Good Seats Still Available

Tim Hanlon
  • 4.7 (107)
  • Sports
  • Updated Weekly

"Good Seats Still Available" is a curious little podcast devoted to the exploration of what used-to-be in professional sports. Each week, host Tim Hanlon interviews former players, owners, broadcasters, beat reporters, and surprisingly famous "super fans" of teams and leagues that have come and gone - in an attempt to unearth some of the most wild and woolly moments in (often forgotten) sports history.

  1. 2d ago

    The WNBA At 30 - With Tamryn Spruill

    For nearly three decades, the Women's National Basketball Association has survived expansion, contraction, indifferent media coverage, shaky ownership, low salaries and repeated questions about whether women's professional basketball could ever become a sustainable American sports business. And yet, here it is. Journalist and author Tamryn Spruill joins us to discuss her essential new book, "The W: A History of the WNBA," which traces the league from its roots in the wildly successful 1996 U.S. Olympic team through its current cultural and commercial renaissance. Spruill takes us back to a moment when the WNBA wasn't even the only new women's league in town. We revisit its early rivalry with the American Basketball League, the rapid expansion to 16 teams, the financial strains that followed, and the many franchises that disappeared, relocated or were simply forgotten along the way. We also explore the league's long struggle for visibility. Spruill explains how limited television exposure, uneven media treatment and an inability—or unwillingness—to understand the WNBA's actual audience kept generations of elite players largely outside the mainstream sports conversation. Eventually, streaming, social media, changing cultural attitudes and more aggressive sponsorship helped players and fans build something traditional sports media often failed to create for them. And, naturally, we spend plenty of time with the teams that "used to be" - including the Charlotte Sting, Orlando Miracle, the newly-concluded Connecticut Sun and, of course, the original Houston Comets dynasty. + + +   MORE ABOUT TAMRYN SPRUILL: https://www.tamrynspruill.com/   SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY BUY THE BOOK:  "The W: A History of the WNBA": https://amzn.to/3TnDeHe SPONSOR THANKS:  Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats FIND AND FOLLOW: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

    The WNBA At 30 - With Tamryn Spruill

  2. 2d ago ·  Bonus

    You Might Also Like: The Next Five

    Introducing Code and Conscience: Freedom to Invent from The Next Five. Follow the show: The Next Five We’re at the start of Q3 2026. Every day that passes, individuals, managers, executives and boards are crunching their internal numbers. They’re working out if the millions of dollars spent on cutting edge agentic AI deployment over the previous 2 years is showing signs of meaningful ROI. If figures from the first half of 2025 were anything to go on, the juice was not worth the squeeze. MIT’s Gen AI Divide Report 2025 showed that ninety-five percent of generative AI projects in H1 last year failed to deliver demonstrable ROI. Ninety-five percent. But, what happened to that remaining five percent? What secret engine were those elite organisations running that the rest of the market is completely missed? Is it really a gap in technical horsepower? Did they structure innovation better? Manage risk more competently? Or did they grant their teams the power to experiment more freely than the rest? Joining host Tom Parker is Steve Tarcza, Director of AI & Developer Acceleration for Stores at Amazon, alongside Jim Rowan, US Head of AI at Deloitte and Seth Fox, Chief Technology Officer at S&P Global. Sources: FT Resources, MIT This content is paid for by AWS and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. The views and claims expressed are those of the guests alone and have not been independently verified by The Financial Times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. DISCLAIMER: Please note, this is an independent podcast episode not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in conjunction with the host podcast feed or any of its media entities. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the creators and guests. For any concerns, please reach out to team@podroll.fm.

    You Might Also Like: The Next Five

  3. Sep 28

    Baseball's First All-Star Game? - With Scott Reich

    On September 27, 1917, some of baseball's greatest stars descended on Fenway Park for a game that has largely disappeared from the sport's collective memory. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker and others came together not for a pennant or championship, but to honor Tim Murnane — a former player, manager and baseball executive who became one of the sport's most influential early journalists. After Murnane died suddenly that February, leaving behind a wife, six young children and significant debts, baseball rallied around his family. The result was the Tim Murnane Memorial Benefit Game, an extraordinary afternoon featuring the powerhouse Boston Red Sox against a hand-picked team of stars from both major leagues. Players left their own teams during the season and traveled to Boston at their own expense. Before the first pitch came skills competitions that look remarkably familiar today: a home run derby, throwing contests and a race around the bases. Will Rogers rode onto the field on horseback, Fanny Brice hawked programs in the stands, and former heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan coached first base. Author Scott Reich joins us to discuss his book "One Day in September: Baseball, Brotherhood, and the Birth of the All-Star Game," which resurrects Murnane's remarkable life and makes the case that this forgotten gathering provided a blueprint for baseball's modern All-Star Game — sixteen years before the first official Midsummer Classic. Along the way, Reich takes us inside baseball's unruly formative decades, explains how Murnane became one of the game's most trusted voices, and explores what this remarkable afternoon revealed about the sport in 1917 — when ballparks doubled as civic gathering places and baseball's biggest stars could put pennant races aside for a cause larger than the game. + + +   MORE ABOUT SCOTT: https://www.scott-reich.com/   SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY BUY THE BOOK:  "One Day in September: Baseball, Brotherhood, and the Birth of the All-Star Game": https://amzn.to/3TnDeHe SPONSOR THANKS:  Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats FIND AND FOLLOW: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

    Baseball's First All-Star Game? - With Scott Reich

  4. Sep 21

    Fort Wayne's Forgotten Sports History - With Logan Wiening

    Fort Wayne, Indiana has spent more than 150 years quietly accumulating one of America's richest—and strangest — collections of sports history. The city hosted what is widely regarded as professional baseball's first league game in 1871, became home to the celebrated Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, fielded industrial and semi-pro clubs backed by some of the city's biggest employers, and produced a seemingly endless procession of minor-league teams whose names, logos and stories have largely disappeared. Old Fort Baseball Co. founder Logan Wiening is trying to make sure they aren't forgotten. A Fort Wayne native, former NBA D-League/G League Mad Ants staffer and self-taught graphic designer, Wiening launched Old Fort in 2021 after noticing that other cities had embraced their vintage sports identities while much of Fort Wayne's remained buried in archives, attics and old yearbooks. What began as an apparel project has evolved into something closer to a local sports-history laboratory—using carefully researched designs, storytelling, pop-up retail and community events to reconnect people with teams they remember and introduce them to ones they never knew existed. Wiening helps trace Old Fort's unlikely evolution and explore the remarkable sporting history underneath it: the 1871 Kekiongas, the Daisies, the GE Voltmen, the delightfully named Fort Wayne Huggie Bears and Scouts of professional slow-pitch softball, the Zollner Pistons' industrial roots, and more. Along the way, he explains the research rabbit holes behind resurrecting forgotten identities, the trademark complications surrounding defunct teams, why nostalgia can become civic history, and why he considers Old Fort a storytelling company whose medium happens to be apparel. + + +   SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY BUY FORT WAYNE SPORTS HISTORY:  Old Fort Baseball Co. (15% off promo code GOODSEATS): https://www.oldfortbaseballco.com/?ref=seats SPONSOR THANKS:  Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats FIND AND FOLLOW: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

    Fort Wayne's Forgotten Sports History - With Logan Wiening

  5. Sep 14

    The Original American Soccer League - With Mark Franek

    A century before MLS, decades ahead of the NASL, and long before American soccer became a regular part of the sports landscape, the United States already had a thriving professional league capable of attracting big crowds, paying real salaries and even luring talent away from Europe. Author Mark Franek, whose new book "American Soccer Nation" traces 150 years of the game's often-overlooked U.S. history, joins us to revisit one of its most remarkable chapters: the rise and fall of the original American Soccer League, launched in 1921 and at its peak during the Roaring Twenties. Backed by companies such as Bethlehem Steel and other industrial powers of the era, the ASL featured colorful clubs, deep-pocketed owners and some of the best players American soccer had yet produced — including prolific scoring star Archie Stark. At its height, the league was successful enough to raid European rosters, prompting British newspapers to warn of an "American Menace." But prosperity gave way to infighting. Franek helps untangle the ASL's increasingly bitter battles with U.S. soccer's governing body over cup competition, scheduling, money and control — tensions that erupted into the so-called "Soccer War" just before the Great Depression devastated the league's ownership base and working-class fan communities. Along the way, we discuss how the ASL helped lay the groundwork for the U.S. team's surprising run at the inaugural 1930 World Cup, why so much of this history has slipped from popular memory, and how many of the sport's century-old arguments still echo today. We also explore Franek's work teaching soccer history at Philadelphia Union-affiliated YSC Academy, the educational roots behind "American Soccer Nation," and why he believes the current American game may finally have the infrastructure to break its long cycle of boom, bust and rebirth. + + +   SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY BUY THE BOOK:  "American Soccer Nation: The Remarkable 150-Year History of Yanks on a Roll, from Mob Football to the Modern Game": https://amzn.to/4xlODFm SPONSOR THANKS:  Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats FIND AND FOLLOW: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

    The Original American Soccer League - With Mark Franek

  6. Sep 7

    Baseball's Texas League - With William H. Brewster

    Long before the Texas League became one of minor league baseball's most enduring institutions, it began as a decidedly shaky experiment in a state still trying to prove it belonged on the national sporting map. In 1887, a barnstorming New York Giants club swept through Texas crushing local amateur teams — until John McCloskey's imported squad of professional players, newly adopted by Austin, pulled off a stunning upset. The victory helped convince local businessmen that Texas was ready for something bigger. By the following spring, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Galveston, Austin and San Antonio had organized the first Texas League, complete with schedules, umpires, salaries and all the financial uncertainty that came with professional baseball in the 1880s. This week, author William H. Brewster joins us to tell that remarkable origin story and discuss his new book, "The Land of Sand and Cotton: Texas, Workingmen, and Professional Baseball in 1888." Brewster takes us inside a league where gate receipts meant survival, Sunday games could make or break a club, teams folded in midseason, players jumped to surviving rosters—and the line between professional athlete and working man was still remarkably thin. But this is also a story about Texas itself: fast-growing cities, railroads, civic ambition, racial tension and communities using baseball as proof that they had arrived. Brewster explains how a rough, improvised circuit became the historical starting point for a league that still carries "Established 1888" today — even if the path from then to now was anything but straight. + + +   SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY BUY THE BOOK:  "The Land of Sand and Cotton: Texas, Workingmen, and Professional Baseball in 1888": https://amzn.to/4gGepPt SPONSOR THANKS:  Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats FIND AND FOLLOW: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

    Baseball's Texas League - With William H. Brewster

  7. Aug 31

    "Honolulu Blues" - With Joel Walkowski

    In Detroit, loving the Lions has rarely been about winning. For author, comedian and Motor City native Joel Walkowski, it became something much deeper: a family inheritance, a language shared with his father, and eventually a way to understand his own struggles with addiction, recovery, disappointment and resilience. Walkowski's engaging new book, "Honolulu Blues: How Loving a Losing Football Team Created a Winning Man," weaves the tortured history of the NFL's Detroit Lions into an intensely personal story about what it means to keep showing up when life — or your football team — refuses to cooperate. Walkowski grew up almost in sync with Barry Sanders, whose first NFL game fell on Joel's third birthday. Trips to the Silverdome with his Lions-obsessed father came with elaborate rituals, while the franchise itself supplied an endless procession of near-misses, bizarre defeats and organizational dysfunction. As Joel's own life began to unravel, the parallels became uncanny: the Matt Millen-era Lions bottomed out at 0-16 as his addiction deepened; Matthew Stafford's arrival coincided with the slow process of becoming functional again; and the Dan Campbell/Jared Goff revival unfolded alongside Joel's more serious work in recovery. This week, Walkowski joins to explore why Barry Sanders became something of a personal "higher power," why generations of Lions fans learned to expect heartbreak, and how football became the connective tissue between father and son. Most poignantly, he recounts watching Detroit's long-awaited 2023 playoff breakthrough while caring for his dying father — and discovering that after a lifetime spent waiting for the Lions to win, perhaps the real payoff had been there all along. + + +    SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY BUY THE BOOK:  "Honolulu Blues: How Loving a Losing Football Team Created a Winning Man": https://amzn.to/4gGRKRM SPONSOR THANKS:  Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats FIND AND FOLLOW: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

    "Honolulu Blues" - With Joel Walkowski

  8. Aug 24

    CNN "Sports Tonight" Pioneer Fred Hickman - With Harrison Golden

    Long before ESPN's SportsCenter became a cultural institution, Fred Hickman was helping define what sports television could be. One of the fledgling Cable News Network's original on-air personalities, Hickman became nationally known alongside Nick Charles on CNN Sports Tonight, where "Nick and Hick" paired serious sports journalism with an easy, conversational chemistry that made the nightly highlights feel both authoritative and welcoming. Their signature "Play of the Day" became so recognizable that, as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a viewer in Germany held up a bedsheet urging Fred to make a united Germany that night's selection — a wonderfully improbable measure of the show's massive reach and influence. This week, we revisit Hickman's remarkable life with journalist Harrison Golden, co-author of the posthumously published memoir "Channeling: My Life On Air, Off Air, and In Living Color." Golden first knew Hickman as a kid watching Yankees coverage on the newly launched YES Network, then encountered him years later while interviewing for a local television job in Baton Rouge. The two became colleagues and friends, and after Hickman was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he entrusted Golden with helping preserve the story he wanted to leave behind. Our conversation follows Hickman from his hometown Springfield, Illinois, to CNN's improvisational early days; the rise and enduring bond of "Nick and Hick"; Hickman's harrowing struggle with cocaine addiction in Detroit and the second chance that brought him back to Turner HQ in Atlanta; the explosive growth and eventual fragmentation of cable sports; and later chapters at YES, ESPN and beyond.  We also revisit Hickman's pioneering importance as one of the first Black sportscasters with sustained national visibility — and, of course, his infamous first-place vote for Allen Iverson in 2000 that kept Shaquille O'Neal from becoming the NBA's first unanimous Most Valuable Player that year. + + +    SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable The "Good Seats" Store: http://tee.pub/lic/RdiDZzQeHSY BUY THE BOOK:        "Channeling: My Life On Air, Off Air, and In Living Color": https://amzn.to/4ghFCIg   SPONSOR THANKS:  Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.royalretros.com/?ref=SEATS Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS): https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats FIND AND FOLLOW: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/GoodSeatsStillAvailable Web: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-seats-still-available/

    CNN "Sports Tonight" Pioneer Fred Hickman - With Harrison Golden
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4.7
out of 5
107 Ratings

About

"Good Seats Still Available" is a curious little podcast devoted to the exploration of what used-to-be in professional sports. Each week, host Tim Hanlon interviews former players, owners, broadcasters, beat reporters, and surprisingly famous "super fans" of teams and leagues that have come and gone - in an attempt to unearth some of the most wild and woolly moments in (often forgotten) sports history.

Information

  • Creator
    Tim Hanlon
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    505
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Good Seats Still Available
  • Show Website
    Good Seats Still Available

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