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We celebrate the arrival of 2020 with an archive re-release of one our favorite interviews of 2019 - New York Yankees broadcaster John Sterling.

Strap in for a rollicking revisit to forgotten pro sports stops like the NBA Baltimore Bullets, WHA New York Raiders/Golden Knights, ABA New York Nets, the WFL New York Stars/Charlotte Hornets - and even the long-lost Enterprise Sports Radio network!

We put the wraps on an event-filled 2019 with our first-annual holiday roundtable spectacular featuring the return of fellow defunct sports enthusiasts Paul Reeths (OurSportsCentral.com, StatsCrew.com & Episode 46) and Andy Crossley (Fun While It Lasted & Episode 2) – for a spirited discussion about the past, present and potential future of "forgotten" pro sports teams and leagues.

It's a no-holds-barred look back on some of the year's most notable events and discoveries, including:

• The short rise and quick demise of the Alliance of American Football;

• Major League Soccer's (unsustainable?) expansion to thirty teams;

• The folding of the Arena Football League – again;

• Major League Baseball's minor league contraction plan; AND

• Raiders NFL football moves on from Oakland for good.

As well as some predictions on what might transpire in 2020, as:

• The second coming of Vince McMahon's XFL kicks off in February;

• Baseball celebrates the Negro Leagues' 100th anniversary;

• Las Vegas takes its biggest sports gamble yet with the Raiders;

• The MLS Players' Association flexes its pre-season bargaining muscles;

• The Chargers and Clippers grapple with second-fiddle status in LA; AND

• Mark Cuban's Professional Futsal League . . . well, your guess is as good as ours!

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Baseball biographer Jeremy Beer (Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball's Greatest Forgotten Player) joins the podcast this week to discuss the life and career of one of baseball's greatest, though largely unsung, players – and provide us a convenient excuse for a deeper dive into the endlessly fascinating vagaries of the sport's legendary Negro Leagues.

Buck O'Neil once described Oscar Charleston as "Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Tris Speaker rolled into one," while baseball historian Bill James ranked him as the fourth-best player of all time – inclusive of the Major Leagues, in which he never played. During his prime, he became a legend in Cuba as well one of black America's most popular celebrities. Yet even among serious sports fans, Charleston is virtually unknown today. In a lengthy career spanning 1915-54, Charleston played against, managed, befriended, and occasionally brawled with baseball greats like Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Jesse Owens, Roy Campanella, and Branch Rickey – with a competitive "hothead" reputation that sometimes brought him trouble – but more often delivered victories, championships, and profound respect. Charleston played for 11 clubs across at least five different Negro Leagues, and doubled as manager for a number of them – including the 1935 Negro National League pennant-winning Pittsburgh Crawfords – considered by many baseball scholars to be the best black baseball team of all time.

Though he never got the chance to play in the bigs, Charleston was still a trailblazer – becoming the first African-American to work as a Major League scout, when Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey hired him for to oversee his fledgling United Baseball League "Brown Dodgers" feeder club.

A National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee in 1976, Charleston's combined record as a player, manager, and scout makes him the most accomplished figure in black baseball history – and, without question, beyond.

Journalist-author/Alabama native Bill Plott (Black Baseball's Last Team Standing: The Birmingham Black Barons) joins the show to help us discover more about the legendary Negro League franchise regarded by most baseball historians as the "jewel of Southern black baseball."

The first Black Barons team began in 1920 as charter members of the Negro Southern League, an eight-member circuit that largely mirrored the all-white minor-league Southern Association – right down to the sharing of ballparks. Three years later, Birmingham made the leap to Rube Foster's major league Negro National League, black baseball's highest professional level at the time – soon to feature eventual All-Star legends like George "Mule" Suttles and Leroy "Satchel" Paige.

The team survived the Great Depression by bouncing between the major Negro National and minor Negro Southern leagues during the 1930s, finally returning to the bigs in 1940 via the newly ascendant Negro American League.

The 1940s was the zenith of the franchise's history, catalyzed by new owners Tom Hayes (a prominent Memphis funeral home operator) and sports entrepreneur Abe Saperstein – whose Harlem Globetrotters provided off-season employment to some of the players. (Reese Tatum, the team's popular center fielder, joined the 'Trotters as "Goose" Tatum, the "Clown Prince of Basketball" – eventually earning greater fame for his achievements on the hardwood than those on the diamond.)

The Black Barons were among the Negro Leagues' elite teams, winning NAL pennants (though losing Negro World Series') in 1943, 1944 and 1948 – and featured a who's who of standout on-field talent such as Lorenzo "Piper" Davis, Lyman Bostock, Bill Powell, Bill Barnes, Joe Bankhead, Ed Steele, Bill Greason, Artie Wilson, Jehosie Heard, and a teenage sensation named Willie Mays – many of whom left for the soon-to-be integrated major leagues.

Birmingham soldiered on post-integration into the 1950s, striving to maintain professional relevance and outlasting most of the remaining Negro League teams in the process; by 1960, the Black Barons had been reduced to a barnstorming outfit, fading into obscurity against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement – giving up the ghost for good in 1963.

Still, the team's legend – and original ballpark (Birmingham's Rickwood Field) – live on.

PLUS: Charley Pride gets traded for a team bus!

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We mourn the unexpected passing of University of Arizona men's ice hockey media broadcaster & World Hockey Association history flamekeeper Tim Gassen - with our previous Episode 75 interview from August 18, 2018.

RIP Tim - your passion for the WHA will be dearly missed!

We hit the lanes this week to delve into the fascinating story of the nation's first and only attempt at a professional team bowling league – a seemingly anachronistic idea by today's standards, but a concept that made total sense in the early 1960s when pro bowling was in ascendance and the sport was seemingly everywhere on television.

Bowlers Journal columnist and historian J.R. "Dr. Jake" Schmidt (The Bowling Chronicles: Collected Writings of Dr. Jake) joins the podcast to lay out the curious backstory, short-lived season(s) and unwitting legacy of the National Bowling League (1960-62) – an ambitious, but altogether logical attempt to professionalize bowling in the style of America's other major team sports, and capitalize on the big money purses beginning to fuel national TV competitions during the late 1950s.

Amidst a bevy of popular made-for-TV competitions that featured various takes on head-to-head play – like NBC's weekly Championship Bowling, and primetime's Make That Spare (ABC) and Jackpot Bowling (NBC) – the coast-to-coast NBL hoped to offer bowling professionals a city-based team format, replete with purposely-designed television-friendly arenas and boisterous fans.

Despite investment from deep-pocketed funders like AFL founder Lamar Hunt and oilman/Cotton Bowl creator J. Curtis Sanford (whose Dallas-based 72-lane Bronco Bowl set the standard for NBL facilities); a well-publicized draft (with then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson in attendance); and a novel scoring system that featured situational bonus points and wild-card substitutions, the NBL stumbled out of the gate devoid of the very thing it needed most to succeed – a national television contract.

Outfoxed by the nascent Pro Bowlers Association – which was simultaneously pioneering a laddered individual vs. individual national tour format with a similarly fledgling ABC-TV – the NBL had to rely solely on individual gates while trying to convince other networks to take notice. Early crowds were sparse to virtually non-existent, and most pros found the money, light workload and broad television exposure of the PBA's "Pro Bowlers' Tour" to be the better path to ply their wares.

It's a tale of what might have been – and we "spare" no question in our pursuit of the story of this most intriguing of forgotten pro leagues!

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Author and unwitting pro football historian Joe Ziemba (When Football Was Football: The Chicago Cardinals and the Birth of the NFL) help us set the record straight on the often-misunderstood history of the first incarnation of pro football's oldest continuous club – now know as the Arizona Cardinals.

Arguably the least successful franchise in National Football League history, the Chicago version of the Cardinals originated years before the start of the NFL (née American Professional Football Association) as the Morgan Athletic Club – a dominant entry in Chicago's fledgling amateur football leagues owned by house painter/plumber/visionary Chris O'Brien.

In 1920, O'Brien's club ponied up $100 to become a charter member of the APFA, quickly developing a pointed rivalry with a fellow founding franchise called the Decatur Staleys – soon to become the cross-town Chicago Bears two years later.

Despite technically winning its first NFL championship in 1925 (controversially declared by Commissioner Joe Carr after the season-dominating Pottsville [PA] Maroons played an unauthorized post-season game against collegiate powerhouse Notre Dame), and eventual new ownership (Bears VP Charley Bidwill bought the Depression-challenged club in 1932) – the Cardinals played consistently losing football through the end of World War II, and often in the shadow of the more popular and successful Bears to the north.

Aside from some short-lived success in 1947 (winning its second [or first?] league championship under coach James Conzelman and a vaunted "Million Dollar Backfield" of stars Paul Christman, Pat Harder, Elmer Angsman, and Charley Trippi), and in 1948 (losing a close final to Philadelphia is a driving snowstorm) – the Chicago Cardinals were regular laughingstocks of the NFL. The Bidwill family's tightfisted finances yielded reliably uncompetitive teams – known more for comically slapstick play and regularly sparse crowds than quality football.

After rebuffing an offer to sell the team by entrepreneurial pro football aspirant Lamar Hunt, the Bidwills deserted the Windy City in favor of St. Louis after the 1959 season.

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Veteran Missouri-area sportswriter Troy Treasure (Icing on the Plains: The Rough Ride of Kansas City's NHL Scouts) joins the podcast this week to delve into the mostly forgotten (and woeful) two-season saga of the 1974 National Hockey League expansion franchise now known as the New Jersey Devils.

Along with the Washington Capitals, the Scouts were the last additions in the NHL's aggressive expansion cycle begun in 1967, and a logical progression for a metro area historically steeped in minor league hockey. While team president Edwin Thompson sought to call the club "Mo-Hawks" to reflect the geographical bond between neighboring Missouri and Kansas, Chicago's similar-sounding Black Hawks squawked in opposition – leading to a community-sourced renaming to "Scouts" after a famous statue overlooking the city.

A construction-delayed (and livestock/rodeo-occupied) Kemper Arena forced the team to play its first month of games on the road (record: 0-7-1), until a 11/2/74 home debut (loss) to Chicago. Their first win finally came the next day away at fellow debutante Washington – the only team to finish the season with a worse record than the Scouts' 15-54-11.

The next season began more promisingly with KC a mere point out of contention for the NHL's charitable playoffs by the end of December 1975. However, the team crashed and burned over its remaining 44 games – posting a remarkably futile 1-35-8 record through season's end.

While rumors of relocation dogged the Scouts as early as the 1975 off-season, the club's unwieldy ownership structure (at least two dozen investors), limited capital and thin talent pool (exacerbated by NHL expansion and a free-spending WHA) – all against a backdrop of a national economic recession –conspired against the Scouts even before they took to the ice.

Relocation to Denver to become the Colorado Rockies came swiftly in the summer of 1976, and Kansas City's brief and forgettable fling with top-flight pro hockey was quickly over.

Treasure helps us dissect some of the Scouts' more notable moments – and surmises why and how the NHL may someday again find its way back to the City of Fountains.

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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 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.

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Marvin "Bad News" Barnes was considered a future Hall of Fame basketball player before he even graduated from college. A standout at Providence (averaging 20.7 points and 17.9 rebounds a game, and leading the Friars to the NCAA Final Four in 1973), Barnes was a consensus 1974 All-American with the world at his fingertips. Although Barnes enjoyed two flamboyantly successful years in the American Basketball Association with the colorful Spirits of St. Louis – where he won 1974-75 Rookie of the Year honors, as well as All-Star accolades both seasons – his career quickly fizzled in the post-merger NBA, where he wore out his welcome with the Detroit Pistons, Buffalo Braves, Boston Celtics, and San Diego Clippers in just four years. By 1980, Barnes' unpredictable idiosyncrasies – fueled by chronic drug and alcohol abuse – had turned a can't-miss pro basketball superstar into a prematurely past-his-prime has-been. Longtime Boston sportswriter Mike Carey ("Bad News": The Turbulent Life of Marvin Barnes, Pro Basketball's Original Renegade) joins this week's show to delve into the tragic story of a supremely gifted athlete whose self-destructive nature took him from sure-fire basketball greatness to a life of homeless panhandling, drug dealing and pimping on the mean streets of East San Diego, and five years in prison.

Even with seemingly limitless chances to turn things around, Barnes was repeatedly undone by predictable slides back into addiction and reckless behavior – ultimately succumbing to acute cocaine and heroin intoxication in 2014 at age 62.

The story of Marvin Barnes is one of squandered talent, met by tragically unconquerable inner demons.

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