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Past Our Prime

Past Our Prime

By: Scott Johnston
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Growing up on boxscores, the Game of the Week, and Sports Illustrated, three longtime Sports TV Producers reflect back on the world of sports through the lens of old issues of SI from 50 years ago. Larry Csonka and the Dolphins; Reggie Jackson and The Swinging A's; The Wizard of Westwood; The Golden Bear and Muhammad Ali are just a few of the many heroes showcased weekly by Scott, Bill and Marc on the Past Our Prime podcast. Stay up to date on what happened in the past as they go back in time and return to the glory days of sports week by week, issue by issue of Sports Illustrated starting in January of 1974 Baseball & Softball Football (American)
Episodes
  • 132. It's a Randy Jones Ted (Leitner) Talk

    132. It's a Randy Jones Ted (Leitner) Talk
    Jul 12 2026
    Randy Jones was a left-handed sinkerball pitcher who became one of the most unlikely stars of 1970s baseball, spending the bulk of his career with the San Diego Padres after being drafted in 1972. Undersized and lacking overpowering stuff, he relied on pinpoint control and a heavy sinking fastball to induce ground balls, leading the NL in wins and ERA in 1975 before an even better 1976, when he went 22-14 with a 2.74 ERA and an NL-record-tying 25 complete games to win the Cy Young Award. That July, he graced the cover of Sports Illustrated under the headline "San Diego's Confounding Randy Jones — Threat to Win 30," a nod to his 16-3 record at the All-Star break, a mark no pitcher has matched since. Elbow trouble eventually diminished his effectiveness, and he finished his career with 100 wins after a trade to the Mets in 1981, but he remained a fixture in San Diego as a broadcaster and ballpark personality, remembered as one of the most beloved Padres in franchise history. Ted Leitner, affectionately known as "Uncle Teddy," served as the radio play-by-play voice of the Padres for 41 seasons from 1980 to 2020, becoming one of the most recognizable figures in San Diego sports — as one local comedian joked, "there are only two kinds of people in San Diego: you either hate Ted Leitner, or you are Ted Leitner." A Bronx native, he paired his baseball duties with a long run as a KFMB-TV sports anchor and as the radio voice of San Diego State football and basketball, while also calling games for the Chargers and Clippers. He's best remembered for his decades-long partnership with fellow Hall of Fame broadcaster Jerry Coleman, together narrating the Padres' pennant runs in 1984 and 1998 and the careers of franchise icons like Tony Gwynn and Trevor Hoffman — a bond Leitner never fully recovered from losing after Coleman's death in 2014. His relationship with Randy Jones ran nearly as deep, dating back almost 50 years to when he covered Jones as the Padres' first true star during his playing days; the two later reconnected as club ambassadors together, with Leitner calling Jones "Mr. Everyman." After stepping away from the booth in 2021, Leitner was inducted into the Padres Hall of Fame in July 2022, cementing his legacy as the connective thread across generations of Padres history. Joining us on Past Our Prime, "Uncle Teddy" Leitner holds court — and folks, holding court is basically his day job. He tells us Randy Jones might've been the most likeable human to ever throw a baseball, a guy so charming he could talk Steve Carlton, Willie McCovey, and other future Hall of Famers into showing up on their pregame show for a soft-tossing lefty who, in his own words, "couldn't break a pane of glass." Case in point: Mike Schmidt once told Jones he should be embarrassed to pitch with stuff that slow — right before Jones went out and shut out the Phillies. Twice. Nothing quite like getting owned by a guy throwing batting practice. Leitner and Jones later became Padres ambassadors together, and Ted doesn't hide how hard it's hit him to lose his old pal — right on the heels of losing another lifelong friend, the legendary Jerry Coleman. And Coleman, it turns out, came with a Hall of Fame connection of his own: a friendship with Ted Williams so tight that Leitner practically got Splendid-Splintered by association with "the greatest hitter who ever lived." There are laughs, there are tears, and there's Ted being Ted for a full hour. It's a Ted Talk, literally, on Past Our Prime — and trust us, you don't want to miss this one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 43 mins
  • 131. Frank Shorter & The Races He Never Stopped Running.

    131. Frank Shorter & The Races He Never Stopped Running.
    Jul 5 2026
    Frank Shorter landing on the cover of the July 5, 1976 issue of Sports Illustrated was perfectly timed — the Montreal Olympics were just weeks away and Shorter was heading back to defend the gold medal he had won in Munich four years earlier in one of the most memorable moments in American track and field history. He had crossed the finish line in Munich in 1972 to a roar from a crowd that had spent the week living through the horror of the Munich massacre — and it was a roar he almost never heard, thanks to an imposter who entered the stadium ahead of him and tried to steal the race and steal his glory. His victory had done something unexpected — it ignited a running boom in America that was still going strong four years later. Now, with Montreal on the horizon, Shorter was the face of American distance running, the defending champion, and the man the entire track world was watching, making him the perfect cover subject for a magazine that understood better than anyone what was at stake when the greatest runners in the world lined up to race 26.2 miles through the streets of a Canadian summer. He won gold in '72 and silver in '76 — but that silver comes with an asterisk that history has since validated. Shorter always believed something was wrong with the man who beat him, Waldemar Cierpinski of East Germany, who had improved his marathon time by five full minutes in a single year — what Shorter called a "leapfrogger." Years later, after the Berlin Wall came down, documents surfaced showing two members of the East German Stasi corresponding about who was procuring and taking performance enhancing drugs, confirming what Shorter had suspected all along. It didn't give him back the gold medal. But it gave him something else entirely. It gave him a mission. Shorter got the attention of President Bill Clinton and Senator John McCain, enlisted the support of U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey, and helped found the United States Anti-Doping Agency — an organization he has been fighting for and through for over fifty years. The man who won Munich and was robbed in Montreal became the most important voice in the war for clean sport, and that fight has defined as much of his life as any finish line he ever crossed. And in a conversation that goes well beyond the track, Frank also shares what it meant to take the experience of being a child abuse victim and turn it into a lifetime of child abuse awareness advocacy — because it turns out the most important race Frank Shorter ever ran had nothing to do with a stopwatch. This is the kind of conversation Past Our Prime was built for. For the second time, the great Frank Shorter joins us on the podcast. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 36 mins
  • 130. Swen Nater and the ABA/NBA Merger

    130. Swen Nater and the ABA/NBA Merger
    Jun 28 2026
    Bowie Kuhn landed on the cover of the June 28, 1976 issue of Sports Illustrated because he had just done something nobody in baseball had done quite so boldly — voided three of the biggest player sales in the history of the sport. When Charlie Finley sold Vida Blue to the Yankees and Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox all in a single afternoon, Kuhn stepped in and nullified every transaction, invoking his power to act in baseball's "best interests." Finley called him the village idiot, Billy Martin joked about pitching him, and the entire baseball world stopped to ask one question — just how much power does a commissioner actually have? That was enough to put Bowie Kuhn on the cover of Sports Illustrated. That same week two other seismic sports stories were playing out inside that June 28th issue. In boxing, George Foreman demolished Joe Frazier in five rounds, knocking him down twice before the referee stopped it — and Smokin' Joe announced his retirement on the spot with a perfect line: "It's time to put it on the wall and go boogie, boogie, boogie." And in basketball, after years of financial chaos and a 44-minute vote, the ABA officially ceased to exist — four franchises surviving into the NBA while the rest quietly disappeared, ending a nine-year experiment that gave the world Julius Erving, the three-point line, and a red, white and blue ball nobody took seriously until it was too late. Swen Nater's journey is one of the most unlikely in sports history. He grew up in the Netherlands, never played a high school game, and arrived at UCLA with almost no formal experience — spending two seasons as Bill Walton's practice player on back-to-back undefeated championship teams without ever starting. Yet the Milwaukee Bucks drafted him in the first round in 1973, making him the only player ever drafted that high without a college start. He chose the ABA instead, and after the Virginia Squires sold him off he landed with San Antonio and won ABA Rookie of the Year. When the merger came, Nater transitioned seamlessly, eventually becoming the only player in history to lead both the ABA and NBA in rebounding. Swen tells us what it was like to backup Walton, how Kareem kept him from signing with Milwaukee, and how Wilt Chamberlain taught him to become a ferocious rebounder. He tells us how John Wooden prepared him for the pros, how Don Nelson made him a better shooter, and the story of the time he and Lonnie Shelton got into it — and his wife's 80-year-old grandmother came onto the court to give him some assistance. It's the end of the ABA and the beginning of a great era in the NBA, and Swen Nater was in the center of it all. Listen and download the latest Past Our Prime wherever you get your podcasts. Have your grandkids show you how. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 31 mins
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