Every other Tuesday at 9 AM a new podcast will be released.
September 8, 2020:
There was a time when Chicago was home to three NFL teams: the Bears, the Cardinals and the Tigers. The Tigers didn’t last long, but the Bears and Cardinals, as football fans know, still play today. While the Bears still call Chicago home, the Cardinals have since moved to St. Louis and now call Arizona (Glendale) home. But it was in Chicago where the Cardinals celebrated their greatest successes winning the NFL Championship in 1925 (although it took a few years before they accepted the title) and 1947 when they beat the Philadelphia Eagles. The Cardinals greatest year might have been 1948 when they went 11-1, but lost the championship game to the Eagles 7-0 in a huge snowstorm. There is so much history about the Cardinals time in Chicago and the relationship the team’s owner, Charles Bidwell, had with the Bears owner, George Halas. Both men helped save each other’s team – and that’s just one of the stories Joe Ziemba discusses with me on this edition of Sports’ Forgotten Heroes. Joe is quite a passionate Chicago Cardinals aficionado and his love for the team comes through vividly. Joe, who wrote the book, “When Football Was Football: The Chicago Cardinals and the Birth of the NFL,” also talks about some of the team’s greatest stars such as Duke Slater, Ernie Nevers, Charley Trippi, Paddy Driscoll and more. Joe and I also get into the reasons why the Cardinals left Chicago, their championship games, why they didn’t accept the 1925 title (at first) and how the team came about. We also talk about the battle for Chicago and so much more on this episode of Sports’ Forgotten Heroes.
August 25, 2020:
Horace Clarke is the only man in MLB history whose first two homeruns were grand slams and in less than one month in 1970 he broke up three no-hitters in the ninth inning. Born in Frederiksted, The U.S. Virgin Islands, Clarke personified the New York Yankees of the late 1960s and early 1970s. A solid player. Not great. Not bad. That’s what the Yankees were during Horace’s time with the team, not great and not bad. On this episode of SFH, we take a look back at this forgotten New York Yankee from one of their least successful stretches in history.
August 11, 2020:
Three men are largely credit with the founding of the American League: Charles Comiskey, Ban Johnson and Tom Loftus. Now, most, if not all, baseball fans have heard of Comiskey. Fans who follow the game closely “probably” know Johnson, but very few – if any – have ever heard of Loftus. That’s because shortly after the American League got going, Loftus stepped away from the game. He was asked to come back on a few occasions, but decided to stay close to his Dubuque, Iowa roots and satisfy his passion for the game there. Loftus also died at a young age (54) and did not leave any family behind. So, when he passed away, there was no one to carry on his legacy while Comiskey and Johnson continued in the game for years and years. Eventually, both Comiskey and Johnson were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Loftus was forgotten. On this episode of SFH, John Pregler who wrote a marvelous and in-depth bio on Loftus for the Baseball Journal (published by SABR) joins the podcast for an in-depth discussion about the third member of the triumvirate who founded the American League.