TimeStamped with Robert Barbieri

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.