TimeStamped with Robert Barbieri

Robert Barbieri

5.0 (1)
Sports
Updated Weekly

Every sport has a timestamp. Host Robert Barbieri revisits sports history’s forgotten teams, erased records, and overlooked figures. Consider this your ticket back in time. New episodes weekly.

Jun 22

Jules Rimet: The Trophy and the Man

Two things carry the name Jules Rimet: the most famous trophy in sports, and the man who dreamed up the World Cup. This is the story of how both of them vanished. The trophy survived a world war in a shoebox under a man's bed, was stolen in London and found by a dog named Pickles, was secretly swapped for a forgery FIFA itself would later buy at auction — and then, one night in Rio in 1983, disappeared for good. Its namesake built the biggest event on earth and was forgotten anyway. TimeStamped traces the whole strange life of both. Featuring: Jules Rimet, Ottorino Barassi, Pickles the dog, and the trophy nobody can find. 🎙️ New episodes every Sunday. Keep the TimeStamp.

29 min
Jun 18

Back to Work on Monday: The USA's 1950 World Cup Miracle

In the summer of 1950, the United States sent a team of part-timers to the World Cup: a mailman, a schoolteacher, a man who drove a hearse, and a dishwasher from Haiti named Joe Gaetjens. On a bumpy field in Belo Horizonte, they beat England, the Kings of Football — 1–0. It's still one of the greatest upsets the sport has ever seen, and almost nobody back home noticed. With the World Cup on home soil in 2026, TimeStamped goes back to the afternoon it all started: the goal no one can fully explain, and the man who scored it and then vanished. Featuring: Joe Gaetjens, Walter Bahr, Frank Borghi, and the "Miracle on Grass." 🎙️ New episodes every Sunday. Keep the TimeStamp.

19 min
Jun 7

Sonny Liston: Everyone’s Fighter but His Own

He was the most feared heavyweight on earth. A champion the public was taught to hate before he threw a punch. Promoters, managers, and the men behind them all had a claim on Sonny Liston: when he fought, who he fought, how much of the purse he’d ever see. Everyone got a piece. This is the story of a fighter who belonged to everyone but himself. I’m Rob Barbieri. This is TimeStamped.

24 min
May 31

The Court They Built: The Forgotten Dynasty of the Edmonton Grads

For twenty-five years, the best basketball team in the world played out of a commercial high school in Edmonton, Alberta. They were women. They almost never lost. And the man who invented the game said no one — anywhere — played it better. This week, the Edmonton Commercial Graduates: a dynasty that dominated for a quarter-century, went undefeated at the 1924 Paris Olympics in a sport that wouldn’t officially let women compete for another fifty years, and then disappeared in 1940 — taking women’s basketball in Canada into the dark with them. They won everything. Then the game moved on without them. That’s how forgotten stories stop being forgotten.

26 min
May 24

The Kenora Thistles: The Smallest Town to Ever Win the Stanley Cup

In January 1907, a mill town on the edge of Lake of the Woods — population barely four thousand — beat the Montreal Wanderers and lifted the Stanley Cup. They held it for sixty-three days. No town that small has touched it since. This is the story of the Kenora Thistles: a roster of local boys and who climbed to the top of hockey in the last window the sport ever allowed it. We trace how they got there, why they couldn’t stay, and what the challenge-cup era looked like in the final years before the NHL made it impossible for a town like Kenora to ever try again. I'm Rob Barbieri. This is TimeStamped.

27 min
May 17

Jay Berwanger: The Kid From Dubuque Who Gave a President a Scar

In 1935, a halfback from the University of Chicago won a trophy that didn’t yet bear John Heisman’s name. A few months later, he became the first overall pick in the first NFL Draft — and turned pro football down flat. This is the story of Jay Berwanger: the most decorated college player of his era, a man Gerald Ford once called the best he ever lined up against, and a name most football fans today couldn’t place in a lineup. We trace how a kid from Dubuque, Iowa became the face of college football in the 1930s, why he walked away from the pro game on his own terms, and what his quiet refusal tells us about the sport’s earliest fault lines. Featuring a Gerald Ford cameo, a wrestling match with future Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, and a trophy that spent its first year without a proper name. I’m Rob Barbieri. This is TimeStamped.

32 min
May 10

The Game in the Madhouse: February 19, 1948: The Night the Globetrotters Beat the Lakers

On a February night in 1948, the Harlem Globetrotters walked into Chicago Stadium and beat the world champion Minneapolis Lakers — George Mikan, Jim Pollard, and all. Or did they walk in with all that? This week, TimeStamped goes back to a game that’s been called everything from a curiosity to the moment that integrated pro basketball. The truth, as usual, is more complicated — and more interesting.

26 min
May 3

The Montreal Royals: The Franchise That Gave Us Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente, and Then Vanished

In 1946, Jackie Robinson played his first season of integrated organized baseball — not in Brooklyn, but in Montreal. Eight years later, a 19-year-old Roberto Clemente did the same. Both wore the uniform of the Montreal Royals, the AAA franchise that called Delorimier Stadium home for thirty-two years and produced one of the most consequential pipelines in the history of the sport. Then, fourteen years after Robinson, six years after Clemente, the Royals folded. And almost nobody remembers them. This is the story of the team that integrated the minor leagues, the team that briefly held the kid who’d become a 15-time All-Star, and the city that loved them both — until baseball stopped loving the city back. I’m Robert Barbieri. This is TimeStamped.

24 min
Apr 26

The Stolen Season: How the Pottsville Maroons Won the 1925 NFL Championship and Had It Taken Away

In 1925, a football team from a coal mining town in Pennsylvania went 10-2, beat the best team in the league head-to-head, and had their championship stripped by a commissioner. Their best player was a coal miner who’d been underground since he was eleven. Red Grange called him the best he ever faced. This is the story of the Pottsville Maroons — the most dominant team in early NFL history, the championship the league stole, and the hundred-year cover-up that followed.

26 min
Apr 19

Three Teams, One Region, One Autumn: How Western New York Built the NFL and Got Nothing in Return

In 1921, three football teams from Western New York were among the founding members of what would become the NFL. One played a single game and vanished. One held the best record in the league and had its championship stolen. And the third was run by a teenager who invented the first team logo in professional football, helped redesign the ball itself, and lost his house trying to keep his franchise alive. This is the story of the Buffalo All-Americans, the Tonawanda Kardex, and the Rochester Jeffersons — the teams that were there before any of it was worth anything.

27 min

10 Episodes

Every sport has a timestamp. Host Robert Barbieri revisits sports history’s forgotten teams, erased records, and overlooked figures. Consider this your ticket back in time. New episodes weekly.

Creator

Robert Barbieri
Years Active

2K
Episodes

10
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Robert Barbieri
Show Website

TimeStamped with Robert Barbieri