Before the Mets. Before MLB expansion. There was The Continental League—a baseball league that never played a single game but reshaped the sport forever.

In this episode of the Pastball Podcast, we take a deep dive into the forgotten story of the Continental League, the brainchild of Branch Rickey in 1959. This ambitious attempt to create a third major league sent shockwaves through baseball, forcing MLB to confront the future of the game.

You’ll learn:

⚾ How Branch Rickey, the same man who broke baseball’s color barrier, led the charge for a new major league.

⚾ Why the Continental League posed a serious threat to the American and National Leagues.

⚾ How MLB responded—not by fighting it, but by expanding for the first time in decades.

⚾ The lasting impact of the league that never played, shaping the modern landscape of baseball.

Baseball could have looked very different without the Continental League. Want to know how it all went down? Tune in now to the Pastball Podcast!

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Welcome back to the Pastball Podcast, the podcast where baseball's bigots moments live forever. Today we're going to rewind to October 17th, 2004, when Dave Roberts turned a stolen base into Red Sox immortality. It's game four of the ALCS Yankees. They're up three nothing in the series. Bottom of the ninth, the Sox are three outs away from being swept again. But then Kevin Millar walks. Enter pinch runner Dave Roberts.

Everyone in Yankee Stadium knows he's running. Mario Rivera, the best closer potentially ever, throws over once, throws over twice, three times to keep him close. Then on the first pitch, Roberts takes off. Orhepasata fires the second, too late, safe. Fenway erupts. Bill Mueller singles home, tying the game. The Sox go on to win an extra innings, then rattle off three more to complete the greatest comeback in baseball history. The curse of the Bambino erased, but for the Yankees, a new curse began. Since that collapse, they've won just one World Series. Meanwhile, the Sox, four. One stolen base changes everything. That's baseball history for you. This has been the Passball Podcast, where even every play has a past, and every past has a story. We'll see you next time.

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Welcome back to the Passball Podcast, where old grunges come back to haunt the diamond. And today we're going to rewind it back to May 29th, 2017, when Hunter Strickland finally got his revenge on Bryce Harper. Over something that happened three years earlier? Yes, back in 2014, the NLDS Harper took Strickland yard, not once, but twice. Both no doubt bombs. Strickland, then the Giants reliever.

He didn't forget. let's fast forward to 2017. Harper's on the national. Strickland still fuming and boom! First pitch, a 98 mile an hour fastball straight to Harper's hip. Guess what? Harper wasn't having it. He chucked his helmet pretty badly. Charged the mound, landed a couple of wild swings, benches cleared, chaos erupted and Strickland got six games while Harper, he sat for four. The kicker of it all, they weren't even in the same division.

Strickland had to wait three years just to settle the score. Some call it payback, others, well, they call it petty. So let me know, what do you think? And ladies and gentlemen, that's the Passball Podcast of the day where baseball grudges, well, they never die.

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