit the endlessly fascinating World Football League - and its enigmatic founder/first commissioner Gary Davidson - with ESPN.com senior writer Ryan Hockensmith ("The Renegade Who Took On the NFL [And the NBA and the NHL]"). Drawing on recent interviews with Davidson, former NFL defectors Larry Csonka & Paul Warfield, and previous podcast guests Howard Baldwin & Upton Bell, Hockensmith delves into some of the more memorable (and a few of the truly unbelievable) historical moments in the WFL's brief mid-1970s existence - all one-and-a-half seasons of it. The tales are tall, but the history is real - and Hockensmith makes it seem as fresh and vivid as the original events themselves nearly 50 years after its flashy debut and quickly spectacular flameout.

Hollywood film producer (Ray; The Game of Their Lives; Sudden Death) and original New England/Hartford Whalers founder/owner Howard Baldwin (Slim and None: My Wild Ride from the WHA to the NHL and All the Way to Hollywood) returns after a three-year absence to help fill in some of the gaps left over from Episode 100, and to dish on "new" territory from his hard-to-believe career, including:

• The contagious indefatigable spirit of WHA founder Dennis Murphy
• Who really paid for Bobby Hull's headline-grabbing contract (and who didn't)
• How Houston and Cincinnati went from being "in" the June 1978 WHA-NHL "merger," to being "out" of the senior league's "expansion" a year later
• The early 1990s saga of the HC CSKA Moscow "Red Army" team (aka the "Russian Penguins")
• Why the way to San Jose stopped first in Pittsburgh and then Minnesota; AND
• The World Football League's (almost) "Boston Bulls"

With the rebooted (though still potentially trademark-infringing) USFL now in full swing, we take a look back at one of the clubs from the original version that didn't make the cut this time around - the Washington Federals. Washington Post sports reporter Jake Russell ("As the USFL Restarts, A Look Back at the Washington Federals") takes us inside his pursuit to decode the numerous curiosities of one of the first league's poorest-performing franchises - both on the field (a 7-22 record over two seasons), and in the stands (the USFL's second-worst average home attendances each year at venerable RFK Stadium). Snakebitten from the start by: an initial owner who instead swapped for a franchise in Birmingham, AL; a convoluted, decision-slowing three-company joint venture/limited-partnership ownership structure; and a newly ascendant Redskins team celebrating its first NFL title in 41 years just weeks before the new team's debut - the Federals' journey in the USFL was beset by revenue shortfalls, poor timing and just plain bad luck. Still, the Feds had their moments - and Russell takes us inside some of his conversations with notable names in the team's brief, but colorful history (including one of the league's best logo/color schemes) like veteran QB Kim McQuilken, rookie QB Mike Hohensee, RB Craig James, and WR Joey Walters.

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."

We take it hard to the tin this week, with a lively roundtable reminiscence of the oft-overlooked, but undeniably influential Women's Professional Basketball League (WBL) of 1978-81 - with four of its pioneering players that helped pave the way for today's flourishing female pro hoops scene. Liz "Bandit" Galloway McQuitter (Chicago Hustle); Charlene McWhorter Jackson (Hustle, Washington Metros, Milwaukee Does, St. Louis Streak); Adrian Mitchell-Newell (Hustle, Streak; LPBA Southern California Breeze); and episode 28 guest "Machine Gun" Molly Bolin Kazmer (Iowa Cornets, San Francisco Pioneers; Breeze; WABA Columbus Minks), join for an intimate discussion about the rapid rise, untimely fall, and heartening modern-day rediscovery of the WBL - catalyzed by their collective involvement in Legends of the Ball, a new nonprofit dedicated to preserving the foundational history of the league and all that's come because of it.

Baseball historian, Minnesota Twins official scorer and Episode 114 guest Stew Thornley ("Metropolitan Stadium: Memorable Games at Minnesota's Diamond on the Prairie"), returns for a fond look back at the semi-iconic structure that helped secure "major league" status for the Twin Cities in the early 1960s. Known simply as "The Met" by area locals (or even the "Old Met" to distinguish from the downtown Minneapolis Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome that effectively replaced it in 1982), Bloomington's Metropolitan Stadium opened in April of 1956 with the stated hope of luring a Major League Baseball franchise to the region - just as the sport was beginning to chart its modern-era manifest destiny. While ultimately luring Calvin Griffith's Washington Senators to become the Twins in 1961 - as well as the expansion NFL football Vikings that same year - the Met was mostly the exclusive home of the minor league American Association Minneapolis Millers for its first five years of existence, save for a handful of annual NFL preseason exhibition games and two regular season Chicago Cardinals matches in 1959. In 1976, it also became the popular outdoor home of the North American Soccer League's Minnesota Kicks - and its legions of young tailgate-crazy fans. Ahead of its time in the mid-50s, Met Stadium was nearly obsolete by the end of the 70s - decent for baseball, not so much for football - and rumors of at least the Vikings absconding for another to-be-built stadium in the area (including concepts for a domed enclosure or a new football-only facility between it and the nearby indoor Met Center) swirled around the community as early as 1970. Alas, after only 21 seasons each for the Twins and the Vikings (six for the Kicks), Metropolitan Stadium succumbed to poor maintenance and the allure of a new, winter-proof Metrodome. Demolished in 1985, the Met gave way to what is now the country's largest shopping center - the Mall of America.