June 29, 1950, 70 years ago: The U.S. soccer team played England in a game everybody assumed England would win.

In the words of the immortal Felix Unger (as played by Tony Randall on The Odd Couple), "You should never assume. Because when you assume, you make an ASS of U and ME!"

The U.S. team played in the 1st World Cup, in Uruguay in 1930. In their Group Stage, they beat Belgium and Paraguay, each by a 3-0 score. This enabled them to top their Group and advance to the Semifinals. Then reality set in, and they got clobbered 6-1 by Argentina, who then lost the Final to the hosts, 4-2.

The 1934 World Cup in Italy was a simple knockout tournament of 16 teams, and the U.S. lost in the 1st round, to the hosts, 7-1. The U.S. withdrew from qualifying for the 1938 tournament.

The 4 "Home Nations" of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland -- England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland -- did not compete in these 1st 3 World Cups. There was a dispute between the U.K. and the governing body of world soccer, FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association.

Only 13 teams competed in 1930, and France, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Romania were the only representatives from Europe. Travel from Europe to South America was prohibitively expensive. So it wasn't surprising that no "nation" in the U.K. played in it.

In 1934, 12 of the 16 teams were from Europe, but no nation in the British Isles competed. This was also true for 1938, when it was supposed to be 16, but Austria withdraw after their "Anschluss" with Nazi Germany, making it 15. Ireland, then known as "the Irish Free State," entered qualifying, but failed to make it.

Then came World War II. The World Cups of 1942 and 1946 were canceled. Since Brazil was supposed to host in 1942, they got the 1st postwar World Cup, in 1950. And as the centerpiece, in what was then their capital city, Rio de Janeiro (the capital was moved to Brasilia in 1960), they built the most famous soccer stadium in the Western Hemisphere, the Estadio Maracanã. With standing room, it could hold nearly 200,000 people.

Only 13 teams entered this tournament. Finally, though, there was representation from Britain, the country that had invented the sport, giving the tournament more legitimacy than ever. It had not helped FIFA that, after the 1934 World Cup, winners Italy went to London and lost to an England team that then called themselves "World Champions."

The U.K. "football" authorities collectively decided that the 1949-50 Home Nations Tournament would send its top 2 teams. England won, and sent its team. Scotland finished 2nd, but the Scottish Football Association had decided only to go if they'd won, and so they withdrew, and only England went.

And what a team it was. From 1949 and 1950 Football League Champions Portsmouth: Midfielder Jimmy Dickinson. From 1950 FA Cup winners Arsenal: Defender Laurie Scott. From 1949 FA Cup winners Wolverhampton Wanderers, who would go on to win 3 League titles in the 1950s: Defender Billy Wright (the national team's Captain), forward Jimmy Mullen, and goalkeeper Bert Williams.

From 1948 League Champions Manchester United: Defender John Aston and midfielder Henry Cockburn. From 1947 League Champions Liverpool: Midfielder Laurie Hughes. From the Tottenham Hotspur team that would win the 1951 League title: Goalkeeper Ted Ditchburn, defender Alf Ramsey (who would manage England to the 1966 World Cup win), and midfielders Bill Nicholson (who would manage Tottenham to the 1961 League and Cup "Double") and Eddie Baily. From the Newcastle United team that would win 3 of the next 5 FA Cups: Forward Jackie Milburn.

From the Blackpool team that would win the 1953 FA Cup, a pair of geniuses: Right wing Stanley Matthews (known as the Wizard of the Dribble) and forward Stan Mortensen. From Preston North End: Forward Tom Finney. From Middlesbrough: Forward Wilf Mannion.

It speaks to the talent of this team that 6 of the players -- Wright, Nicholson, Milburn, Matthews, Finney and Mannion -- would have statues dedicated outside their teams' stadiums.

Sure, the host nation, Brazil, was the prohibitive favorite. But England were going to win the tournament. After all, England invented the sport.

*

The U.S. team was taken from various clubs in the top league in the country at the time, the American Soccer League. There was nothing like a "first division" as in European or South American countries. And none of them was still in college, although they weren't over the hill: One player was 38, the rest were between the ages of 21 and 31, coming from these ASL clubs:

* St. Louis Simpkins-Ford, sponsored by Joe Simpkins' Ford car dealership: Frank Borghi, 25, goalkeeper; Robert Annis, 21, defender; Charlie Colombo, 29, midfielder; Gino Pariani, 22, forward; and Frank "Peewee" Wallace, 27, forward.

* St. Louis McMahon: Harry Keough, 22, defender. Each of these 6 men was a St. Louis native. Borghi, Colombo and Pariani came from the "Dago Hill" neighborhood on the North Side, which also produced baseball legends Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola. A line Berra would later use about the 1969 Mets, on whom he coached, would apply to this U.S. team: "We were overwhelming underdogs."

* Philadelphia Nationals: Walter Bahr, 23; and Ed McIlvenny, 25; both midfielders. Bahr was a Philadelphia naive, born on the exact same day as the great Ferenc Puskás, whose Hungary team did not enter the tournament but would star in it 4 years later. But McIlvenny was born and raised in Scotland, and had played in his homeland for Greenock Morton and in Wales for Wrexham. He came to America because labor paid more than "football" back home, and since he had begun the process of attaining American citizenship, he qualified for the U.S. team under the rules of the time.

* Brookhattan, which, as its name suggests, played home games in both Brooklyn and Manhattan: Joe Gaetjens, 26, forward. A native of Haiti, he came to New York in 1947, and led the ASL in scoring in the 1949-50 season. Then, as now, there was a notable Haitian community in Brooklyn.

* Brooklyn Hispano: Joe Maca, 29, defender. A native of Belgium, he played in his country's 1st division and for its Army team during World War II, then came to America. Perhaps someone thought "Maca" was a Hispanic-sounding name, and recommended Hispano to him and vice versa.

* Ponta Delgada: Frank Moniz, 38; John Souza, 29; and Ed Souza, 28; all forwards. Ponta Delgada was named for a town in the Azores, islands off the west coast of Portugal, and all 3 players were from Fall River, Massachusetts, a small city south of Boston with a large Portuguese community -- large enough that no close relationship between the 2 Souzas could be established. Because of "blue laws" in Masschusetts, Ponta Delgada played their Sunday games in Tiverton, Rhode Island, in a stadium whose northern boundary was literally the State Line.

* Pittsburgh Harmarville: Nicholas DiOrio, 29; and Robert Craddock, 26; both forwards.

* Chicago Vikings, so named for their largely Scandinavian ethnic makeup: Geoff Coombes, 31, defender.

* Chicago Eagles, so named for their largely Polish ethnic makeup: Adam Wolanin, 30, forward.

* Chicago Slovak, yet another mostly ethnic team: Gino Gardassanich, 27, goalkeeper.

This was probably the most talented national team the U.S. had ever had -- and would remain so for a long time to come. But nobody thought they would do much in the World Cup. The odds on them winning the tournament were given as 500-1.

*

June 24: Brazil opens the tournament, and the Maracanã, with a 4-0 win over Mexico.

June 25: England starts by beating Chile 2-0 at the Maracanã. Mortensen scores in the 39th minute, Mannion in the 51st. The U.S. gets off to a good start against Spain, with Pariani scoring in the 17th. But the defense collapses late, allowing 3 goals between the 81st and 89th minutes, and Spain win, 3-1. Elsewhere, Yugoslavia beats Switzerland 3-0, and Sweden beats Italy 3-2. As amazing as this game was, this would not be the biggest upset of the tournament, or even the 2nd-biggest.

June 28: Brazil can only manage a 2-2 tie with Switzerland, blowing 1-0 and 2-1 leads, with Switzerland equalizing in the 88th minute. Yugoslavia beats Mexico 4-1.

June 29: Spain beats Chile 2-0. Sweden and Paraguay play to a 2-2 draw. And then there was the game between England and the U.S. Surely, this would be an England win, and nobody would talk about it forever.

Indeed, in America, hardly anybody talked about it for decades.

*

This is what the world was like on June 29, 1950, 70 years ago today:

American soccer, as I pointed out, was barely noticeable. What would later be called Major League Baseball was no further south than Washington and Cincinnati, and no further west than St. Louis. And yet, there were teams in both the American League and the National League in Boston, Philadelphia and St. Louis. Within 5 years, each of those cities would be down to 1 team.

The National Basketball Association had just completed its 4th season, its 2nd straight with the Champions being the Minneapolis Lakers, but their only Western outpost had just folded. It was known as the Denver Nuggets. That name would be used again. The next season would see the NBA following MLB and the National Football League in racially integrating.

The NFL had stretched to Los Angeles and San Francisco, but no further into the South than had baseball. And the National Hockey League had only 6 teams: The Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Boston Bruins, the New York Rangers, the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Blackhawks.

In addition to the Lakers, the Red Wings, the Yankees and the Los Angeles Rams were defending Champions. Ezzard Charles was the Heavyweight Champion of the World. There was, as yet, no European Cup (the tournament now called the UEFA Champions League). Television and sports was still a new combination, as radio, newspapers, and movie theaters'"newsreels" still dominated the way people found out what was going on in "the world of sports."

The defining soccer players of my childhood? Pelé was a 9-year-old boy named Edson Arantes do Nascimento, nicknamed "Dico" by his family, and using radio and newspapers to keep tabs on the tournament, especially the Brazil team, in his hometown of Três Corações (Three Hearts) in the State of Minas Gerias.

Eusébio was 8, and living in Mozambique in Africa, then still a colony of Portugal. Sandra Mazzola was 7, and watching his father, Valentino Mazzola, star for Torino in Turin, Italy. Gianni Rivera was 6. Franz Beckenbauer was 4. Giorgio Chinaglia and Johan Cruijff were 3.

Arséne Wenger -- not a defining player of my childhood, but a defining figure in the game in my adulthood -- was 8 months old. And Charlie George, Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish, Doctor Sócrates, Mario Kempes, Michel Platini, Liam Brady, Paolo Rossi and Diego Maradona hadn't been born yet.

The World Cup has since been held twice each in Mexico and Germany; and once each in Switzerland, Sweden, Chile, England, Argentina, Spain, Italy, America, France, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Brazil again, and Russia.

And the Olympic Games have since been held in America 5 times; 3 times each in Japan, Italy and Canada; twice each in Austria, France, Norway, Australia, Russia and Korea; and once each in Finland, Mexico, Germany, Bosnia, Spain, Greece, China, Britain and Brazil.

America had 48 States. There were 22 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. There had not been a Civil Rights Act since 1886. There was Social Security, but no Medicare, Medicaid, Environmental Protection Agency, OSHA or Title IX. The ideas that abortion, same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana use would one day be legal were absurd -- but so was the idea that corporations were "people" and entitled to the rights thereof.

The President of the United States was Harry Truman. Herbert Hoover, and the widows of Calvin Coolidge and Woodrow Wilson, were still alive. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the President of Columbia University. John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were in the U.S. House of Representatives. Lyndon Johnson was in the U.S. Senate. Jimmy Carter was in the U.S. Navy. Ronald Reagan was an actor. George H.W. Bush was in the oil business.

Joe Biden was 7 years old. Donald Trump was 4 years old (and hasn't gotten any more mature), while George W. Bush and Bill Clinton would soon reach that birthday. Barack Obama and Mike Pence weren't born yet.

The Governor of the State of New York was Thomas E. Dewey. The Mayor of the City of New York was William O'Dwyer. The Governor of the State of New Jersey was Alfred E. Driscoll. The current holders of those offices -- Andrew Cuomo, Bill de Blasio and Phil Murphy -- weren't born yet.

There were still surviving veterans of the American Civil War, the U.S. Army's wars with the Native Americans, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Zulu War. There were still a living person who had witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, another who had witnessed the Wright Brothers' 1st flight, and a living former policeman who had worked on the Jack the Ripper case.

The holder of the Nobel Peace Prize was John Boyd Orr, who had worked with the nascent United Nations to increase the world's food supply and get it to starving people. This is one of several examples of the Prize going to someone whose efforts were humanitarian and deserved some kind of recognition, but were not really related to the stopping or the prevention of a war.

The Prime Minister of Britain was Clement Attlee, and of Canada Louis St. Laurent. The head of state for both was King George VI of Britain. The Pope was Pius XII. The current Pope, Francis, was then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 13 years old, and following the World Cup, though his native Argentina had not qualified for it. There have since been 13 Presidents of the United States, 2 British Monarchs, and 7 Popes.

Major novels of 1950 included Across the River and Into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway, Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, The Town and the City, whose author is listed on the cover as John Kerouac, although it's the debut novel of Jack Kerouac; Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester, Conan the Conqueror by Robert E. Howard, The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury, and Pebble in the Sky, the debut novel of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.

The year would also see the publication of Asimov's collection of short stories I, Robot; Damon Knight's collection of short stories To Serve Man, the title story later forming one of the most renowned episodes of the anthology TV series The Twilight Zone; and Beverly Cleary's children's story Henry Huggins -- not to be confused with Henry Higgins, the nasty dialectician created for the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, who died that year.

Later in the year, C.S. Lewis will begin his Chronicles of Narnia, by publishing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. His close friend J.R.R. Tolkein had published The Hobbit, but not yet any of his Lord of the Rings trilogy.

J.D. Salinger was still working on The Catcher in the Rye. Ian Fleming was working for a newspaper syndicate, and had not yet published any books. Vladimir Nabokov had, but they hadn't succeeded, so he was teaching at Cornell University. Truman Capote had published novels, but not yet the one for which he would be best known. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had been sent to what the Soviet government called a "special camp" in Kazakhstan. Robert Ludlum was producing Broadway plays, and hadn't yet published a novel.

Joseph Heller was a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University. John Updike and Philip Roth had both just graduated from high school. Thomas Harris was 9 years old, Anne Rice and John Irving were 8, Winston Groom 7, Alice Walker 6, James Patterson and Tom Clancy 3, Stephen King 2, George R.R. Martin a year and a half, and Douglas Adams, Stieg Larsson, Helen Fielding, Suzanne Collins, J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer weren't born yet.

So no one yet heard of Dean Moriarty, Holden Caulfield, James Bond, Dolores "Lolita" Haze, Holly Golightly, Yuri Zhivago, Jason Bourne, John Yossarian, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, Alexander Portnoy, Hannibal Lecter, Lestat de Lioncourt, T.S. Garp, Forrest Gump, Celie Harris, Alex Cross, Jack Ryan, Jack Torrance, Jon Snow, Arthur Dent, Lisbeth Salander, Bridget Jones, Katniss Everdeen, Harry Potter or Bella Swan.

Major films of the Summer of 1950 included The Asphalt Jungle (which helped launch Marilyn Monroe to fame), the best-known film version of Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate epic Treasure Island, the Western Winchester '73, the film version of the Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun, Father of the Bride, the baseball biopic The Jackie Robinson Story (with Jackie playing himself), Elia Kazan's epidemic film Panic in the Streets, the original film noir versions of Night and the City and No Way Out, the science fiction film Destination Moon, and the film noir tribute to old Hollywood Sunset Boulevard.

Kirk Alyn once again played the Man of Steel in Atom Man vs. Superman. Robert Lowry had recently played Batman in a serial. Gene Roddenberry was a Los Angeles policeman. Sydney Newman was helping to establish British episodic television, and hadn't yet created The Avengers (the 1960s spy series, not the superhero team) or Doctor Who. George Lucas was 6 years old, Steven Spielberg 3.

Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz had just founded Desilu Productions. While they hadn't yet begun filming I Love Lucy, this did make Lucy one of the earliest women, and Desi one of the earliest Hispanics (if a very light-skinned one), to have any creative control in Hollywood. American TV was dominated by anthology shows like Kraft Television Theatre and The Philco Television Playhouse; game shows like the brand-new What's My Line? and Beat the Clock; and variety shows like Your Show of Shows hosted by Sid Caesar, and Toast of the Town, which would later be renamed for its host: The Ed Sullivan Show. The Hazel Scott Show made its debut on the DuMont Television Network, making singer Scott the 1st African-American woman to host a TV program.

Among the writers of Your Show of Shows were Neil Simon, his brother Danny Simon, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond, Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen. Neil would base Felix Unger of The Odd Couple on Danny. Carl would create The Dick Van Dyke Show, basing his character Alan Brady on Sid, Dick's character Rob Petrie on himself, Rob's wife Laura on his own wife Estelle, their son Ritchie on real-life son Rob, Buddy Sorrell on Mel, and Sally Rogers on Selma. Mel would go on to create Get Smart with Buck Henry.

No one had yet heard of Joe Friday, Ralph Kramden, Marshal Matt Dillon, Captain Kangaroo, Paladin, Beaver Cleaver, Ben Cartwright, or any of the legendary TV characters of the 1950s onward.

The Number 1 song in America was "The Third Man Theme," Anton Karas' zither-driven theme song from an Orson Welles spy thriller film. Frank Sinatra was at a low point in his career, as his original fans, the "bobby-soxers," had outgrown him and weren't drawn to his new material. Nat King Cole, Frankie Laine, Patti Page and Teresa Brewer were the year's big singers.

Hank Williams was already big in the South, but not in the North. Elvis Presley was in high school. Johnny Cash had just graduated, and, before the World Cup was out, would enlist in the U.S. Air Force. Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, and Don and Phil Everly were in junior high. Tina Turner was 10 years old; John Lennon, Ringo Starr and Bob Dylan were 9; Paul McCartney, Paul Simon and Aretha Franklin 8; George Harrison 7, Mick Jagger and Diana Ross 6, Pete Townshend 5, Cher 4, David Bowie and Elton John 3, Billy Joel 1, Bruce Springsteen 9 months old, and Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince weren't born yet.

Inflation was such that what $1.00 bought then, $10.64 would buy now. A U.S. postage stamp cost 3 cents, and a New York Subway ride 10 cents. The average price of a gallon of gas was 23 cents, a cup of coffee 15 cents, a burger-fries-and-Coke meal 46 cents, a movie ticket 46 cents, a new car $1,700, and a new house $7,150. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed that day at 206.72. Not 20,006, or even 2,006, but two hundred and six.

June 29, 1950, 70 years ago: The U.S. soccer team played England in a game everybody assumed England would win.

The England team was loaded. From 1949 and 1950 Football League Champions Portsmouth: Midfielder Jimmy Dickinson. From 1950 FA Cup winners Arsenal: Defender Laurie Scott. From 1949 FA Cup winners Wolverhampton Wanderers, who would go on to win 3 League titles in the 1950s: Defender Billy Wright (the national team's Captain), forward Jimmy Mullen, and goalkeeper Bert Williams.

From 1948 League Champions Manchester United: Defender John Aston and midfielder Henry Cockburn. From 1947 League Champions Liverpool: Midfielder Laurie Hughes. From the Tottenham Hotspur team that would win the 1951 League title: Goalkeeper Ted Ditchburn, defender Alf Ramsey (who would manage England to the 1966 World Cup win), and midfielders Bill Nicholson (who would manage Tottenham to the 1961 League and Cup "Double") and Eddie Baily. From the Newcastle United team that would win 3 of the next 5 FA Cups: Forward Jackie Milburn.

From the Blackpool team that would win the 1953 FA Cup, a pair of geniuses: Right wing Stanley Matthews (known as the Wizard of the Dribble) and forward Stan Mortensen. From Preston North End: Forward Tom Finney. From Middlesbrough: Forward Wilf Mannion.

It speaks to the talent of this team that 6 of the players -- Wright, Nicholson, Milburn, Matthews, Finney and Mannion -- would have statues dedicated outside their teams' stadiums.

The U.S. team was taken from various clubs in the top league in the country at the time, the American Soccer League. There was nothing like a "first division" as in European or South American countries. And none of them was still in college, although they weren't over the hill: One player was 38, the rest were between the ages of 21 and 31, coming from ASL clubs in New York, Philadelphia, the Boston satellite city of Fall River, Pittsburgh, Chicago and St. Louis.

England started by beating Chile 2-0. The U.S. got off to a good start against Spain, jumping ahead 1-0 in the 17th minute. But the defense allowed 3 goals between the 81st and 89th minutes, and Spain won, 3-1.

This set up the U.S.-England meeting, at Estádio Independência in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil on Thursday, June 29, 1950, 70 years ago today. Surely, this would be an easy England win, and nobody would talk about it forever.

As a British citizen familiar with the English game, as well as that of the country he had adopted, the U.S. manager, Bill Jeffrey, told the press, "We have no chance," and called his team "sheep ready to be slaughtered." One of the English national newspapers, the Daily Express, wrote, "It would be fair to give the U.S. three goals of a start."

England had 8 shots on goal in the 1st 32 minutes. U.S. goalkeeper Frank Borghi put on a heroic performance. Then, in the 37th minute, game an Ed McIlvenny throw-in, taken by Walter Bahr, whose shot toward foal was deflected by the head of Joe Gaetjens, and the U.S. led 1-0.

In the last few minutes of the game, the England players appealed for a penalty and insisted that a deflected shot had gone over the goal line, but were denied by the referee each time. Final score: America 1, England 0.

July 1, 1995, 25 years ago: The deal to move the Québec Nordiques to Denver is made official, approved by the National Hockey League. They become the Colorado Avalanche.

Previously, Denver had been home to the Denver Spurs of the World Hockey Association in the 1975-76 season, then the Colorado Rockies of the NHL from 1976 to 1982. The Spurs failed after 1 season, the Rockies after 6. The Rockies moved to the Meadowlands, becoming the New Jersey Devils.

Starting in the WHA in 1972, the Nordiques reached the Finals in 1975, losing to the Houston Aeros. They made the Finals again in 1977, and beat the Winnipeg Jets. They made the Playoffs in their last 5 seasons in the WHA, and were 1 of the 4 teams that were absorbed into the NHL in 1979.

They didn't do so well. They only won 2 regular-season Division titles, in the Adams Division in 1985 and the Northeast Division in 1995. They got to the Conference Finals in 1982 and 1985, but fell apart by 1987.

They went 12-61-7 in 1989-90, by which time Marcel Aubut had gone from team president under their ownership group to majority owner; 16-50-14 in 1990-91, and 20-48-12 in 1991-92. They got back to the Playoffs in 1993 and 1995. But even though they were once again finding success on the ice, they were losing money, and ended up moving.

The Avalanche have been considerably more successful than their predecessors, either the Nordiques or the previous Denver teams. In just their 1st season, 1995-96, they did something they never came all that close to doing in Québec City: They won the Stanley Cup. The players did the right thing: They took the Cup back to Québec City, where it hadn't been won by a native team ever, except for the 1912 and 1913 Quebec Bulldogs.

The Avs won another Cup in 2001, beating, with some irony, the former Denver NHL team, the Devils. They've also reached the Conference Finals in 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2002. After a down period, they won a Playoff round last season, and got to Game 7 of the Conference Semifinals.

Québec City, meanwhile, has done their best to get a new team. They've built a new arena, the Videotron Centre. They've got a fan movement going. And they've seen several NHL teams have pathetically low attendance, including, in recent times, the Avalanche. But also the Carolina Hurricanes (who used to be a WHA-NHL team, the New England/Hartford Whalers), the Arizona Coyotes (who used to be a WHA-NHL team, the original version of the Winnipeg Jets), the Atlanta Thrashers (who moved to become the new Winnipeg Jets), the Florida Panthers, the New York Islanders, and, alas, the Devils.

But NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman hates Canada, and knows that a team in Québec City won't generate as much revenue as, say, a Sun Belt team. He's been proven right with the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Dallas Stars, the Anaheim Ducks and, ugh, the Vegas Golden Knights. But he's also been proven wrong with Miami (the Panthers), Atlanta and Arizona.

As for Québec City hockey, they have the Québec Remparts of the Québec Major Junior Hockey League, reaching that league's Finals in 2006 and 2015, although they lost both times. They've reached the Playoffs every season of their existence, since their establishment in 1997. And, by QMJHL standards, they're very well-supported.

Maybe it's time to move a team to Québec. The NHL overlooked Bettman's love of the Sun Belt and his hatred of Canada, and righted a wrong, and allowed the Atlanta-to-Winnipeg move of 2011. And, while Minnesota isn't in Canada (no matter how cold it gets there), they allowed an expansion team to replace the North Stars, who had moved to Dallas, righting a wrong there. Maybe they can do it again, for Québec City.

The move of the Nordiques was wrong, wasn't it? Sure, the Avs have done well at times, but shouldn't Denver have waited for the expansions of the end of the 20th Century? It was just 3 more seasons for the Nashville Predators, 4 more for the Thrashers, and 5 more for the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild.

It was wrong for Aubut to sell the Nordiques to someone who would move the team out of Québec City, right? T-shirts reading "Marcel Aubut: Wanted Dead or Alive" were often seen in Québec in the late 1990s. And he walked away with $15 million from the sale (about $25 million in today's money). All Nordiques fans got was... those lousy T-shirts?

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Marcel Aubut for the Québec Nordiques Moving to Denver

First, some reasons that didn't make the final cut: The Best of the Rest.

Marcel Aubut. He had already kept them afloat once, and gotten them what should have been their biggest break: Surviving the WHA and entering the NHL.

Not every good WHA team survived. The Houston Aeros made the Playoffs in each of the league's 1st 6 seasons, making the Finals 3 times, winning 2 titles, but they didn't even make it to the last season of 1978-79, much less to the merger.

The Cleveland Crusaders, the Minnesota Fighting Saints and the San Diego Mariners each made the Playoffs 3 times. So did the franchise that began as the Ottawa Nationals, and became the Toronto Toros and the Birmingham Bulls, once in each season. But none of these teams got to the final season.

The Cincinnati Stingers, the Indianapolis Racers, and the Philadelphia Blazers/Calgary Cowboys franchise each made the Playoffs twice. The Chicago Cougars, the Los Angeles Sharks and the Phoenix Roadrunners each made it once, but none was still in business for the final WHA season.

The Nordiques were defending champions in 1978, but were still on the verge of folding when they were bought by the Carling-O'Keefe Brewery. They appointed Aubut, then a noted Québec City lawyer, as their new president.

To his credit, since 1995, he has tried to get a new team for the city. He was instrumental in helping get the Videotron Centre built. He does seem to be sorry for what he did, unlike most team owners who cause their team to move, due to either their greed, their mismanagement, or factors beyond their control. Keep that in mind as we go on: Sometimes, there are factors beyond the team owner's control.

He was respected enough to have been elected President of the Canadian Olympic Committee -- the 1st Francophone ever so honored. He was re-elected in 2014.  He resigned in 2015, after allegations of sexual harassment, He has apologized for his behavior, and has never been criminally charged, nor sued.

Gary Bettman. If he wants an NHL team to move, it moves, as we have seen.

However, for once, an NHL team moved from a cold weather City, especially in Canada, to a city in America's South or West, and Bettman was not the person most responsible. No question about it, he didn't want the Nordiques to stay in Québec City. But even if he had, I'm not sure there's much he could have done about it. There were other factors at work, as you will soon see.

The Montréal Canadiens. The rivalry between the Habs and the Nords was vicious at times, peaking in a long, nasty fight in a Playoff game at the Montreal Forum on April 20, 1984, known as the Good Friday Massacre.

The Nords beat the Habs in the Playoffs in 1982 and 1985; but lost to them in 1984, 1987 and 1993. And they just couldn't compete with them for the hearts and minds of the Province of Québec. All those Stanley Cups the Canadiens won before the Nordiques were even founded. All those legends, including Georges Vezina, Howie Morenz, Maurice and Henri Richard, Doug Harvey, Jacques Plante, and Jean Beliveau, who grew up near Québec City. He and Plante both played for the Quebec Aces of the old Quebec Senior Hockey League.

And even when the Nords were succeeding in the WHA, the Habs won 6 Cups in the 1970s. Yvan Cournoyer, Ken Dryden, Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson. Finally, Québec City native Patrick Roy starred for them in goal -- and then, to rub it in, Roy joined the team after the move to Colorado, and helped them win 2 Cups. (Lafleur ended his career with the Nords, but it was hardly the same thing.)

No matter how much the media tried to make the Nords the team of French speakers and Québec
nationalists, and the Habs the team of English speakers and Canadian nationalists, it just didn't work in the Nords' favor. The Canadiens would always be the Province's favorite team. Or, being that it's Canada, its favourite team.

It was pretty much the same thing as New England: The Whalers would never be as popular as the Boston Bruins, not even in Connecticut. Even in North and Central Jersey, the Devils still haven't eliminated fandom for the New York Rangers. The Anaheim Ducks have the same problem, with many people in Orange County not yet giving up on the Los Angeles Kings.

Eric Lindros. If he had signed with the Nords, would they have stayed? Maybe not: Eventually, he would have demanded a salary that Aubut probably could not have paid. Or, maybe his presence would have driven up revenues enough to pay his salary and save the team.

But it was never going to happen. Whether it was his decision, or that of his parents, Carl and Bonnie, who would later drive the Philadelphia Flyers' management nuts (and Ed Snider and Bob Clarke didn't need the help), Lindros wasn't going to play for the Nordiques. Upon his election to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2016, he told ESPN he didn't have a problem with the city, or with its fans, or with having to learn French. It was all about Aubut: "I was not going to play for that individual, period."

Now, the Top 5:

5. Le Colisée de Québec. It had been built in 1949, for the Quebec Aces of the Quebec Senior Hockey League, with 10,034 seats. When the Nordiques arrived in 1972, capacity was roughly the same.

A condition for them entering the NHL was a larger arena. An expansion got capacity up to 15,750, but it remained an old-time arena. By the time the Nords left in 1995, only the Montreal Forum, Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, and the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium were older; the Gardens was the only one of those left at the start of the 1996-97 season, and in the 1998-99 season, even that was closed.

4. Denver. If an NHL team was going to move in 1995, Denver was a great place to go. It was a city of about 600,000 people with a metropolitan area of about 3 million. It had the McNichols Sports Arena, built in 1975, and by 1995 having a capacity of 17,171; and a plan to build a new arena, which became the Pepsi Center (ironically, having the same sponsor that the Colisée would have in its last years), which opened in 1999 and seated 18,007 for hockey.

True, both the NHL and the WHA had failed in Denver in the 1970s. But the 1990s had seen the city embrace baseball, with the Colorado Rockies name revived; and keep its interest in football with the Broncos and basketball with the Nuggets. Colorado was ready to try hockey again.

3. The Québec Major Junior Hockey League. It's not just the Remparts. It has teams from all over the Province, from Gatineau on the Québec side of the Ottawa River across from the national capital to Rimouski in the Gaspé Peninsula, a span of 456 miles. Because of the QMJHL, the people of Québec don't really miss the Nordiques.

LHJMQ (Ligue de hockey junior majeur du Québec) also includes teams in the Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. That nearly doubles the span, to 835 miles. 

2. Demographics. Québec City is home to 532,000 people. There are cities in North America with fewer people and at least one major league sports team. But, as is the case with pretty much every major Canadian city except Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, the metropolitan area doesn't have much in the way of suburbs. What suburbs it does have makes the overall population rise to only about 800,000.

The area simply isn't big enough of a metropolitan area to support a major league team, in any sport. Certainly not in the NHL, with 41 home games a year, in the cold Winter months.

But the big culprit is politics. And I don't mean NHL politics, led by dictator Gary Bettman. I mean actual politics. A very nasty form, which is tinged by national pride (both a real country and a proposed country), language, and even religion, all of it carrying accusations of discrimination:

1. The Parti Québecois. First, they won the Provincial election in 1976, and launched a sovereignty referendum in 1980. It failed by a vote of 60 percent to 40. Then they lost the 1985 election. But they regained power in 1994, partly due to the federal government's alleged slights to the Province and its culture.

Behind party leader and Premier (like the Governor of one of our States) Jacques Parizeau, the PQ (or "Pequistes") launched a new referendum in 1995, and both sides campaigned very hard for it, including with competing rallies in downtown Montreal, the city where it was always going to be decided, and with ugly charges on both sides. In the end, on October 30, 1995, the vote was nearly an even 50-50 split.

It just barely failed. With a turnout of 93.5 percent of registered voters, here was the result: Non, 2,362,648 votes, or 50.58 percent; Oui, 2,308,360 votes, or 49.42 percent. The number of spoiled ballots, ballots that could not be accepted for whatever reason, was larger than the Non side's margin of victory, 54,288 votes -- shades of what would happen in Florida 5 years later.

That was 4 months after the Nordiques moved. That was the PQ's only concern in 1995: Separating from Anglophone Canada. They were not interested in building a new arena to keep the Nordiques, or modernizing the old one. They just wanted to stick it to Ottawa, to "protect the French language," and to promote Québec's status from a "distinct society" within Canada to an independent nation of its own.

Anything else was simply not their department. This would also include building a new ballpark for the Montreal Expos: They weren't willing to do that, either, any more than the City of Montreal was.

The PQ was more interested in stepping to Ottawa than in stepping up for its own people. Said people finally accepted this in 2003, and restored the Liberal Party to power in the Provincial election. By then, restoring the Provincial capital to the NHL had ceased to be a priority.

VERDICT: Not Guilty. Marcel Aubut is no saint, but he's also not a major reason why the Québec Nordiques moved. And he still has a chance, and apparently still has the desire, to get the city restored to the NHL.

These are my choices for the Top 15 Craziest Games In Yankee History. I decided that I couldn't limit it to 10. As you can see, 2 of them fell on this day of the year, July 1. And it won't surprise anyone that 6 of the 15 are against the Boston Red Sox.

I am listing these in chronological order, rather than in order of craziness.

1. September 3, 1906, Hilltop Park, Manhattan: The Yankees, still known as the New York Highlanders, are in a 3-way battle for the American League Pennant, with the Chicago White Stockings (later the White Sox) and the Cleveland Naps (so named for their star and manager, Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, later to become the Indians).

The defending Pennant winners, the Philadelphia Athletics, are not yet out of the race, and are the opposition on this day. It is a doubleheader, and the Highlanders win the 1st game, 4-3, but not before shortstop Norman "Kid" Elberfeld is so angry at an umpire's decision that he chases him around the field. The home crowd of 20,000, basically all that could fit in the single-decked wooden firetrap at 165th & Broadway, where Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center would be built, boos him.

The 2nd game sees a pair of future Hall-of-Famers go at it, Jack Chesbro for New York and Rube Waddell for Philadelphia. The A's lead 3-1 going to the bottom of the 9th. The Yankees tie it up, and have the winning run on base.

But the A's allege baserunner interference on the part of Hall-of-Famer Willie Keeler. Their manager, Connie Mack, a former major league catcher -- and, at age 43, hardly the "Grand Old Man of Baseball" that he would become -- pulls his team off the field, and the umpires forfeit the game to the Highlanders.

2. October 1, 1932, Wrigley Field, Chicago: Game 3 of the World Series. There was bad blood between the Yankees and the Chicago Cubs, because the Cubs had acquired former Yankee shortstop Mark Koenig late in the season, he'd helped them win the Pennant, and had announced that, whatever their individual players' shares of the World Series money would be, he would get only half as much.

The Yankees, including Babe Ruth himself, publicly called the Cubs cheap, and there was some rough stuff in the 1st 2 games at Yankee Stadium. When Ruth and his wife Claire got off the train at Union Station in Chicago, Cub fans were waiting for them, throwing garbage at them, and spitting on them. Neither was naive: The Babe had been treated badly before, and Mrs. Ruth, under her maiden name of Claire Hodgson, was an actress and used to rough customers. But this was over the line.

The Yankees took a 4-1 lead, including home runs by Ruth and Lou Gehrig. But the Cubs tied it up in the bottom of the 4th. Ruth led off the top of the 5th, and the Cub fans were abusing him like crazy. In the Cubs dugout, the "bench jockeying" was nasty as well.

Ruth was no stranger to this. Because of his large, wide nose and big lips, there had been suggestions that he was part black. Research into his family history showed him to be almost completely German -- in fact, because his grandparents were born in Pennsylvania, before moving to Baltimore, they were "Pennsylvania Dutch" -- ethnically Amish, if practicing Catholics.

But that didn't stop people from indulging in rumors, and one of the names he was sometimes called was "(N-word) Lips." On one memorable occasion, which may be apocryphal, he heard this particular insult, walked over to the opposing dugout, and said, "Listen, you guys, call me 'bastard' or 'cocksucker,' or whatever you want, but lay off the personal stuff, would ya?"

Charlie Root was pitching for the Cubs, and he threw a called strike. The Babe didn't like the pitch, and the Cubs' bench jockeying got worse. A home movie -- sadly, silent, and with all the crowd noise, we probably wouldn't be able to hear what the players were saying anyway -- shows Ruth waving he hand at the Cub dugout, a classic "Ah, go on, ya bum" gesture.

Legend has it that there were only 3 pitches in this at-bat. In fact, Root's next 2 pitches were out of the strike zone, and called balls. His 4th pitch was called a strike. The home movie shows Ruth pointing directly at Root -- twice. His arm is not extended. Contrary to legend, he is not pointing at a spot beyond the outfield fence, as if to say, "I'm going to hit the next pitch there."

But he is sending a message. Cubs catcher Gabby Hartnett claimed Ruth said, "It only takes one." Another source said Ruth said, "You got one more, kid!" (To the Babe, who was terrible with names, if you were a young guy, you were "Kid"; if you were older, you were "Doc"; and if he didn't like you, or sometimes even if he did, you were "You son of a bitch!") Gehrig, in the on-deck circle, told a reporter that what Ruth yelled at Root was, "I'm gonna hit the next pitch right down your goddamned throat!"

So, yes, Babe Ruth called his shot.

Root threw him one more pitch. The Babe crushed it to dead center field. Longtime Cub observers said it was the longest home run ever hit in Wrigley Field to that point. The now-familiar center field scoreboard wouldn't go up until 1937, and no player has ever hit it with a home run. Had it been there in 1932, the Babe's blast might have hit it.

The crowd knew that the Babe had made his point, and, like the Russian fans turning from Drago to Balboa in Rocky IV, switched sides, and cheered him.

The next batter was Gehrig, and he also hit his 2nd home run of the game. The Yankees hung on to win, 7-5, and completed the sweep the next day.

3. September 3, 1939, Fenway Park, Boston: On the anniversary of the 1st game on this list, a similar deal. Another Sunday doubleheader. The Sox won the opener 12-11. In the nightcap, the Sox got 2 home runs from rookie Ted Williams, and 1 from their shortstop and manager, Joe Cronin. The Yankees got homers from Joe DiMaggio and Joe Gordon.

It was tied 5-5 after 7 innings. At the time, Massachusetts law had a 6:30 PM curfew for Sunday sporting events. In the top of the 8th, the Yankees take a 7-5 lead. Knowing that the curfew is coming up fast, they want to get the game in. So they start making dumb outs, including bad attempts to steal home plate. The Red Sox do what they can to prolong the game.

Finally, Cronin goes to the home plate umpire, Cal Hubbard -- also a lineman who will make the Pro Football, as well as the Baseball, Hall of Fame, the only man to be in both -- and says that the game should be forfeited to the Red Sox, because what the Yankees are doing is illegal. Except Hubbard knows that this isn't true. Ordinarily, making outs on purpose would be trying to lose on purpose, thus "fixing" the game, possibly for the benefit of gamblers. But, this time, they're doing it to try to win the game, so it's allowed.

The angry Red Sox fans start throwing garbage onto the field. Hubbard realizes that the field can't be cleared before 6:30, and orders the game forfeited to the Yankees. It didn't matter in the standards: While the Sox were in 2nd place, the Yankees were running away with the Pennant. Still, it was another wild chapter in baseball's nastiest rivalry.

4. October 3, 1947, Ebbets Field, Brooklyn: Game 4 of the World Series. Against the Brooklyn Dodgers, Bill Bevens has a no-hitter going into the 9th inning. No pitcher had ever thrown a no-hitter in a World Series game. But he'd been shaky: He'd walked 8 batters going into the 9th, so it wasn't going to be "a no-hit, no-run game." The Yankee lead was 2-1, not 2-0. So the game was already rather unusual.

Bruce Edwards leads off the bottom of the 9th, and flies to left. Two outs to go. But Bevens issues his 9th walk of the game, to Carl Furillo. Johnny "Spider" Jorgensen pops up to 1st. One out to go. The pitcher's spot in the order is up. The pitcher is Hugh Casey, he of the pitch that led to Mickey Owen's passed ball in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 4 of the 1941 World Series, between these same teams -- a game that was another contender for this list.

Dodger manager Burt Shotton sends Pete Reiser to the plate. A 3-time All-Star, a 2-time National League stolen base champion, and a former batting champion, injuries have left Reiser a shell of his former self. He had been playing on a badly injured ankle. But Shotton still has confidence in him.

Shotton also sends Al Gionfriddo in to pinch-run for Furillo, who, though a great right fielder with an arm that got him nicknamed "The Reading Rifle," was not fleet of foot. Gionfriddo does what Shotton expects of him, and steals 2nd base successfully. That leaves 1st base open. Two of baseball's "unwritten rules" have come into conflict here: You want to set up the force play at any base, but you don't want to put the winning run on base.

Yankee manager Bucky Harris, figuring Reiser's bad ankle makes him a baserunning liability, decides to walk him intentionally -- Bevens' 10th walk. Except Shotton is already a move ahead of Harris, and replaces him with speedy Eddie Miksis.

The next batter was supposed to be Eddie Stanky. Earlier in the year, Ewell Blackwell of the Cincinnati Reds had won 16 straight games. The 8th was a no-hitter. The 9th was against the Dodgers, and he was 2 outs away from matching his former Reds teammate Johnny Vander Meer with back-to-back no-hitters -- and against the same team Vander Meer completed his against in 1938, the Dodgers. But Stankey hit one up the middle, through Blackwell's legs, and the tall pitcher couldn't bend down in time to get it.

But Shotton plays another hunch, and replaces Stanky with Harry "Cookie" Lavagetto. A 4-time All-Star, Lavagetto was also nearing the end of the line. But he has enough left to smack a Bevens delivery to the opposite field, off the weirdly angled right field wall, and Tommy Henrich can't get to it in time. Henrich throws the ball back to the infield, but it is too late: Not only is the no-hitter gone, but Gionfriddo has scored the tying run, and Miksis has scored the winning run. Dodgers 3, Yankees 2. The Series is tied.

The Yankees won Game 5. The Dodgers won Game 6, with Gionfriddo making a spectacular catch off a drive by DiMaggio. The Yankees won Game 7, and Bevens was one of the pitchers they used. Neither Bevens, nor Gionfriddo, nor Lavagetto ever appeared in another major league game.

The Yankees had won. However, like 1948 (Game 1, Braves over Indians), 1975 (Game 6, Red Sox over Reds), and arguably 2001 (Games 4 and 5, Yankees over Diamondbacks), this World Series would be remembered most for a game won by the team that ultimately lost the Series.

5. October 13, 1960, Forbes Field, Pittsburgh: Game 7 of the World Series. We are approaching the 60th Anniversary of this epic. The way it ended sometimes obscures how wild the game, and the entire Series, was. The Yankees won Game 2 16-3, Game 3 10-0, and Game 6 12-0. But the Pittsburgh Pirates won Game 1 6-4, Game 4 3-2, and Game 5 5-2. In other words, the games the Yankees won, the average score was Yankees 13, Pirates 1; the games the Pirates won, the average score was Pirates 4, Yankees 3.

But they all counted the same, setting up a Game 7 that is sometimes called the greatest game in baseball history.

The Pirates take a 2-0 lead in the 1st inning, on a home run by Rocky Nelson. They make it 4-0 in the 2nd. Bill "Moose" Skowron leads off the top of the 5th with a home run to make it 4-1. The Yankees take a 5-4 lead in the top of the 6th, highlighted by a Yogi Berra home run, and make it 7-4 in the top of the 8th.

Now comes the bottom of the 8th, which renders this game not just a seesaw affair, but a crazy one. Gino Cimoli leads off with a single. Bill Virdon hits a ground ball that hits a pebble in the infamously bad Forbes Field infield. Yankee shortstop Tony Kubek seems to be perfectly placed to field it and turn a double play, erasing Cimoli and Virdon. But, after hitting the pebble, the ball jumps up and hits Kubek in the throat. He does down, and Virdon reaches 1st safely. Yankee manager Casey Stengel has to send Joe DeMaestri in to play shortstop.

Dick Groat singles Cimoli home. Stengel makes a pitching change, replacing Bobby Shantz with Jim Coates. Bob Skinner bunts the runners over. Coates gets Nelson to fly to left, and, with Forbes having dimensions very similar to the pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium, Virdon has to stay on 3rd, Groat on 2nd. Roberto Clemente singles Virdon home. And then Hal Smith hits a home run to make it 9-7 Pirates.

But the Yankees have 1 more chance. Bobby Richardson leads off the top of the 9th with a single off Bob Friend. Dale Long, himself a former Pirate, also singles. Pirate manager Danny Murtaugh replaces Friend with Harvey Haddix. Roger Maris pops up for the 1st out. Mickey Mantle beats out a grounder to 2nd, and Richardson scores to make it 9-8. Long gets to 3rd. Gil McDougald is sent in to run for Long.

Yogi hits a sharp grounder to 1st. Nelson takes it and runs to 1st. Two out. No more force play. Mantle realizes that if he goes back to 1st, or if he runs to 2nd, it's a double play. Somehow, he quickly figures out what he can do: He fakes running toward 2nd, and Nelson begins the process of throwing to 2nd. This allows Mickey to dive back to 1st base safely. While this is happening, McDougald scores the tying run.

And Mickey is still on 1st, with the run that could win the World Series. But Skowron grounds to short, and Mickey ends up out at 2nd anyway. So it stays 9-9.

Stengel brings Ralph Terry in to pitch the bottom of the 9th. Bill Mazeroski leads off. If this at-bat had ended any other way, the 1st thing anyone would remember about Maz would be "best-fielding 2nd baseman of his generation, maybe of all time." Instead, he becomes the only man, to this day, after to win a World Series with a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 7. Pirates 10, Yankees 9.

The Yankees had outscored the Pirates 55-27. But it's not the most runs, it's the most wins. Mantle later said not only that he cried on the entire flight back to New York, but also that, of the 12 World Series he played in, this was the only one in which he thought the team that played better didn't win.

6. October 2, 1978, Fenway Park: American League Eastern Division Playoff. Another one on the short list for the title of "Greatest Baseball Game Ever Played." With the possible exception of the 1951 Giant-Dodger Playoff that ended with the Bobby Thomson home run, no single game has been written about more than this one.

The story is familiar. The Yankees were defending World Champions, but fell into dissension and injuries, while the Red Sox were running away with the AL East. The Yankees changed managers and got healthy, the Sox developed their own injuries, and the Yankees completed a comeback from 14 games back with a 4-game sweep at Fenway. The race came down to the end, and both teams finished with 99 wins, requiring the Playoff.

The game is relatively calm for 6 innings, with the Sox ahead 2-0. But the Fenway wind, which aided a Carl Yastrzemski drive that became a home run down the right field line, shifted. In the top of the 7th, the Yankees get 2 runners on. Bucky Dent breaks his bat and fouls a ball off his foot. He gets a replacement bat and, despite being the least likely home run hitter in the starting lineup, hits one to make it 3-2.

Sox fans like to talk about how Dent's replacement bat was corked, but they have no credibility when talking about other teams cheating.

The Yankees make it 5-2 in the 8th, but the Sox make it 5-4 in their half. The bottom of the 9th begins benignly when Dwight Evans flies to left. But Rick Burleson works Goose Gossage for a walk.

Jerry Remy hits a fly to right field. Today, this would be an easy out for Lou Piniella. But, back then, Fenway didn't have that big press box and luxury seating section behind home plate, which blocks out the Sun. This time, the Sun was in Lou's eyes. He can't see.

Desperate, he sticks his arms out like a hockey goalie, hoping the ball hits one of them. At the last instant, he sees the ball land in front of him, and he leans to his left and snatches it. Burleson, representing the tying run, doesn't know whether he's going to catch it, so has to hold up, and can only advance to 2nd, not 3rd.

Jim Rice flies to right, advancing Burelson to 3rd. Yastrzemski, one of the great clutch hitters of all time, comes up, but the Goose gets him to pop up to 3rd. As a Boston newspaper headline put it, "Desinty 5, Red Sox 4." The Yankees went on to win the World Series.

7. July 24, 1983, Yankee Stadium I, Bronx: The Pine Tar Game. This is not a crazy game for the 1st 8 innings. The Kansas City Royals score a run in the top of the 2nd. Dave Winfield ties it in the bottom half with a home run. The Royals make it 2-1 in the 4th, and 3-1 in the 6th. But the Yankees make it 4-3 in the bottom of the 6th.

With 2 outs in the top of the 9th, U L Washington (that's how his name is written, no periods) singles, and George Brett takes the Goose deep, to make it 5-4 Royals. But manager Billy Martin comes out to talk to the umpires, and, this time, Billy is in full control. He points out that Brett has pine tar on his bat, surpassing the legal limit.

The umpires measure it, and he's called out, restoring the 4-3 Yankee lead and ending the game. Brett has a fit, and has to be held back by his teammates, but there's nothing he can do.

His team files an appeal. Despite being a former Yankee general manager (and the son of another), AL President Lee MacPhail does something no League President had ever done before, or has since: He overruled his umpires. Unofficially, we have since seen, many times, that the baseball establishment considers it okay to cheat if you do it against the Yankees. This may be the only time when it's actually been made official.

MacPhail rules that the game must be resumed, with 2 outs in the top of the 9th and the Royals leading 5-4. An open date for both teams is found, August 18, and the game is resumed. Although an angry George Steinbrenner decided to let anybody with a ticket to the original version of the game into Yankee Stadium free of charge, since Yankee Fans have been screwed over by this as much as their team has, only about 1,200 people take him up on the offer.

Billy, a master of spite, decides that the game is already a farce, so he decides to deepen the point. He puts pitcher Ron Guidry in center field, and 1st baseman Don Mattingly at 2nd base -- making Mattingly one of the very few lefthanded-fielding 2nd basemen ever.

He then appeals at each base, suggesting that the runners hadn't touched them, and should be called out on that basis. But the umpire has a notarized affidavit signed by all the umpires from the original game, stating that all bases had been touched.

Brett was not in the game, either, because his ejection from the game was allowed to stand. Which makes no sense: In a real court of law, any crime committed by someone in response to a false charge gets thrown out. At any rate, he did not even show up for the resumption, instead going on to Baltimore, the Royals' next stop.

George Frazier strikes Hal McRae out to end the top of the 9th. Dan Quisenberry pitches the bottom of the 9th for the Royals. He gets Mattingly to fly to center, Roy Smalley to fly to left, and Oscar Gamble to ground to 2nd.

The game did have meaning in the standings: The Yankees were only 2 games behind Toronto in the AL East on July 24, while the Royals were 1 game behind the Texas Rangers in the AL West. As it turned out, though, none of those 4 teams won their Division: The Baltimore Orioles won the East, and the White Sox won the West, with the Orioles winning the Pennant, and then beating the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series.

8. August 29, 1986, Kingdome, Seattle: The Yankees afe in another dogfight with the Red Sox for the AL East, and in another injury crisis. And the last thing they need is a Pacific Coast roadtrip. The Yankees always had trouble with the Kingdome, its awful artificial turf, its gray roof, and it's lousy atmosphere.

They score 3 runs on the Seattle Mariners in the 1st inning, on a Mattingly homer, and a Rickey Henderson homer makes it 5-0 in the 2nd. But the normally reliable Ron Guidry has an absolute meltdown in the bottom of the 2nd: Single, double, single, home run, groundout, single. Piniella is now the manager, and he replaces Guidry with Brian Fisher, who ias no better: Single, single, walk, single, RBI groundout, single, flyout. Mariners 8, Yankees 5. After 2 innings.

Bob Shirley makes it worse in the 4th, 12-5 Seattle. Finally, the Yankees have had enough in the top of the 5th: Henderson leads off with another home run. Willie Randolph grounds out, but Mattingly and Dave Winfield work Mark Langston, normally a Yankee Killer, for a walk. Ron Kittle doubles Mattingly home. After a pitching change, Dan Pasqua singles home Winfield and Kittle. Wayne Tolleson reaches on an error. Claudell Washington grounds out, but Mike Easler reaches on another error, which scores Pasqua. 12-11 Seattle.

But Piniella has pinch-hit himself into a corner. Washington had batted for catcher Joel Skinner. Easler had pinch-hit for Mike Fischlin, who was already a backup shortstop. And Pasqua had pinch-hit for left fielder Gary Roenicke.

So rookie Juan Espino is sent behind the plate. Easler is left in the game to replace Roenicke. Tolleson is moved from 3rd base to shortstop. Pasqua is installed at 1st base. And, with the football mentality of "the best athlete," Piniella moves Mattingly to 3rd base. Mattingly is lefthanded, and because a lefty 3rd baseman would have to turn around to field a grounder and throw to 1st, there have been very few. But Lou guesses that Mattingly ias his best remaining choice.

Sure enough, in the bottom of the 5th, Jim Presley hits a grounder right at Mattingly. Unfazed, he starts an inning-ending double play. In the 6th, Danny Tartabull and Ray Quinones hit grounders to 3rd, and Mattingly handles them. In the 8th, Phil Bradley and Presley both ground to 3rd, and Mattingly properly handles those.

Pasqua leads off the 7th with a game-tying home run. Winfield leads off the top of the 9th with a walk. Kittle flies out. Pasqua walks, sending Winfield to 2nd. Tolleson flies out. And Espino doubles to center, making it 13-12 Yankees, and putting Tim Stoddard in position to be the winning pitcher.

Bottom of the 9th. Dave Righetti on to close it out. Alvin Davis grounds to Mattingly, who fields his 6th chance at 3rd base without an error. I thought I remembered a Mariner bunting to test Mattingly, but none did. Bob Kearney flies to left. Quinones singles to center, and now, in the homer-happy Kingdome, the Mariners have the tying run on and the winning run on base. But the batter is Steve Yeager, once a catcher who played in 3 World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the Yankees, but now playing out the string in Seattle. He flies to right, and it was over.

It was the 32nd of 46 saves Righetti would notch that year, a single-season MLB record that he didn't hold for long. But it was the wildest game of a weird season for the Yankees, who ended up finishing 2nd to the Red Sox. This time, unlike 1949 and 1978, they could not overcome their injuries and the Red Sox.

9. July 1, 1990, 30 years ago today, Comiskey Park, Chicago: Now, I come to the reason behind this post, because this might be the craziest one of all. Imagine pitching a no-hitter, and losing 4-0. Andy Hawkins doesn't have to imagine it: He did it.

This is the Yankees' last game at Comiskey, which was closing after 80 years as home of the White Sox. They were in the middle of their worst season of my lifetime, one in which they would finish last for the 1st time since 1966 -- the only other times in their history being 1908 and 1912. George Steinbrenner had just been suspended from operating the team. This allowed Gene Michael to begin the process of rebuilding.

One of the guys who is part of that was Jim Leyritz, a catcher who had made his major league debut the day before, a Yankee win. He played out of position, at 3rd base, and hit 2 home runs. But today, manager Carl "Stump" Merrill starts Leyritz in left field, a position he has literally never played before, at any level.

Both Hawkins and White Sox starter Greg Hibbard get through the 1st 4 innings without allowing a baserunner. But in a foreshadowing of what was to come, Hawkins walks 2 batters in the 5th. He gets out of it, though, and pitches a perfect 6th. He walks a batter in the 7th, but still doesn't allow a hit. And now, we could talk about it.

Of course, you can't say the word "no-hitter" while one is in progress, because that jinxes it. It is "the other N-word." Of course, lots of people say it, and the achievement ends up being completed anyway. And, according to baseball historian John Thorn, for some reason, the words "perfect game" can be spoken aloud without jinxing the achievement.

The Yankees got 2 singles in the top of the 6th, 2 more in the top of the 7th, and a player reached on an error in the top of the 8th. But the game is still scoreless when the bottom of the 8th began. And now, it is getting later in the day, and the Sun is right over Comiskey's roof, making it tough for the outfielders to see, not unlike the conditions in the 9th inning at Fenway during the Bucky Dent Game.

Hawkins gets first Ron Karkovice, then Scott Fletcher, to pop up to 2nd base, and it looks like the inning will end benignly, and give the Yankees the chance to win the game in the top of the 9th. What follows is one of the most shocking baseball sequences I've ever seen on WPIX-Channel 11, and I still have the videotape in my basement.

The batter is Sammy Sosa, not yet the steroid-riddled slugger who would thrill people under false pretenses across town at Wrigley Field. He hits a sharp grounder to 3rd, and Mike Blowers can't handle it. He picks it up and throws to 1st. Sosa dives headfirst, and beats the throw. There is no immediate decision from the official scorer, but it is ruled an error.

Sosa steals 2nd. Ozzie Guillen, later to manage the Pale Hose to their 2005 World Championship, draws a walk. Lance Johnson also works Hawkins for a walk, and now the bases are loaded with nobody out in a tie game -- despite Hawkins still having a no-hitter.

The batter is Robin Ventura, who would eventually make his mark in postseason play for both New York teams. This time, he hits a lazy fly ball to left field. But the Sun is making the ball hard to see. And Leyritz has never played the position before. He can't see it, even with sunglasses. He gets right under it, but closes his glove too early, and the ball bounces off his fingers and rolls away. All 3 runners score, and Ventura ends up on 2nd base.

And Hawkins still has the no-hitter. But he's losing 3-0. In the visiting team TV broadcast booth, Phil Rizzuto is "Holy cow"ing away, and George Grande, better known as an announcer for the Cincinnati Reds, tells the Scooter, "There isn't a hole deep enough that you want to crawl into.""You," of course, meaning Leyritz.

The batter is Ivan Calderon. He hits the ball to right field, where Jesse Barfield is one of the best fielders at the position. But the Sun bothers him, too, and the far more experienced outfielder makes the exact same mistake as Leyritz: He closes his mitt too early, and the ball hits it and rolls away. Ventura scores. It's 4-0 Chicago.

Rizzuto yells, "Holy cow, what's comin' off here?" Grande asks him if, in 50 seasons' involvement with the Yankees, he's ever seen anything like this before. He admits he hasn't. Finally, the inning ends when one of the heroes of the 1986 game in Seattle, Dan Pasqua, bats for the White Sox, and pops up to short.

I switch over to WOR-Channel 9, where the Mets are about to finish off the Reds 3-2 at Shea Stadium. They bring up what's happening at Comiskey. Ralph Kiner mentions that only 1 other pitcher has ever pitched a complete game no-hitter and lost, and says, "I think it was Ken Johnson." Tim McCarver, playing for the St. Louis Cardinals and helping them win the World Series that year of 1964, confirms that it was the pitcher for the team then known as the Houston Colt .45's, becoming the Astros the next year: "It is Ken."

I switch back to Channel 11, and I see that the fight has gone out of the Yankees. Mattingly flies deep to center. Steve Balboni, a one-dimensional player (a slugger who struck out too much to justify it) who had no speed, reaches on an error, with some irony. Merrill sends Tolleson in to pinch-run for him. But Barfield, who certainly had power, doesn't help, grounding into a game-ending double play.

After the game, for WPIX, Hawkins is interviewed by, of all people, Tom Seaver. Now broadcasting for the Yankees, Seaver was "The Franchise" for the Mets, but pitched the only no-hitter of his career for the Reds. But even he, who has seen some remarkable things in his baseball life -- some good, some not -- finds this one, to borrow a Met adjective, amazing.

Hawkins is circumspect, accepting responsibility for walking batters and putting himself in position to lose, but knowing that now, he is a part of baseball history.

A year later, Major League Baseball convenes a committee to re-examine rules, and one of their decisions is that a game can only be defined as a "no-hitter" if the game is a complete game with no hits allowed. Not only does this mean that a player who pitches 9 no-hit innings, then loses the no-hitter in extra innings, no longer gets the credit for it, but Hawkins, who got credit for a complete game, lost credit for the no-hitter because he pitched "only" 8 innings. In other words, he got robbed.

The craziest game in the worst Yankee season of my lifetime -- and maybe the craziest game in any Yankee Fan's lifetime.

10. October 17, 1999, Fenway Park: Game 4 of the AL Championship Series is a similar story to that 1939 game at Fenway. This one was relatively quiet for 8 innings, after which the Yankees led 3-2. But Boston's bullpen and defense both collapsed. And 2nd base umpire Tim Tschida called Jose Offerman out when Chuck Knoblauch never touched him.

Sox fans were furious, and when the inning was capped by a home run by Ricky Ledee, making the score 9-2, the Fenway Faithful threw garbage onto the field. It took 12 minutes to get it all off. There was no threat of forfeiting the game to the Yankees, though.

There are few things that Yankee Fans and Red Sox fans can agree on. One is that Tschida was a lousy umpire. I saw him cost the Yankees a few games over the years, but never one as big as this. The Yankees clinched the next night, and Sox fans still believe the umpires screwed them. This is not true: The Sox made 10 errors in the 5 games. If New Englanders want to blame anyone for the Sox losing the Pennant to the Yankees, blame the Sox themselves.

11. October 16, 2003, Yankee Stadium I: Game 7 of the ALCS. Maybe I should make this a dual entry, with Game 3 of this series, at Fenway. Pedro Martinez, Karim Garcia, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez, Don Zimmer. I didn't think any postseason series, even Yankees vs. Red Sox, could top the 1999 ALCS for craziness, but by the end of Game 3, this one already had.

So the Yankees fall behind 4-0 to the cheating Red Scum in the 4th inning, Joe Torre gambles by taking Clemens out and replacing him with Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi hits 2 home runs to make it 4-2, and the David Ortiz, the big fat lying cheating bastard, takes David Wells deep to make it 5-2, and the Sox are 5 outs away in the bottom of the 8th.

And that's when Pedro gets tired. Derek Jeter doubles to right. Bernie Williams singles him home. Sox manager Grady Little goes out to talk to Pedro, but instead of bringing the lefthanded Alan Embree in to pitch to the lefthanded Hideki Matsui and the switch-hitting, but not as good from the right side, Jorge Posada, leaves the righthanded Pedro in. Matsui hits a ground-rule double to right, and Posada doubles to center. Tie game.

Mariano Rivera gives it all he has for 3 innings. Tim Wakefield throws Aaron Boone a knuckleball to lead off the bottom of the 11th, and the Yankees win the Pennant.

12. July 1, 2004, 16 years ago today, Yankee Stadium I:"The Curse of the Bambino," if it ever existed, has one last gasp in it. Unfortunately, it doesn't save that for the postseason. It saved it for this regular-season clash at the big ballyard in The Bronx.

The Yankees enter the top of the 6th with a 3-1 lead, aided by home runs off Pedro by Tony Clark and Posada. But the Sox tie it in the top of the 7th, including a home run by Manny. The Yankees strand men on 1st and 2nd in the 7th, and the bases loaded with 1 out in the 9th, sending the game to extra innings.

Mariano only pitches 2 innings this time, holding the Sox scoreless. The Yankees strand men on 2nd and 3rd in the 10th. The Sox get men on 2nd and 3rd in the top of the 12th, and Trot Nixon sends a ball foul toward left field. Derek Jeter races over, catches it, and seems to fly into the stands.

There had been occasions when people had called Jeter "Superman." This time, he actually seemed to fly. But he landed face-first onto a seat, and was bleeding. Maybe he wasn't Superman. Maybe he was Batman.

Miguel Cairo leads off the bottom of the 12th with a triple, and the Yankees ended up loading the bases with 1 out again, but couldn't get a run home. In the top of the 13th, Manny leads off the top of the 13th with another home run, and the Sox lead 4-3. Curtis Leskanic gets the 1st 2 outs in the bottom of the 13th, and it looks like this crazy game will end quietly.

It doesn't. Ruben Sierra singles up the middle. Cairo doubles him home to tie it. And John Flaherty hits a long fly ball into the left-field corner, and Cairo scores. Yankees 5, Red Sox 4, completing a sweep.

Flaherty has built his broadcasting career on this one hit. Then again, Fran Healy was a backup catcher who built a broadcasting career on less than that.

The Red Sox used all their nonpitchers, except for their alleged best player, Nomar Garciaparra. Soon, they traded him. And their World Championship * was on.

Were the games in the 2004 ALCS crazy? Yes. Would they have been less so had the Sox not cheated? Almost certainly.

13. May 16, 2006, Yankee Stadium I: Going into the bottom of the 2nd inning, it is Texas Rangers 9, Yankees 0. There ias no hope. Well, according to Baseball-Reference.com, there was a 2 percent chance of the Yankees winning the game. As the meme goes, "So, you're saying, there's a chance."

The Yankees score a run in the bottom of the 2nd. But the Rangers score again in the top of the 3rd. 10-1 Texas. The Yankees score 2 in the bottom of the 3rd, then 2 more in the bottom of the 5th. Then they break it open in the bottom of the 6th, including a home run by Jeter, and took an 11-10 lead. In the space of 9 at-bats, 1 go-through of the lineup, their chance of winning go from 9 percent to 72 percent.

Apparently, the Rangers don't like that math. It didn't help that Torre does something he did far too often: Bring Scott Proctor in to pitch. The 1st 2 batters he faces are Kevin Mench, who draws a walk, and Brad Wilkerson, who hits a home run. 12-11 Texas.

But singles by Johnny Damon and Jeter, and a sacrifice fly by Posada, tie the game in the bottom of the 7th. The game is still tied going into the 9th, but Mariano blows it: Single, sac bunt, walk, double. 13-12 Texas.

Bottom of the 9th. Damon leads off with a single. But Jeter grounds back to the pitcher, and Alex Rodriguez flies out to center. Now, in spite of the tying run being at 2nd and the winning run at the plate, the Yankees' chances of winning are 15 percent. Jorge Posada goes all Han Solo: "Never tell me the odds!" Here's John Sterling's call:

Swung on, and hit in the air to deep right! The ball is high! It is far! It is gone! It is a bottom of the 9th, 2-out, 2-run walkoff home run for Posada! Jorgie juiced one! He hits a 2-run home run to elevate the Yankees from a 13-12 loss to a 14-13 win! Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeeee Yankees win!

14. June 12, 2009, Yankee Stadium II, Bronx: The new Stadium is only 2 months old, and already, it needs an exterminator. Vermin are in the house. Unwanted pests. Not just the New York Mets, but their disgusting fans.

Robinson Cano opens the scoring with a home run in the 2nd. The Mets take a 2-1 lead in the top of the 3rd. In the bottom of the 3rd, Mark Teixeira hits one out to tie it up. Former Yankee Gary Sheffield homers in the top of the 5th to make it 6-3 Mets. Jeter homers in the bottom of the 5th to make it 6-4. In the bottom of the 6th, Cano singles, Posada walks, and Matsui cranks one. 7-6 Yankees.

But the Mets tie it in the top of the 7th, and take an 8-7 lead in the top of the 8th. That lead holds into the bottom of the 9th. Francisco Rodriguez, a.k.a. K-Rod, who had driven the Yankees nuts while pitching for the team now known as the Los Angeles Angels, gets Brett Gardner to pop up. Jeter singles and steals 2nd, but Damon strikes out. Teixeira is intentionally walked to set up the force play at any base (except home plate).

The batter is A-Rod, and he pops up to short right field. The least clutch player in baseball history has blown it again. He knows it. He slams his bat down. Met 2nd baseman Luis Castillo drifts back. Perhaps not the easiest of plays, but it's one that a major league infielder should be able to make.

Castillo doesn't make it. He drops the ball. Jeter, running on the 2-out pitch, scores easily. Teix, not a fast runner, was running all the way, and he scores. Yankees 9, Mets 8. This is probably more of an ignominious loss for Met fans than it is a great win for Yankee Fans, but, after the way they treated us in the 1980s, and talked trash during the 1999 and 2000 postseasons, they deserve it.

15. April 21, 2012, Fenway Park: Since the Yankees had been the opponent for the Back Bay ballyard's 1st game, the schedule was set up so that they would be the opponent for its official 100th Anniversary game. That had been the day before, and, unlike that April 20, 1912 game, the Yankees won.

This time, it looks like the Sox will get revenge. They score 2 in the 1st inning, 3 in the 2nd, 2 in the 3rd and 2 in the 5th, making it 9-0 Boston. As the top of the 6th opens, the Yankees have less than a 1 percent chance of winning.

They get a run in that inning. Then they roll a couple of 7s. With 1 out in the top of the 7th, they get single, single, walk, home run by Nick Swisher, double, reach on an error, home run by Teixeira. 7 runs, 6 hits, 1 walk, 1 error. Leading off the top of the 8th: Single, walk, double, intentional walk, unintentional walk, ground-rule double, intentional walk, double, double, single, stolen base, single. 7 runs, 6 hits, 4 walks, no errors.

Yankees 15, Red Sox 9. The lead is so big (How big is it?), even Boone Logan can't blow it. Logan gets the Sox out 1-2-3 in the bottom of the 8th. But Joe Girardi leaves the lefty in to face the lefty Ortiz to lead off the 9th, and Big Papi singles. That's enough for Girardi: He brings Cody Eppley in to finish he game, and he gets a double play and a strikeout to put it in the books.

March 11, 2020: There were 4 NBA games played. The New York Knicks beat the Atlanta Hawks, 136-131 in overtime at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Detroit Pistons, 124-106 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. The Charlotte Hornets beat the Miami Heat, 109-98 at the American Airlines Arena in Miami. And the Dallas Mavericks beat the Denver Nuggets, 113-97 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.

There were 5 NHL games played. The New York Rangers lost to the Colorado Avalanche, 3-2 in overtime at the Pepsi Center in Denver. The Chicago Blackhawks beat the San Jose Sharks, 6-2 at the United Center in Chicago. The Winnipeg Jets beat the Edmonton Oilers, 4-2 at Rogers Place in Edmonton. The Los Angeles Kings beat the Ottawa Senators, 3-2 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. And the St. Louis Blues beat the Anaheim Ducks, 4-2 at the Honda Center in Anaheim.

Two Major League Soccer teams played games in the CONCACAF Champions League, both against teams from Mexico. New York City, yet again forced out of Yankee Stadium for reasons beyond their control -- at this point, a team that doesn't control its own venue looks really stupid -- played at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey, home of their arch-rivals, who were happy to take the money of the richest team in MLS, and lost 1-0 to Tigres UANL of San Nicolás de los Garza. And Atlanta United lost 3-0 to Club América, at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City.

And Major League Baseball was in Spring Training. The Yankees lost to the Miami Marlins, 3-1 at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida. The Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-3 at Clover Park (the new name of their Spring Training stadium since 1988) in Port St. Lucie, Florida.

The next day, everything stopped. The Coronavirus pandemic, known as COVID-19, has shut everything down.

Today, the MLS Is Back Tournament gets underway at the Disney World complex outside Orlando, Florida. So North American major league sports will be played for the 1st time in 119 days -- a shade under 4 months. How long has that been?

*

We've had St. Patrick's Day, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and the Independence Days of both America and Canada.

The New York Knicks and the New Jersey Devils are both considering new head coaches, and the Devils are considering a new general manager -- or, the Devils may stick with both current holders of those jobs, Alain Nasreddine and Tom Fitzgerald, respectively. But none of the New York Tri-State Area teams have changed managers/head coaches, or general managers.

The NCAA canceled its basketball tournament. Football, at all levels, looks like it will start on time, but probably in closed stadiums. MLB, the NBA and the NHL will all restart this month, although MLB canceled its All-Star Game today. The Los Angeles Dodgers were supposed to host it for the 1st time since 1980, so they got the 2022 edition, with next year's going to the Atlanta Braves.

Thoroughbred horse racing's Triple Crown was postponed. The Belmont Stakes was only postponed 2 weeks, then run before an empty grandstand, with Tiz the Law winning. The Kentucky Derby has been moved to September 5, and the Preakness Stakes to October 3.

In tennis, Wimbledon was canceled for the 1st time since World War II. The French Open was postponed to September 20 to October 4, while the U.S. Open is tentatively set to be held on schedule, starting August 31.

The Tour de France has been postponed until August 29. If you consider auto racing to be a sport, the Indianapolis 500 has been postponed until August 23. If you consider golf to be a sport, the PGA Championship has been postponed until August 3, the U.S. Open until September 17, the Masters until November 12, and the British Open canceled outright, also for the 1st time since World War II.

The 2020 Summer Olympics and Soccer's Euro 2020 have been postponed until 2021. Liverpool have finally clinched the Premier League title, their 1st title in England's top flight since 1990, when it was still called the Football League Division One.

The FA Cup Quarterfinals have been played, behind closed doors. The Semifinals and the Final will be held at the new Wembley Stadium in London, as planned, but postponed and behind closed doors. Arsenal will play Manchester City on July 18, and Chelsea will play Manchester United on July 19. The winners of these games will face each other for the Cup on August 1.

The UEFA Champions League had not yet completed its Round of 16. Its Quarterfinals will be held from August 12 to 15, its Semifinals on August 18 and 19, and its Final on August 23. All of these games will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, which was meant to host only the Final (barring advancement by either of the city's big teams, Benfica and Sporting Clube de Portugal, neither of which happened).

You'll notice that these games are spilling over into what would have been the start of the 2020-21 seasons in the various European leagues. Said leagues will have to come up with schedules that are either compressed more than usual, to get done by mid-May as usually intended (some leagues have Winter breaks, and may have to eliminate them), or may have to spill over into Summer again, thus again putting the Euros in jeopardy.

Movie premieres have been put on hold. Some studios have made deals with Internet streaming services to premiere their movies. This includes Scoob!, a purported origin story for cartoon dog Scooby-Doo and his human friends, the crime-solving teenagers known as Mystery, Inc. This cartoon also includes Hanna-Barbera stars the Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, Captain Caveman and his companion Dee Dee Skyes, and, as the villains, Dick Dastardly and Muttley. (This Blue Falcon is Brian Crown, son of Radley Crown from the original from the 1976-77 Dynomutt series.)

The Number 1 song in America at the time of the shutdown was "The Box" by Roddy Ricch, a.k.a. Rodrick Wayne Moore Jr., a 21-year-old rapper who is, yes, straight outta Compton, California. Now, the Number 1 song is "Rockstar" by DaBaby, a.k.a. Jonathan Lyndale Kirk, a 28-year-old rapper from Cleveland, with Roddy Ricch also on it. The songs have other things in common: They're both autotuned, and they're both monotonous as hell.

Since the world pretty much shut down, global stock markets have crashed. So has the price of oil, as the pandemic means fewer people are going out, thus fewer are buying gasoline. But other things have happened.

North Macedonia, formerly a part of Yugoslavia, joined NATO. The Israeli governmental deadlock was ended, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had held on to power through 2 inconclusive national elections, formed a unity government with opposition leader Benny Gantz, and agreed to step aside in favor of Gantz in 18 months, on November 17, 2021.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was reported to be deathly ill, or even dead, following surgery, but appears to have recovered. Islamist militants killed 52 people in Mozambique. Iran launched its 1st satellite, Ghased (meaning "Messenger").

Troops from India and China clash over their border. Gunmen killed 24 people, including 2 newborns, in a maternity hospital in Afghanistan. On the same day in that country, a suicide bomber killed 32 people at the other side of life, a funeral. A Pakistan International Airlines flight crashed near Karachi, killing 97 people. An attack on that country's stock exchange killed 8 people. A landslide in Myanmar killed 162. And 34 died in a ferry collision in Bangladesh.

In North America, the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history took lace, 16 people in the small coastal town of Portapique, Nova Scotia. The SpaceX Dragon 2 was launched, the 1st manned spacecraft taking off from U.S. soil since the suspension of the Space Shuttle program 9 years earlier.

And the murder of George Floyd by a policeman in Minneapolis boosted the Black Lives Matter movement, causing demonstrations around the world, leading to Donald Trump ordering the U.S. Army to gas peaceful demonstrators near the White House, so he could walk over to a nearby church, and stand for a photo op, holding a Bible -- upside-down, as it turned out. And he's held rallies in Oklahoma, Arizona and New Hampshire, increasing the spread of COVID-19. It's almost like he doesn't give a damn how many people have to die to keep him in office and out of prison.

Over 132,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 in America. That's equivalent to roughly 44 occurrences of the 9/11 attacks, in just 4 months. It's also 2.27 times the 8-year U.S. death total in the Vietnam War, in 4 months. And nearly 1/3rd of the U.S. deaths in World War II, which was nearly 4 years, and this happened, I say it again, in 4 months. Or, to put it another way, Donald Trump has been in office for 41 1/2 months, so this is more than one 9/11's worth of deaths in every month of his Presidency.

And still, Trump refuses to accept responsibility. How many of those 132,000 people could have been saved if he had just used the Obama Administration's pandemic plan, instead of throwing it out, because he's Mr. Government By Spite?

Let's suppose a pessimistic figure. Suppose only 10 percent could have been saved, above and beyond the number we will never know who have been saved by the other measures that Governors and Mayors of taken. That would still be 13,200 people. That would still be more than four 9/11s whose blood is on Trump's tiny hands.

Here's a summary of famous people who've died from the Coronavirus, from March 12 until now:

* Sports: Philadelphia Eagles running back turned actor Timmy Brown, New Orleans Saints 63-yard field goal kicker Tom Dempsey, 1966 English World Cup winner Norman "Bites Yer Legs" Hunter, former Arizona State baseball coach and Oakland Athletics manager Bobby Winkles, and Canadian Football Hall-of-Famer Marv Luster.

* Other fields of endeavor: Playwright Terrence McNally, jazz patriarch Ellis Marsalis, Fountains of Wayne singer Adam Schlesinger, historian Henry Graff, singer John Prine, magician and animal trainer Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy, and actor-singer Nick Cordero.

Among those who've died from other causes, in sports:

* Baseball: Former Atlanta Braves owner Bill Bartholomay, Houston Astros slugger Jimmy Wynn, Chicago White Sox pitcher and broadcaster Ed Farmer, Detroit Tigers Hall-of-Famer Al Kaline, 1960s Chicago Cubs All-Star Glenn Beckert, Kansas City Royals Pennant-winning manager Jim Frey, Yankees part-owner Hank Steinbrenner, former Oakland Athletics All-Star Matt Keough, former Houston Astros All-Star and Yankee general manager Bob Watson, former Atlanta Braves catcher Biff Pocoroba, former All-Star outfielder Claudell Washington, former Boston Red Sox manager Eddie Kasko.

* Football: Buffalo Bills AFL Champion Mike Stratton, 1956 NFL Champion Giants player Harland Svare, Washington Redskins Hall-of-Famer Bobby Mitchell, Philadelphia Eagles All-Pro Pete Retzlaff, former NFL quarterback Tarvaris Jackson, Green Bay Packers Hall-of-Famer Willie Davis, Baltimore Colts All-Pro Mike Curtis, Miami Dolphins Hall of Fame coach Don Shula, Miss America turned CBS NFL Today panelist Phyllis George, college coach Pepper Rodgers, original 1960 New York Titan/Jet Jack Klotz, Auburn University coach Pat Dye, New York Giants football player and broadcaster Lee Grosscup, college football coach Johnny Majors, Cincinnati Bengals All-Pro Ken Riley, New York Jet Super Bowl III winner Paul Rochester, Miami Dolphins Super Bowl winner Jim Kiick, former Washington Redskins offensive line coach Joe Bugel, and former Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Gay Culverhouse.

* Basketball: Harlem Globetrotters icon Curly Neal, 1963 Loyola National Champion Les Hunter, ABA Commissioner Mike Storen, 1955 Syracuse Nationals NBA Champion and Globetrotter Jim Tucker, former Chicago Bull All-Star and Hall of Fame Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, college coach Eddie Sutton, Washington Bullets Hall-of-Famer Wes Unseld, and former Portland Trail Blazers executive Harry Glickman.

* Hockey: 1970s Chicago Blackhawks All-Star Pat Stapleton, 1940s hockey star Jim Conacher, former Los Angeles Kings coach Tom Webster, auto racer Stirling Moss, and 1950 Detroit Red Wings Stanley Cup winner Doug McKay.

* Soccer: Executive Bob Hermann, founder of the North American Soccer League and namesake of soccer's version of the Heisman Trophy; Manchester City legend Glyn Pardoe, New York Cosmos players Ralph Wright and Seninho, and Manchester United legend Tony Dunne.

* Olympic Gold Medalists: Czech javelin thrower Dana Zatopkova (widow of track legend Emil Zatopek), American swimmer Tom Bruce, American sprinter Bobby Morrow, American boxer Pete Rademacher, and 1964 decathlon winner Willi Holdorf of Germany.

* Other Sports: World Champion gymnast Kurt Thomas, and Hall of Fame jockey Don Seymour.

Other fields:

* Acting: Stuart Whitman, Lyle Waggoner, Melinda O. Fee, Honor Blackman, Shirley Douglas (ex-wife of Donald Sutherland and mother of Kiefer Sutherland), Brian Dennehy, Tom Lester, Sam Lloyd, Jerry Stiller, Fred Willard, Ken Osmond, Richard Herd, Ian Holm and Carl Reiner.

* Directing: Peter Hunt, Lynn Shelton and Joel Schumacher.

* Music: Rock and roll pioneer Little Richard; Singers Kenny Rogers, Jan Howard, Bill Withers, Carl Dobkins Jr., Millie Small, Betty Wright, Phil May, Bonnie Pointer, Vera Lynn, Benny Mardones and Charlie Daniels; rapper Huey; jazz pianist Freddie Cole (brother of Nat King Cole), jazz drummer Jimmy Cobb, rock keyboardist Max Crook; songwriters Bill Martin and Kenny Young, and film composers Johnny Mandel and Ennio Morricone.

* Authors: Historian Richard Reeves, Beat Generation poet Michael McClure, comic book writer Dennis O'Neil, comic book artist Joe Sinnott, The Graduate writer Charles Webb, and baseball biographer Lonnie Wheeler.

* Journalist: Hugh Downs.

* Politics: Nixon and Reagan Administration aide John Sears, former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, Lewinsky scandal whistleblower Linda Tripp, former Arizona Governor Jane Hull, former Secretary of the Treasury Paul H. O'Neill (no relation to Paul O'Neill the Yankee), former FBI Director William Sessions, JFK sister and former Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith.

* Others: 1950s "Quiz Show Scandal" whistleblower Herb Stempel, 1940s quiz show champion turned philosopher Joel Kupperman, Diners Club credit card pioneer and film producer Matty Simmons, radio talk show host Barry Farber, photographer and Beatles insider Astrid Kirchherr, and scandalous teacher Mary Kay LeTourneau.

Obviously, nobody born since March 12, 2020 is yet famous in their own right. But U.S. soccer team star Alex Morgan had her 1st baby on May 7, following former national teammate Hope Solo, who had twins on March 4, before everything shut down.

Also becoming new parents (not necessarily for the 1st time) during the shutdown have been actresses America Ferrera, Chloë Sevigny, model Iskra Lawrence, Dancing with the Stars dancer Karina Smirnoff, and singer Grimes and her boyfriend, tech mogul Elon Musk, who, after 5 kids with his ex-wife, named this child X Æ A-Xii -- or "Ash."

March 12, 2020: Everything in North American sports shut down. July 8, 2020: It begins again. Whether it will keep going, or have to be shut down again, remains to be seen. After all, Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is a fool, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is a megalomaniac, and Donald Trump is both.

Anything can happen.

It's 2020. Anything has already happened.

Alain Nasreddine did a fair job as interim head coach of the New Jersey Devils, but now, they have an official head coach, and it's a good choice: Lindy Ruff.

Nasreddine has not been outright fired, just restored to his previous position as an assistant coach. His chances of getting a head coaching job with another team are probably good.

As for the new man: He's only new to us. He's what they call a "lifer."

Lindy Cameron Ruff (no, "Lindy" is not short for something else) was born on February 17, 1960, in Warburg, Alberta. It's a town of about 800 people, about 55 miles southwest of Edmonton, so it's not quite "in the middle of nowhere."

But Canada is not like America: Aside from the capital of Ottawa, and the 3 biggest cities -- Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver -- their cities don't really have "suburbs," as we understand that term. So once you get as far from downtown as Warburg is, there's really nothing to do, except work in whatever the town's main industry is, and play whatever sport is popular there. In Canada, of course, it's hockey above all others.

Like Jim Schoenfeld, who coached the Devils into their 1st Playoff run, ending in Game 7 of the 1988 Wales Conference Finals, Ruff was a tough defenseman for the Buffalo Sabres. He was chosed by the Sabres in the 2nd round of the 1979 NHL Entry Draft.

During the 1980 Playoffs, the Sabres lost to the eventual Stanley Cup winners, the New York Islanders. But not before a Stanley Cup Semifinals game in which Isles goalie Billy Smith hit Ruff with his stick and knocked him down. Ruff got up and tackled "Battlin' Billy."

In 9 full seasons with the Sabres, they made the Playoffs 7 times, including twice as regular-season Champions of the old Adams Division. But that 1980 run was the closest they got to the Cup, and would remain so until he became their head coach.
He was traded to the New York Rangers at the 1989 trade deadline, and played 2 seasons and change for them. After 2 more seasons in the minors, he was hired as part of the original coaching staff of the Florida Panthers in 1993. He was only 33 years old, and under head coach Doug MacLean, helped them reach the Stanley Cup Finals in 1996, only their 3rd season.

That got his original team's attention, and the Sabres brought him back as head coach in 1997. In just his 1st season, he got them to the Eastern Conference Finals, losing to the Washington Capitals. In the next season, 1998-99, he got them to the Stanley Cup Finals for only the 2nd time in their history. (The 1st was in 1975, losing to the Philadelphia Flyers.) They lost to the Dallas Stars, with a controversial ending.

A corporate scandal led to financial issues for the Sabres' owners, and they missed the Playoffs the next 3 seasons. Then came the 2004-05 lockout. But Ruff, already lasting longer in the job than most coaches who haven't won the Cup (and even some who have) have done, got them back to the Conference Finals in 2006, losing to the Carolina Hurricanes; and again in 2007, losing to the Ottawa Senators. In 2006, he was given the Jack Adams Award for NHL coach of the year. He finished 2nd in the voting the next season. By this point, he was the longest-tenured coach with the same team in the NHL.

But things were already beginning to unravel. In those season, there were multiple incidents where the referees, and the League office, seemed to be taking sides with the Sabres' opponents and against the rules. After a 2007 Playoff game against the Rangers, a game the Rangers won in a series the Sabres won, Ruff criticized the officials and got fined by the League.

In spite of these incidents, he was named an assistant coach for Canada's team at the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics, in each case under Mike Babcock, then of the Detroit Red Wings. Canada won the Gold Medal on home ice in Vancouver in 2010, and repeated in Sochi, Russia in 2014.

On January 6, 2011, Ruff became the 16th coach in NHL history to win 500 games. Two nights later, he won his 501st, and that made him the coach with the most wins for a single team, surpassing Toe Blake of the Montreal Canadiens.

But he still couldn't win the Stanley Cup, and in the middle of the 2012-13 season, he was fired. Ironically, his next head coaching job would be with the team that beat him in his only Stanley Cup Finals to that point, the Dallas Stars. In his 1st season, he got them to their 1st Playoff berth in 6 years. But that was as far as he could get them, and he was fired at the end of the 2016-17 season.

He has spent the last 3 seasons as an assistant coach with the Rangers, under head coach David Quinn. Yesterday, after speculation that the new full-time Devils coach could be him, or Peter Laviolette, or Gerard Gallant, Lindy Ruff was hired to coach the Mulberry Street Marauders.

New Jersey Devils head coaches
1982-83 Bill MacMillan (also general manager)
1983-84 Tom McVie
1984-88 Doug Carpenter
1988-89 Jim Schoenfeld (1988 Conference Finals)
1989-91 John Cunniff
1991-92 Tom McVie, 2nd time
1992-93 Herb Brooks (1980 Olympic Gold Medal coach)
1993-98 Jacques Lemaire (1995 Stanley Cup, 1994 Conference Finals)
1998-2000 Robbie Ftorek
2000-02 Larry Robinson (2000 Stanley Cup, 2001 Conference Champions)
2002 Kevin Constantine
2002-05 Pat Burns (2003 Stanley Cup)
2005 Larry Robinson, 2nd time
2005-06 Lou Lamoriello (also general manager)
2006-07 Claude Julien
2007 Lou Lamoriello, 2nd time
2007-09 Brent Sutter
2009-10 Jacques Lemaire, 2nd time
2010 John MacLean (1988 Playoff hero, 1995 Cup winner)
2010-11 Jacques Lemaire, 3rd time
2011-14 Peter DeBoer (2012 Conference Champions)
2014-15 Adam Oates and Scott Stevens, co-coaches
2015-19 John Hynes
2019-20 Alain Nasreddine
2020-present Lindy Ruff

Tom Fitzgerald will remain as general manager.

New Jersey Devils general managers
1982-83 Bill MacMillan (also head coach)
1983-87 Max McNab
1987-2015 Lou Lamoriello (3 Stanley Cups, 2 other Finals)
2015-20 Ray Shero
2020- Tom Fitzgerald

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on the one hand, and the Republic of Ireland on the other, agree on very little. Indeed, they seem to enjoy arguing with each other. One thing they do agree on is that Jack Charlton was a legend -- for each of them.

John Charlton (no middle name) was born on May 8, 1935, in Ashington, Northumberland, in the North-East of England. He was born into quite the footballing family. His younger brother Bobby Charlton went on to become one of England's most honored players, even more so than he.

His uncles on his mother's side included the brothers Jack, George, Jim and Stan Milburn. Another brother, Alec, didn't play professionally, but became the father of Jackie Milburn, who starred as a forward for Newcastle United in the 1940s and '50s, and might still be the team's all-time most popular player.

As with so many families all over the world, sport offered a way out of poverty. The North of England was dominated by coal mining, and his father, Bob, was a miner, with no interest in football. It was his mother, Cissie, who played with the boys, and coached a local schools team. It was less than 20 miles to the south to watch Newcastle United, including cousin Jackie, play at St. James' Park, and the entire family remains Newcastle fans to this day.

"This part of the world produced its fair share of footballers," Jack Charlton would later say, "and nobody was particularly impressed if a lad went away to play professional football. In fact, we never used to say, 'going away to play football.' We just used to say, 'going away.'"

But it would be West Yorkshire team Leeds United that signed uncle Jim, and offered Jack a trial at age 15. Knowing that footballers were terribly underpaid, and that miners had a strong labor union, Jack went into the mine with his father. He hated it, and asked Leeds if they were still interested. They were.

Cousin Jackie helped Newcastle win the FA Cup in 1951, 1952 and 1955. They've won only 1 major trophy since, the 1969 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. But Leeds snapped Jack Charlton up, and Manchester United signed Bobby. Thus was the history of English football changed, because "The Toon" couldn't see that there was a great pair of brothers right in their own backyard.

Yesterday, with bigotry still very much in the news following the murder a few weeks ago of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, by an officer of that city's police department, the NFL's Washington Redskins released a statement announcing that their team name and logo, often considered offensive to Native Americans would be changed.

They are doing so in reflection of this atmosphere, but also noting that one of their minority owners is Frederick W. Smith, founder and CEO of Federal Express, who owns the naming rights to their current stadium, FedEx Field. He said he would cancel his sponsorship of the team and the stadium if the name was not changed.

Smith is from Memphis. When an old white man from the city where Dr. Martin Luther King was shot and killed by (it is widely, but not universally, believed) a white supremacist says something is bigoted and needs to be changed, that says something.

Nike and PepsiCo have also urged the name change, and Target and Walmart have removed Redskins merchandise from their stores. Those companies, and also Amazon, have removed Redskins merch from their websites.

Daniel Snyder, who bought the team from the family of the late owner Jack Kent Cooke in 1999, said he wouldn't change the name, that it was too tied into the history of both the NFL and the Washington, D.C. area, and that there were Native American groups supporting the name.

Some changes had already been made. The 'Skins are one of the few NFL teams with a well-known fight song, "Hail to the Redskins." There was a line in it, "Scalp 'em," which was replaced by "Beat 'em." Many fans had gone to games wearing "Indian headdresses" and war paint, but this has decreased in recent years.

(So has the wearing of plastic pig masks and rubber pig snouts, as we get further away from the 1980s, when the team's excellent offensive line was known as the Hogs. The man who coached that line, Joe Bugel, died a few days ago. He had also once been the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals.)

But such names have fallen by the wayside in recent years. In 1972, Stanford University dropped Indians as its name in favor of Cardinal -- the color, not the bird, so no S on the end. In 1974, Dartmouth College dropped "Indians" for a color as well: The Big Green. In 1996, Miami University of Ohio dropped Redskins for RedHawks.

And in 2018, after decades of disapproval, Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians dropped Chief Wahoo, their mascot with the bright red skin (unlike the Washington Redskins' logo, which had dark red skin that at least resembled something biologically possible). Terry Pluto, the great columnist for The Plain Dealer, Cleveland's largest newspaper, wrote last week that he expects the Indians to drop that name entirely after the 2021 season, as soon as its contractually allowable.

Some Native-themed team names don't face the same pressure. Florida State University has a working agreement with the Seminole tribe, so their Seminoles name and Chief Osceola live mascot are staying put. But the University of Illinois, which calls its teams the Fighting Illini, have had to alter their Chief Illiniwek mascot to make him more authentic, and still face calls for the character's retirement.

The National Hockey League's Chicago Blackhawks released a statement saying that their name honors Black Hawk, a Native chief of the early 19th Century, who waged war against the U.S. Army, but was considered an honorable warrior. The Kansas City Chiefs are the reigning NFL Champions, and they aren't dropping their name, because a Chief suggests leadership. Nor are the Atlanta Braves changing theirs, because "Brave" suggests a noble warrior.

It's been suggested that no one would put up with the name "New York Jews,""Philadelphia Paisans," or "Chicago Negroes." This is certainly true.
But what about the National Basketball Association's Boston Celtics? And there's an old joke: What do you call 6 black guys, 3 Italians and 2 Poles playing football? The Fighting Irish. No organized group is telling the University of Notre Dame to drop that name.

And the NFL's Minnesota Vikings were named in honor of the Upper Midwest's large Scandinavian community. Should that name be changed? As the sign in this photo suggests, maybe not.
Disclaimer: I went to a junior high school in East Brunswick, New Jersey, which opened in 1961, around the time that Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish diplomat then serving as Secretary-General of the United Nations, was killed in a plane crash. So the school was named for him, and, in reflection of his nationality, the teams were named the Vikings. Nearby, South Brunswick High School is also the Vikings, but my alma mater, East Brunswick, is the Bears.

But the pressure on Snyder to change the Redskins name had grown intense. Accepting this, Snyder announced "a thorough review of the name." Yesterday, this announcement was made:

Almost immediately, this decision was praised by one of the biggest sports sponsors in the world, Anheuser-Busch Breweries; and ripped by the usual conservatives who get so easily offended while simultaneously talking about how liberals are so easily offended.

The Redskins name will stay throughout the 2020 season -- assuming, given the Coronavirus situation, there is one. The new name will be in place for the 2021 season. They will, however, be keeping the team's familiar burgundy and gold color scheme.

Already, the favorites for the new name seem to be Redwolves and Redtails -- not least because it would keep the R initial. Redwolves suggests strength in the pack, and has connotations of being wild and independent.

It would also be fairly easy to change the fight song: Instead of "Braves on the warpath," it could be "Beasts on the prowl."

Redtails is seen as a tribute to the planes flown by the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black flying unit of World War II. But this would be a bad idea: It would make people think of an old sports term, "Red Ass," sometimes abbreviated to "R.A.," meaning a player who's always in a bad mood.

It also occurred to me that, once this name change takes effect, the oldest team name in D.C. major league sports will be the NHL's Washington Capitals. They've had that name since their inception in 1997. When the Montreal Expos moved to Washington after the 2004 season, they didn't take the name of the previous team that had moved in 1971, the Washington Senators. They became the Washington Nationals.

The NBA's Washington team began in 1961, as the Chicago Packers. But, given the rivalry between the NFL's Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, this was seen as silly. So, after just 1 season, they became the Chicago Zephyrs. But they lost money, and after just 1 more year, they moved to Baltimore, taking the name of that city's former NBA team, the Baltimore Bullets. It was alliterative, and spoke of speed and damage-causing ability.

But in 1973, they moved down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. In 1997, tired of hearing that Washington was "the murder capital of the world," dropped the name Bullets and became the Washington Wizards.

*

Top 10 Sports Teams That Should Change Their Names

Dishonorable Mention: Every team in Major League Soccer whose "mascot" is simply "FC" (for "Football Club") or "United." I know it's hard coming up with a good one, but show some imagination.

Also, in many cases in England, where the practice began, calling a team "United" meant it was a merger of two different teams. That is not the case in MLS.

Dishonorable Mention: The Boston Red Sox, the Houston Astros and the New England Patriots. These teams' names have been forever tainted by the organization's blatant cheating.

10. Orlando Magic. I get it: The Orlando area is most famous for being the home of Walt Disney World, "The Magic Kingdom." But what was wrong with "Magicians"? The Washington team hadn't yet adopted "Wizards," and even if they had, the existence in the NFL of "Raiders" didn't stop the name "Buccaneers." (More about that a little later.)

One of the offshoots of the Harlem Globetrotters was named the Harlem Magicians, but the Globies' organization, which also owns the rights to the name of the team's official usual opponents, the Washington Generals, didn't sue the USFL when it named a team the New Jersey Generals.

When the team name was announced in 1987, along with the other 1988 and '89 expansion teams, including their Florida arch-rivals, the Miami Heat, Rick Reilly wrote in Sports Illustrated that, given that the biggest star in the NBA at the time was Earvin "Magic" Johnson, there should be a player named Magic Orlando.

(He also joked about the Heat name: Instead of the very sharp logo of a flaming basketball going through a hoop, he said the logo might be a fat guy sunning himself on a beach. Also, he asked, What is one "Heat" called? He imagined a woman telling a friend, "I met the cutest guy. He plays basketball in Miami. He says he's a Hot.")

9. Brooklyn Nets. Renaming the American Football League's New York Titans the Jets made sense: It rhymed with Mets, and they were going to be sharing a stadium for the foreseeable future. Naming a basketball team the Nets, just so that it rhymed, was stupid. And, given that all 3 teams have been joke franchises -- since 1986, the teams are 0-4 in finals between them -- why would the NBA team want to be associated with the Mets and the Jets?

It was even worse with World Team Tennis, which began in 1974: The local team was named the New York Sets. This was dumped in 1977, in favor of New York Apples, since New York City is "The Big Apple." But the league folded in 1978.

8. Buffalo Bills. The AFL team that began in 1960 was actually the 2nd team with the name. The 1st was in the All-America Football Conference of 1946-49. At that point, there were still living people who remembered William F. Cody, a.k.a. Buffalo Bill. And the musical based in part on his Wild West Show, Annie Get Your Gun, included a song titled "Colonel Buffalo Bill."

But he got that name from hunting buffaloes. He had no connection to the city of Buffalo, New York, whose name also has nothing to do with buffaloes. It's an English corruption of "beau fleuve," the French name for the Niagara River. So calling a team "the Buffalo Bills" is stupid. So is the name used for their minor-league baseball team and for former teams in basketball and hockey: "The Buffalo Bisons."

7. Philadelphia Phillies. What the hell is a "Phillie"? It makes it sound like "filly," a young female horse. Even their longstanding Class AA team, formerly the Reading Phillies, has dropped that name, in favor of "The Reading Fightins," for the major league team's occasional nickname, the Fightin' Phils.

6. Indianapolis Colts. The name "Colts" belongs to Baltimore. Also, just as a "filly" is a young female horse, a "colt" is a young male horse. It suggests speed, but also immaturity. And, while we're at it...

5. Chicago Cubs. A young bear? True, it inspired the name of the football team, the Chicago Bears. That sounds strong and fearsome. "Cubs" does not.

4. Collectively, the Pirate Teams. The Pittsburgh Pirates, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Whatever City They're In This Year Raiders. Pirates had to be tough just to survive. But they were vicious killers and thieves. Not something to celebrate.

3. The Los Angeles Lakers. They started in 1947 as the Minneapolis Lakers, as Minnesota is "The Land of 10,000 Lakes." That made sense. But they moved to Los Angeles in 1960, and there's no notable lake anywhere near Los Angeles. The Pacific Ocean, yes; a notable lake, no.

2. The Utah Jazz. They started in 1974 as the New Orleans Jazz. That made sense, if you can get past the idea of ending a team name with a Z instead of an S, and being named after a form of music rather than something that fights and wins.

But they moved to Salt Lake City in 1979. Basketball has been compared to jazz by people like Woody Allen and Wynton Marsalis, because of its use of improvisation and quick thinking. Basketball star Bill Walton, a fan of The Grateful Dead, made an interesting comparison of them to a basketball team in his memoir, including the improvisation angle. But the only music Utah is known for is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Great skill, but not much in the way of improvisation or individuality.

Frank Layden, who coached the Jazz from 1981 to 1988, noted that Utah has the Great Salt Lake, and Los Angeles is the West Coast's jazz hub, and suggested that the teams simply change names: The Los Angeles Jazz and the Utah Lakers. Neither team's management took him up on it.

1. Los Angeles Dodgers. It was bad enough that team owner Walter O'Malley moved them out of Brooklyn in 1957. But he took the Dodgers name with him. Yes, it was the 2nd-most familiar team name in baseball at the time, behind the Yankees. But it was universally identified with Brooklyn. It was short for "Trolley Dodgers." What does anybody dodge in L.A.? The cops? Drive-by shootings by gangs?

If Gordon Lightfoot had written it, it could have gone...

The legend lives on from Ipanema on down
of the sport called O Jogo Bonito.
It's said that the game has brought plenty of fame
but the bounces of July can beat you.


5. The Brazilian Media. Modern observers of international tournaments see how the media in England builds their national team up as sure winners. The England theme in 2018 was "It's coming home." They were right, but not in the way they think: "It," the World Cup trophy, is known as the Jules Rimet Trophy, for the longtime President of FIFA, who founded the tournament. And the tournament and the trophy were won by his homeland, France.

Brazil is no different. Their success in the "Baby Boom" years, winning in 1958, 1962 and 1970, made them many a neutral fan's "second team" in World Cup play thereafter. (That, and the many TV shots of gorgeous Brazilian women in tight yellow team shirts.) When Brazil won in 1994 and 2002, lots of people with no connection to the country were happy for them (if not as happy as they would have been if their own team had won it).

The shocking defeat the next time the World Cup was in Brazil, the 7-1 demolition by Germany in the Semifinal, hurt a great deal, because this was supposed to be it. But it wasn't. As I said, Brazil have won the World Cup a record 5 times, and it's never been in Brazil.

For whatever reason, Brazil seem to do better away from home. Maybe it's the national media. There have been cases where American teams won a title when their local newspapers were on strike, and not badgering their players with questions. The 1978 New York Yankees are the most notable example.

But in 1950, the Brazilian media were out of control, promoting the team. And the overconfidence became insane. Each player on the winning team gets a winner's medal, but, this time, 22 gold medals were made, with each player's name inscribed on them, before the Final.

A "cup final song" is nothing new in England: Sometimes, both teams in the FA Cup Final will be brought into a recording studio to record one. And the England team usually goes into a studio before leaving for a World Cup to record a song. In 1950, without the players participation, a song was composed, to be played after the Final: "Brasil Os Vencedores" (Brazil the Victors).

Ângelo Mendes de Morais, the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, met with the players on the morning before the Final, and told them, "You, players, who in less than a few hours will be hailed as Champions by millions of compatriots! You, who have no rivals in the entire Hemisphere! You, who will overcome any other competitor! You, who I already salute as victors!" Even Rimet himself prepared a congratulatory speech for Brazil.

Victory wasn't just expected, it was assumed. As Felix Unger, played by Tony Randall on The Odd Couple, taught us, "You should never assume. Because, when you assume, you make an ASS of U and ME!"

4. Argentina. The other major South American power, though not what they would become in the 1970s, withdrew from the tournament, due to a dispute with the Brazilian Football Confederation. Could they have caused problems for Brazil? Could they have knocked Uruguay out, thus leaving a clearer path for Brazil? We'll never know.

What we do know is that the path for Brazil and Uruguay was clearer than it should have been, and not just because Argentina weren't there to stop either of them:

3. The State of Postwar Europe. Germany was one of the best teams in Europe even before their 1938 Anschluss with Austria, which had done well before that. After it, the Nazi team was even better. And Italy had won the World Cup in 1934 and 1938.

Even with the Superga disaster the year before, which wiped out nearly all of the Torino team that had dominated Italian soccer in the 1940s, Italy would still have been a serious threat to win the 1950 World Cup, as would Germany.

But Germany was still occupied by the Allied powers. Although both West Germany and East Germany had been established as nations in 1949, the German Football Association (DFB) had only been re-established in January 1950, and wasn't readmitted to FIFA until September, after the World Cup. East Germany's FA wasn't admitted until 1952.

As, officially, still the defending champions after 12 years, Italy were invited to the World Cup without having to go through the qualifying process, and they did play. But they lost to Sweden in their 1st game, and that led to Sweden topping the Group. Italy were out. Perhaps, in a different format, they might have lasted longer, and thus been a bigger threat to win. (And, of course, given the U.S. win over England, and then the Final, this turned out to be only the 3rd-biggest upset of the tournament.)

As for teams in the Soviet sphere: The Soviet Union, 1934 Finalists Czechoslovakia, and 1938 Finalists Hungary did not play. All would participate in the qualifying process for 1954, and Hungary reached the Final. But of all of Eastern Europe, only Yugoslavia, whose dictator Josip Tito had had a falling out with the Soviets' Josef Stalin, sent a team to Brazil in 1950.

2. England. If not Brazil, then the best team in the world was probably England. But they choked, losing 1-0 to both Spain (somewhat understandable) and the U.S. (understandable only in hindsight, and, even then, it's a bit of a stretch.)

England, not Spain, would have topped their Group had they beaten Spain, and might then have been a threat to win: Spain tied Uruguay 2-2, but got slaughtered by Brazil 6-1. England could have done better than that, but they didn't get the job done.

Who did?

1. Uruguay Were Better. It had been 20 years since the 1930 World Cup win, and none of the players were the same. But some of their 1950 players had been on the team that won the 1942 Copa América, and had reached the Semifinal in 1947. Some would still be on it when they reached the Semifinal in 1953, 1955, 1956, 1957 and 1959, winning it in 1956 and 1959. They also reached the Semifinal of the 1954 World Cup.

Both teams were good in attack. But Uruguay were renowned for their defense, and Brazil were not. If any team was going to beat Brazil in this tournament, it was going to be Uruguay: They didn't have to travel far, they were used to the weather, they were used to the atmosphere, and they were familiar with their opponents. To beat Brazil, they were ready, they were willing, and, clearly, they were able.

VERDICT: Not Guilty. Still, there are old men in Brazil who remember, and pass the story down to children who do not yet know it, who know their country as one that has succeeded at this sport, and not as one with a self-esteem problem.

The legend lives on from Ipanema on down
of the event called Maracanazo.
It's said that the game brought a terrible shame
that can't be erased by a golazo!

Last year at this time, Domingo Germán was the best pitcher in baseball.

In late February 2013, I did Top 10 lists for the best and worst managers/head coaches in New York sports history. I also did them for the best and worst executives in New York sports history. Not necessarily the best team owners, but the people most responsible for personnel decisions, what has been known in modern times as the general manager.

It has occasionally been true that the person with the official title of "general manager" has reported to someone higher up, who makes the final decision. On fewer occasions still, that person has been someone between the GM and the team's majority stockholder or "owner."

It's been 7 years. A new decade, and an unexpected break in the action due to the COVID-19 pandemic, makes this as good a time as any to update the lists.

So I'm going to start with the team owners. First the best, then the worst. Then the executives, the personnel decision guys. Finally, the in-game leaders, the managers and head coaches.

I'm going to limit this to the "Big Four": Major League Baseball, the National Football League (and, in the case of the 1960-69 Titans/Jets, the American Football League), the National Basketball Association (and, should I decide to include representatives of the 1967-77 Americans/Nets, the American Basketball Association), and the National Hockey League.

I'm also going to limit "History" to 1920 onward, with "The Golden Age of Sports" effectively beginning the modern age of sports. So, on the lists of worst owners and executives, this exempts, if not absolves, Andrew Freedman, the nutcase who owned the Giants at the turn of the 20th Century; and Frank Farrell and Big Bill Devery, the ex-police commissioner and current bootlegger (or was it the other way around? Didn't matter, whichever had been Commish was pretty damn corrupt) who owned the New York Highlanders/Yankees from their 1903 founding until 1915.

Honestly, picking the best team owners is harder than picking the worst. As William Shakespeare put it, "The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones."

Honorable Mention to the following:

* Tim Mara, Giants, 1925-59.
* Del Webb and Dan Topping, Yankees, 1945-64.
* Ned Irish, Knicks, 1946-74.
* Joan Payson, Mets, 1962-75.
* Roy Boe, Nets, 1969-78, and Islanders, 1972-78.
* John Pickett, Islanders, 1978-96.

Because, for the most part, these guys hired the right GMs and head coaches, and then stayed out of the way. And, in the cases of Webb with the Yankees, Pickett with the Islanders, and, considerably more reluctantly, Boe with the Nets (but not with the Islanders), they also sowed the seeds of their teams' ruination.

10. Bill Jennings, Rangers, 1962-81. As President of the Madison Square Garden Corporation, he ran the Blueshirts into a new area that saw the building of the New Garden in 1968, and made them a Playoff perennial, including reaching the 1972 Stanley Cup Finals.

That team got old by 1975, and, despite considerably backlash from the fans, he retooled them into another Playoff perennial, reaching the Finals again in 1979. He died in 1981, but the team was more secure than most NHL teams at that point.
9. John Mara, Giants, 2005-present. As hard as it is to believe, one of the best New York sports team owners is current. He picked up from where his father Wellington left off, and, with fellow half-owner Steve Tisch, (to whose father, Bob Tisch, Wellington had sold half the franchise), has kept them a class organization and won 2 Super Bowls.
8. Tex Rickard, Rangers, 1926-29. George Lewis Rickard only owned the Broadway Blueshirts for their 1st 2 1/2 seasons, but he made that time count. He had already built the 3rd Madison Square Garden, the building that would become known as "The Old Garden," because of his main business, promoting prizefights. He rented it out to the 1st NHL team in the City, the New York Americans, and saw how popular they were. So he bought his own franchise. Someone suggested they be called "Tex's Rangers," and the name stuck.

He hired Lester Patrick to run the team, and Patrick deserves most of the credit for the team's early success on the ice. But Rickard was a born promoter, and he made the Rangers the 2nd-most-popular sports team in the City, behind the Yankees.
It wasn't that hard: There were, as yet, no Jets, Knicks, Nets, Islanders, Liberty, Devils, Cosmos, Red Bulls, NYCFC or Sky Blue FC; the Amerks fell way behind the Rangers; the baseball Giants and the Dodgers were both in down periods; the football teams named for the Giants and the Yankees weren't doing great at the turnstiles; and none of the pro basketball teams in New York prior to the Knicks got much traction.

Nevertheless, The Garden on a hockey night became the place to be. Rickard took the "Broadway" part seriously, and treated every home game like a show, billing the team as "the classiest team in hockey." Calling the Rangers that from the late 1970s onward would be laughable, but, in the late 1920s and the early 1930s, fans got the message: Men showed up at The Garden in suits, women in furs. It wasn't just a place to see hockey, it was a place to be seen.

Complications of an appendicitis attack killed him at age 59. There were no antibiotics in those days. To put this in perspective: At the same age, George Steinbrenner owned the Yankees for another 21 years; Wellington Mara owned the Giants for another 30 years; Leon Hess owned the Jets for another 26 years; Branch Rickey had not yet become a part-owner of the Dodgers; Charles Dolan had not yet bought the Knicks and the Rangers; and John McMullen had not yet bought the NHL's Colorado Rockies and made them the New Jersey Devils.

The Rangers would reach the Stanley Cup Finals 5 times, winning twice, in the 12 years following Rickard's death, on top of the Cup they had already won in 1928. Had he lived to be at least 76 -- and all of those guys I mentioned in the previous paragraph did -- he would have been in position to be the 1st owner of the Knicks, who reached 3 NBA Finals before what would have been his 84th birthday. Who knows what Tex could have lassoed for New York sports had he lived longer?

7. Nelson Doubleday, Mets, 1980-2002. You'll notice that I am not including co-owner Fred Wilpon, who bought Doubleday's half out in 2002, on this list. He'll be on the worst owners' list.

Doubleday didn't just revamp the team by hiring Frank Cashen as GM. He also revamped Shea Stadium, turning the dank, dreary football stadium that had been nicknamed "Grant's Tomb" into a colorful amphitheatre that seemed, at times, like a good home for baseball. Shea became a place for families again, instead of a place even the Corleone family wouldn't want to hang out at.
During Doubleday's tenure, the Mets went from about as low as any New York baseball team has gotten since World War II -- even the early Mets, as bad as they were, were still fun to watch -- to a team that won a World Series and had another Playoff berth, then fell apart, then got rebuilt into a team that made back-to-back Playoff runs and won another Pennant. Given where he started from, that was pretty good.

6. Larry MacPhail, Dodgers, 1938-41, and Yankees, 1945-47. He quickly wore out his welcome wherever he went, but not before turning his genius into the modernization of 3 franchises: The Cincinnati Reds, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the New York Yankees.
To all 3 teams, he brought the first true renovations of their stadiums, including lights. To all 3, he brought radio broadcasting. To all 3, he brought in modern scouting systems. Between the 3 teams, he can be linked to 25 Pennants and 13 World Series wins, even though he was only directly in charge for 2 Pennants with the Reds (including the 1940 World Championship), 1 Pennant with the Dodgers (1941), and 1 Pennant with the Yankees (winning the 1947 World Championship).

5. Branch Rickey, Dodgers, 1942-50. He also wasn't in Brooklyn all that long, but while he was, he didn't just change one baseball team. He changed the world, by signing one player, and sticking with him no matter what. The name of that player was Jackie Robinson.

He was the operating part-owner, and his own general manager, but not the sole or even the majority owner. This led to the end of his tenure. There were 4 equal shares in the team. Rickey had one. A bank, the Brooklyn Trust Company, had another, and hired Walter O'Malley to operate it. O'Malley bought that share out. Then, when a 3rd part-owner died, O'Malley bought him out, and gained the loyalty of the 4th part-owner. Rickey, who loved money as much as O'Malley did, cashed out.

O'Malley took credit for the Dodgers' success thereafter, but it was Rickey who built it, and can be credited with 6 Pennants and the 1955 World Championship -- all with Jackie Robinson as a key member, not just a token member.
4. John McMullen, Devils, 1982-2000. He was part of the ownership group that bought the Yankees in 1973, having gotten to know "managing general partner" George Steinbrenner through each's contacts in the shipbuilding industry. He sold his share in 1979, so he could buy another team, the Houston Astros, owning them until 1993. He said, "Few things in life are as limiting as being one of George's 'limited partners.'"

In 1982, he bought the NHL's Colorado Rockies, and moved them from Denver to the Meadowlands, making them the New Jersey Devils. He owned them until 2000, overseeing their rise from what Wayne Gretzky called "a Mickey Mouse operation" to a 2-time -- and, within his lifetime, a 3-time -- Stanley Cup winner.
He died in 2006. When the Devils established a Ring of Honor at the Prudential Center in 2017, he -- not Lou Lamoriello, not Jacques Lemaire, not Scott Stevens, not Martin Brodeur, not Mike Emrick -- was the 1st inductee.

3. Wellington Mara, Giants, 1965-2005. Nobody has owned a New York team longer -- and Knick and Ranger fans better hope that remains true, because if Charles Dolan is still the owner of those teams in 2034 (he'd be 107 years old, unlikely but not impossible), 40 years after buying them, it will mean that his son James is still running them.

Until 1978, Well Mara was one of the least successful owners in major league sports. He had taken over parts of the team after his father Tim's death in 1959 and his uncle Jack's death in 1965. But the Giants hadn't made the Playoffs since 1963, and "The Miracle of the Meadowlands" showed just how incompetent Giants management was.

His supporters could claim that he was responsible for the revenue-sharing plan that allowed smaller-market teams, even the Green Bay Packers, to survive, but that did Giant fans no good. His supporters could also claim that, by getting Giants Stadium built, he had given the team control over its own home field for the first time, but most fans didn't care about that, since the only way it had affected them had been starting the season with 3 road games due to the chance the Yankees would be in the World Series -- a chance that had fallen apart in the mid-1960s.

But he got the message. He hired George Young as GM, and Young made the personnel decisions that got the franchise back on its feet. It may not seem like it at the moment, but thanks to what Well did from 1978 to his death in 2005, the Giants have always had an aura of class and competence: No matter how bad things get on the field, there won't be any real scandals, and you have the sense that the team can snap out of it, if not this season, than next season.
2. George Steinbrenner, Yankees, 1973-2010. When George bought the Yankees on January 3, 1973, the price was $8.8 million. When he died on July 13, 2010, the team was estimated to be worth $1.15. billion. Factoring inflation in, that's an increase in worth of 26.6 times. Not 26 percent, 26 times.

Yes, he got suspended from operating the team due to making an illegal campaign contribution to President Richard Nixon. Yes, he got suspended again for hiring somebody to dig up dirt on one of his own players (unsuccessfully, it turned out). Yes, he was a raging egomaniac. Yes, he took the actions that led to the demolition of the original Yankee Stadium. And, yes, he seemed to fire, suspend and fine people for ridiculous reasons.

But, as he liked to say, "I never really fired anybody." Pretty much any manager, coach or executive he removed from a position, he either kept, or later welcomed back, putting him in a different position, and sometimes moving him back into the one he had previously held. And, as he frequently said, "I never ask anybody to work any harder than I do" -- and he did work hard to make the Yankees winners.

That work frequently didn't pay off, especially from 1982 to 1990, when he acted as pretty much his own GM. But when his work did pay off, the results were as follows: 20 Playoff berths, 16 American League Eastern Division titles, 13 trips to the AL Championship Series, 11 AL Pennants and 7 World Series wins. He also built the Yankees Entertainment & Sports (YES) Network and the new Yankee Stadium.

Say what you want about George Steinbrenner, and I've said plenty, and some of it has been rough, and most of that has been fair. But he loved the Yankees, and he loved New York City, and he loved Yankee Fans. He wanted to win for us as much as he wanted to win for himself. And he wanted to win as much as we did. That's what every fan of every team should expect from his team owner: Make the effort to bring success. George made the effort, and it succeeded more than anyone else over that time.

1. Jacob Ruppert, Yankees, 1915-39. He took the 3rd-most-popular team in The City and made it the greatest franchise in professional sports in the Western Hemisphere. And if you want to argue that Manchester United or Real Madrid are better, you'd better come with viable facts.

Put it this way: In 2012, Real Madrid played in Yankee Stadium, and it raised their profile in America. In 2019, the Yankees came to London, and it benefited the sport more than the team. Everybody in Europe already knows about the Yankees. The day that Arsenal clinched their unbeaten Premier League season, May 15, 2004, the camera panned the famous North Bank of Highbury, and there was a woman wearing a tank top, shades, and a Yankee cap.

In 1935, there was a tour of MLB players in Japan, and everybody in Japan wanted to see the man they, in their accents, called "Babu Rusu." All they knew about Babe Ruth was what they had seen in newsreels, but Japan knew who Babe Ruth was in 1935. America didn't know who Pelé was until the 1970 World Cup.

It was Jacob Ruppert who signed the 1st 2 great Yankee managers, Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy. It was Ruppert who signed Ed Barrow, the 1st great personnel man in New York sports history. It was Ruppert whose ambition and money led to the building of the original Yankee Stadium, the greatest venue in the history of sports on planet Earth -- or, as it says on his Plaque in Monument Park, "this imposing edifice," even though the original edifice is gone now.
It was Ruppert who bought Babe Ruth and several other good players, helping to turn the 1910s Boston Red Sox machine into the 1920 New York Yankees Dynasty. It was Ruppert who signed Lou Gehrig. It was Ruppert who heard about Joe DiMaggio, heard that other teams were backing off on signing him due to an injury, and ordered his signing anyway.

The work he did in building the Yankees led to the team's 1st 13 Pennants and 10 World Series wins. The last of each being in 1943. By the next one, in 1947, it was very much a different organization, never mind roster: Ruppert was a swinging bachelor, but never married, and had no children, so control of the team went to his brother George and his sister Amanda, and, while letting Barrow make the decisions, they sold the team in 1945 to the triumverate of Dan Topping, Del Webb and Larry MacPhail.

There are 37 people affiliated with the Yankee organization in Monument Park. Of these, 11, including Ruppert himself, are honored there. So why did it take until 2012 for Ruppert to be elected (2013 to be inducted) to the Baseball Hall of Fame, which opened the year of his death, 73 years earlier? The only thing I can think of is that it was an oversight, that people may have failed to consider him because they thought he was already in.

As I said in my post about the 10 best, picking the 10 best is harder than picking the 10 worst. Once again, I'm going to limit it to the last 100 years, 1920 to 2020.

10. Stephen W. McKeever, Dodgers, 1925-38. (That's as controlling owner. As at least part-owner, 1912-38.) Steve McKeever was not a bad guy. But after the deaths of Charlie Ebbets and his brother Ed McKeever within days of each other in 1925, he was the owner of a team that never had any money.
There were times during the Great Depression that the Dodgers could have gone out of business. The team was terribly. And Ebbets Field, built in 1913, was already in a state of disrepair, because McKeever couldn't afford to maintain it. The Brooklyn Trust Company controlled Charlie Ebbets' estate, and hired Walter O'Malley to oversee their one-quarter ownership of the Dodgers.

Steve McKeever died in 1938, and that led to the other owners hiring Larry MacPhail away from the Cincinnati Reds, and that ended the Dodgers' danger of becoming the 1st MLB team to go bankrupt in the 20th Century. That ended up never happening, although the Seattle Pilots came pretty close in 1969 and '70, before being sold and becoming the Milwaukee Brewers.

Steve McKeever was a tragic figure, so I can only place him at Number 10. Most of it wasn't his fault.

9. Leon Hess, Jets, 1968-99. (That's as controlling owner. As at least part-owner, 1963-99.) Also not a bad guy. He was a good businessman, in his case the energy business. And he was very generous with charity. He was liked, and he was respected. Jet fans usually did not blame him for the team's failures. But they should have, because he didn't get it done. Hess is not on this list for reasons of personality or scandal. It's strictly business.

When he became majority owner of the Jets, business was booming, thanks to the partner he'd bought out, David "Sonny" Werblin; the head coach that Werblin had hired, Wilbur "Weeb" Ewbank; and the quarterback that Werblin had drafted, Joseph "Broadway Joe" Namath. The Jets won Super Bowl III on January 12, 1969.

For the rest of Hess' life, he owned the Jets, and they reached only 2 AFC Championship Games. (Had he died 4 months sooner, it would have been only 1.) In 24 years after firing Ewbank, he hired 8 head coaches (not counting interim ones), and none got him back to the Super Bowl. Walt Michaels came within 1 game in the 1982-83 season. Bill Parcells came within a half in the 1998-99 season. But that was it.
The worst one was Rich Kotite. A Staten Island native, who'd been a decent tight end for the Giants, and had coached the Philadelphia Eagles into the Playoffs, he seemed like a good fit. On January 4, 1995, Hess told the media, "I'm 80 years old. I want results now!" Here's the results he got: 3-13 in 1995, and 1-15 in 1996.

Kotite quit before he could be fired, and Hess begged Parcells to leave the New England Patriots and come home to New Jersey. It came close to working. And then Hess died. And then Vinny Testaverde got hurt in the next season's opening game, and was out for the season, and the chance to win one for Hess was gone.

8. Mike Burke, Yankees, 1966-73, and Knicks 1973-81. (More accurately, in terms of seasons, he was the Yankees'"owner" 1967-72.) Another guy who isn't on this list for reasons of personality, or for the amount of effort he put into trying to win.
Edmund Michael Burke was a genuine hero of America's effort in World War II. A great businessman. A man who loved sports. And, along with Mayor John Lindsay, the man who saved the original Yankee Stadium for an additional 2 generations. We should thank him for those things.

But while he loved baseball, he didn't know how to run a sports team. Granted, the Topping-Webb regime left CBS, and their handpicked team president Burke, a pig in a poke, basically a brand name and nothing else.

But he didn't do much with it: When the team finally won the whole thing in 1977, only 4 players were left from before George Steinbrenner owned the team: Roy White, Thurman Munson, Sparky Lyle and Graig Nettles. I think when George came in, and then bought Burke out, it was a great relief to Burke.

Upon leaving the Yankees, he was named President of the Madison Square Garden Corporation. But that did him no favors on this list, either. Once again, his timing was terrible: The Knicks had just won 2 titles and reached another Final in 4 seasons, but the key players were getting old. He proved unable to replace them. Finally, in 1981, he sold out, and retired to a farm he'd bought outside Galway, in his ancestors' homeland of Ireland, living there until his death in 1987.

7. "The Secaucus Seven," Nets, 1978-98. Led by Joe Taub and Alan Cohen, these guys got little to work with, and they made less out of it. Having to pay $8 million -- and, as the late sportswriting legend Bert Randolph Sugar would have said, these were Jerry Ford dollars, not Donald Trump dollars -- just to get into the NBA following the collapse of the ABA and to pay off the Knicks for "territorial indemnification" -- the Nets had to sell off their best player, Long Island native Julius "Dr. J" Erving, and a year later trade their next-best player, Bronx native Nate "Tiny" Archibald.

In other words, just to remain in the Tri-State Area, the Nets had to dump 2 of the men who would be named in 1996 to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players. (Even as we approach the NBA's 75th Anniversary, Doc is probably still one of the game's top 20.)

So how many times did the Nets make the Playoffs in those 20 seasons that the S7 owned them? 10. Which isn't actually all that bad. But how many Playoff series did they win? One. That was in 1984, against the defending World Champion Philadelphia 76ers -- with Erving -- before falling in 6 in the next round against the Milwaukee Bucks. How many Playoff games did they win? 9, with 5 of those coming, as I said, in '84.

It's not so much how often they made the Playoffs, it's how bad they were when they didn't. And the bad draft picks... Dennis Hopson, Ed O'Bannon, Yinka Dare... Maybe the Nets weren't as big a joke as the other "little brother" team in the NBA, the Los Angeles Clippers... but even when they were a good team, 1982-86 and 1992-94, they didn't exactly sell out the Meadowlands. Partly because the established, glamorous Knicks were also good at the same time.

The S7 sold the Nets in 1998, and in 2001 new ownership made the trade for Jason Kidd and the team made 2 NBA Finals, reaching the Playoffs 6 straight seasons, before Bruce Ratner bought the team and put their breakup and move to Brooklyn into motion.

Despite a 20-year record of ineptitude, I can't rank the S7 any higher, for 2 reasons: There were 7 of them, not any 1 that was more responsible than any other; and the Nets have always been the 2nd basketball team in a 2-team town. Sometimes 3rd, when you consider St. John's.

In fact, counting all the area's major league teams, they're the 9th team in a 9-team town. And, frankly, counting the Liberty and the Red Bulls may not be doing the Nets any favors, either. The owners since have done them no favors, either.

6. Fred Wilpon, Mets, 2002-present. (That's as controlling owner. As at least part-owner, 1980-present.) When Freddy and Nelson Doubleday were co-owners, the Mets reached the Playoffs 4 times, winning the 1986 World Series and the 2000 NL Pennant. Since Doubleday sold out in 2002, and Fred became sole owner and gave his son Jeff Wilpon effective control of the team, it's been 3 Playoff berths, 1 Pennant, and 2 shocking regular-season collapses.
Okay, things happen. Teams have injury crises. Teams simply get beat by better ones. Teams have runs of bad luck. All of these have happened to the Mets since the Wilpons started running things on their own. And while many Met fans were sad to see Shea Stadium go, Citi Field is a much better ballpark, and that was Fred Wilpon's idea.

But the Wilpons trusted Bernie Madoff with their money, and that crippled the Mets financially for the 1st few Citi Field years. And they hired field managers and general managers who didn't know what they were doing. Omar Minaya and his "Los Mets" didn't work: It left Met fans feeling so tortured, it might as well have been called the "Spanish Inquisition."

Willie Randolph got the Mets to within 1 run of a Pennant in 2006. Given what happened in 2007 and '08, with mostly the same players, that may have been the biggest "miracle" in Met history. Jerry Manuel was not the answer. Ask Met fans if they won the 2015 Pennant and the 2016 Wild Card berth because Terry Collins was the manager, and they'll say no, they won those in spite of Collins.

Mickey Callaway was not the answer. Jeff Wilpon hired Carlos Beltran to manage, and he had to have been aware that there was already an investigation into Beltran's activities with the Houston Astros. So now, Luis Rojas is the manager.
Firing Minaya as GM led to the hiring of Sandy Alderson, but his health became an issue, hamstringing the Mets further. Brodie Van Wagenen has been a fool, trying to dictate to his managers how to run things every bit as much as Brian Cashman seemed to do in The Bronx to Joe Girardi and now to Aaron Boone.

It now appears that the Wilpons may finally be about to sell the Mets to Steven A. Cohen, a billionaire hedge fund manager with a company history of bigotry, misogyny and crooked dealings. When the other option was... Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez.

That's the Mets for ya. As their former manager Jeff Torborg once said about ways to catch the knuckleball, there are two theories about how to run the Mets, and, unfortunately, neither of them work. As was proven when they were owned by...

5. Lorinda de Roulet, Mets, 1975-80. Joan Payson knew her baseball, and that's a big reason why she was a member of the board of directors of the baseball New York Giants. She was the only board member to vote against the move to San Francisco in 1957, and that's a big reason why she was offered the chance to buy into the National League as the 1st owner of a new team for New York, the Mets.

Mrs. Payson owned the Mets from their laughable 1962 beginnings to their 1969 World Championship and their 1973 Pennant. Then, in 1975, she died. Her daughter, Lorinda de Roulet, inherited the team.

She knew that she knew nothing about baseball, so she trusted the team's president, M. Donald Grant. He was cheap. Not because the Mets weren't making money. And even if they weren't, it wasn't his money: Mrs. de Roulet was a de Roulet by marriage, and both a Payson and a Whitney by blood. She was richer than George Steinbrenner. She could afford to spend whatever she wanted.

But she trusted Grant, and he thought baseball players were beneath him. He had what Marvin Miller, director of the players' union, called "a plantation mentality." When he pulled a dirty trick that led to Tom Seaver, "The Franchise," demanding a trade in mid-1977, hardly any of the '73 Pennant winners were left. After the season, he got rid of Bud Harrelson, the last remaining player from the '69 titlists.

Mrs. de Roulet finally fired the old buzzard in 1978. By that point, attendance at Shea Stadium was so sparse, it was being called Grant's Tomb: It had gone from a City record 2.7 million fans in the 1970 season to under 800,000 by 1979 -- or, per game, from 33,000 to 9,740. The Mets were bad, and not even interesting. They had bottomed out every bit as much as the Yankees had in 1966, and without the history to back it up.

Not until 1980 did things begin to turn around at Shea. That was the year when Lorinda sold the team to Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday. They hired Frank Cashen, who helped build the Baltimore Orioles team that dominated the American League from 1966 to 1971, as general manager. His drafts and trades built the Mets into a contender by 1984, and a World Champion in 1986.

Enter Ratner. Emphasis on the "Rat." A real estate developer, he could have led the move to build a new arena for the Nets and Devils, so they could leave the Meadowlands in style. Instead of joining the Devils in the building of the Prudential Center, he wanted to build an arena in the Atlantic Yards section of Brooklyn, and move the Nets there. New Jersey basketball fans finally had a great team, and, instead of helping, the new owner stabbed them in the back, right through the heart.
For reasons I won't get into, the Barclays Center project dragged on. And on. And on. Even the Montreal Expos were not a lame-duck franchise as long as the New Jersey Nets were. Finally, in 2010, Ratner had had enough: He sold the Nets to Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, so that he could concentrate on finishing the Barclays Center project. He did, and it opened in 2012.

Nets games have not become a big happening in Brooklyn. Really, the people of the Borough couldn't care less. As bad as the Knicks have been in the 21st Century, they are still more popular in Brooklyn than the Nets are. And Prokhorov, who promised big things for the franchise, also failed as an owner, and has sold out.

In the 6 seasons that Ratner owned the Nets, they went from Atlantic Division Champions in 2004, and Division Champions again in 2006, to 12-70 in 2010. And he killed their fan base, and failed to build a new one where he was moving them to. He packed as much ugliness into 6 years as Fred Wilpon has in 18 years.

3. Walter O'Malley, Dodgers, 1950-57. (That's as controlling owner. As at least part-owner, 1942-57. Counting Los Angeles, 1942-79.) Did he have anything to do with the Dodgers' success in the 7 seasons between his buying out of Branch Rickey and his move of the team? Not much. The biggest move was in hiring Walter Alston as manager in 1954 -- and even that may have been more of him being convinced by general manager Emil "Buzzie" Bavasi.
Let's get it out of the way right now: If you think the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles was a bad thing, the person most responsible for it was Walter O'Malley.

Robert Moses, who controlled construction of pretty much anything in the State of New York at the time, refused to condemn the land that O'Malley wanted for a new stadium, which would have been built in Atlantic Yards, where the Barclays Center was eventually built. Moses offered O'Malley a stadium he wanted to build in Flushing Meadow, but O'Malley didn't want to own the Queens Dodgers, so he turned it down, and started looking elsewhere. This was the stadium that would eventually become Shea Stadium.

O'Malley has been called a "visionary." But his "vision" only seemed to succeed when it could benefit him, not the fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers. If he was such a visionary, then he should have found a way around Moses. He could have gone to Mayor Robert Wagner. If Wagner refused to help, O'Malley could have gone to Governor Averell Harriman.

If he refused to help, O'Malley had other options. The City of New York was electing a Mayor in 1957. How the hell Wagner got elected to a 2nd term after losing the Dodgers and the Giants, I don't know. Get-out-the-vote efforts by the City's Democratic machine, I guess. O'Malley could have financed a candidate to beat Wagner.

Failing that, the State of New York was electing a Governor in 1958. O'Malley could have helped Nelson Rockefeller beat Harriman, which did happen. Rocky would have had no qualms about overruling Moses on the stadium, because he went on to overrule him on other things, and finally removed him from power in 1968.

But O'Malley, who had already forced Branch Rickey, Red Barber and Jackie Robinson away from the Dodgers, chose not to find a way around Moses. He moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.

It wasn't because Los Angeles was potentially a great market for baseball. If he thought he could make more money staying in Brooklyn, he would have. If he thought he could make more money in San Diego, or Hawaii, or Japan, or Antarctica, or on the Moon, that's where the Dodgers would be playing today. Walter O'Malley was about Walter O'Malley, and that meant that he was about money.

2. Horace Stoneham, Giants (baseball), 1936-57. (Counting San Francisco, 1936-76.) It was no contest. And not just because he owned the team for 22 seasons and won just 1 World Championship. That's not that bad. They did win 4 Pennants. Throw in what happened after he left New York, and that's 5 Pennants, for an average of 1 every 8 seasons. I know, it doesn't work that way. But it makes him look somewhat competent.

He wasn't. He inherited the team from his father Charles (who owned the team from 1919 until his death in 1936), and saw them win Pennants in 1936 and 1937. But the rise of 2 teams built by Branch Rickey -- first the St. Louis Cardinals and then the Brooklyn Dodgers -- saw what had been the most successful sports team in North America become the 3rd-biggest baseball team in New York City.
He never spent much to rebuild the team, or to maintain the ballpark. As the neighborhoods -- Harlem to the south, Washington Heights to the West -- deteriorated, so, too, did the Polo Grounds. When he made the decision to move, he was asked about the young fans he was abandoning. He said, "I feel bad for the kids, but I haven't seen too many of their fathers lately."

The fathers didn't want to risk their cars and sit in a rickety old stadium. It was 46 years old at the time of the move, but already in worse shape than either Ebbets Field, or Shea Stadium, or the original Yankee Stadium ever got.

The Giants then had the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association as their top farm team. There were going to move to Minneapolis for the 1958 season. It would have been the cheapest option. Then, O'Malley told him of the plan to move the Dodgers to Los Angeles, and said, Why don't you move the Giants to San Francisco? It would keep the rivalry going.

Although the move to the City By the Bay paid off financially and competitively at first, things dropped off, and by 1976, Stoneham nearly moved them again, to Toronto, before finding a buyer.

The thing is, it didn't have to be this way. Moses had offered O'Malley the Flushing Meadow stadium. Had he offered it to Stoneham, the Giants probably would have moved into a new stadium there by Opening Day 1960, and might be playing in Citi Field today.

And, all that time, New Yorkers would have still gotten to see Willie Mays, and also Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Gaylord Perry, Bobby and Barry Bonds, Jack Clark, the unrelated Will Clark, Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, and, with no hard feelings, Jeff Kent.

There would never have been a Mets, so they wouldn't have had Tom Seaver or Mike Piazza. But they still might have had a "miracle" title in 1969 (the Giants finished 2nd in the NL West, and would instead have been in the NL East, and might've beat the Chicago Cubs out, and then all bets would have been off). There wouldn't have been a title in 1986, but there could have been Pennants in 1989, 2002, 2010, 2012 and 2014 -- and the Giants did win their Division in 2000, before losing to the Mets, so, in addition to 1962, there could have been at least 1 other Subway Series between the Giants and the Yankees.

All Stoneham had to do was ask Moses for help. The plan was there, waiting for a team to take it. But Stoneham was the biggest fool who ever owned a New York sports team.

But not the worst owner.

1. Charles Dolan, Knicks and Rangers, 1994-present. As the owner of Cablevision, Dolan bought the Madison Square Garden Corporation. He sold Cablevision in 2016, but kept control of the Garden Corporation. It should have been the other way around.
He became controlling owner of the teams just after both had made the Finals in their respective sports, the Rangers winning, the Knicks coming within 1 game of doing so. 26 years. 2 teams. 2 berths in the Finals. 2 Finals games won. That's it.

Yes, more of the blame can be laid at his son James, the actual operator of the Knicks and the Rangers. But when Mike McCaskey ran the Chicago Bears into the ground, his father Ed "took the keys away." And when it became obvious that William Clay Ford Jr. was never going to turn the Detroit Lions around, his mother, Martha Firestone Ford -- making Bill Ford a great-grandson of both auto titan Henry Ford and tire mogul Henry Firestone -- removed him from power.

Charles Dolan continues to let James Dolan run the Knicks and the Rangers. Charles is 93 years old, making him the oldest team owner in New York sports history. As far as I know, he is not in ill health. Even if he were, James is 65, and could run the teams for a long time to come.
Telling Knicks and Rangers fans, "It can't get any worse" will be no comfort to them. They've seen it get very bad. They know that things can get worse, even than they are now.

James Dolan recently tested positive for COVID-19. He recovered. It would be wrong for Knick or Ranger fans to wish death on him. But I'm sure there were a few who were happy to know he suffered.

I did it for team owners, here's an update for executives. For the most part, my selections for the best and worst of these aren't also team owners -- more about the men who made the personnel decision, the trades, the free-agent signings, the draft picks -- but there are notable exceptions. Again, I'll limit it to 1920 to the present.

Honorable Mention to Charles "Chub" Feeney, Giants, 1946-57. (Counting San Francisco, 1946-70.) A grandson of former owner Charles Stoneham, and a nephew of the next owner, Horace Stoneham, he was hired as general manager, and built the Giants' 1951 National League Pennant winners and 1954 World Champions.

But he was also the main force behind their attempt to move the team to Minneapolis (where their top farm team was located) for the 1958 season, and then scuttled that move when Brooklyn Dodger owner Walter O'Malley suggested to Horace Stoneham that both teams move to California instead, the Dodgers to Los Angeles and the Giants to San Francisco.

Honorable Mention to Lester Patrick, Rangers, 1926-46. One of the best players of the 1900s and 1910s, he was the Rangers' 1st GM and 1st head coach (1926-39), leading them to the 1928 and 1933 Stanley Cups, before stepping aside and letting his former best player, Frank Boucher, coach them to the 1940 Cup. A charter member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Honorable Mention to Eddie Donovan, Knicks, 1965-72. A bad head coach (1961-65), but a great general manager, who built the 1970 and 1973 NBA Champions, although that may have been more to do with the coaching of Red Holzman. Still, Eddie hired Red, which counts for a lot.

Honorable Mention to Gabe Paul, Yankees, 1973-77. When George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees, they were far and away New York's 2nd team behind the Mets. He had Paul as a part-owner and his personnel man. The team was completely overhauled. For 1974, Paul traded for Lou Piniella, Chris Chambliss and Dick Tidrow. For 1975, Paul signed free agent Catfish Hunter.

For 1976, Paul traded for Willie Randolph, Mickey Rivers and Ed Figueroa. For 1977, Paul traded for Bucky Dent. Granted, bringing in manager Billy Martin and slugger Reggie Jackson were both ideas of George Steinbrenner (and George should, at least, get Honorable Mention status for those 2 moves alone), but Paul built the team.

All those years, both before and after this, he ran the Cleveland Indians, but never won anything. He never had an owner with enough money to build a champion, and, as a result, Paul often had to sell off or trade away players in salary dumps just to keep the Indians afloat. With George, Gabe finally had a man willing to spend whatever it took. And they found out what it took. It was worth every penny. If Gabe hadn't had enough of George after the 1977 victory, and had stayed, I might rank him higher.

Honorable Mention to Al Rosen, Yankees, 1978-79. He succeeded Gabe, and brought in Goose Gossage, vital spare parts Gary Thomasson and Jay Johnstone, and, after Billy had to go, his old Indians teammate Bob Lemon as manager.

Honorable Mention to Bob Watson, Yankees, 1996-97. He finished Gene Michael's job in 1996.

Honorable Mention to Brian Cashman, Yankees, 1998-present. I have ripped him mercilessly, saying that he's never won anything on his own, that he only won from 1998 to 2009 because he had George Steinbrenner's money and Gene Michael's players. There is some fairness to that, but it's far from completely fair.

Still, since the retirement of Derek Jeter in 2014, he has had more resources than any GM in baseball, and has just 1 Division title and 2 ALCS berths to show for it. His decisions have helped 3 different teams win 4 Pennants: The Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians in 2016, and the Houston Astros in 2017 and 2019.

It is time for him to win a Pennant for the team he actually works for. With all the resources at the Yankees' disposal, 1 Pennant in 17 years, 1 World Championship in 20 years, is unacceptable.

Now, the Top 10:

Honorable Mention to Jerry Reese, Giants, 2002-17. Director of Player Personnel starting in '02, and general manager in '07, he did from then until 2012 what all the employees that the New York Jets have ever had, combined, have not been able to do: Build a team that won 2 Super Bowls.
But while the job he did was impressive -- not since the 1997-98 Broncos has any other team won 2 Super Bowls without cheating -- it wasn't nearly as important to the franchise as that done by the man who starts my Top 10:

10. George Young, Giants, 1979-97. After the disastrous play known as "the Miracle of the Meadowlands" against the Philadelphia Eagles on November 19, 1978, Giants owner Wellington Mara decided that enough was enough. The team his father Tim founded was at the bottom of the barrel. They hadn't won an NFL Championship since 1956 (Super Bowl -X, if you prefer) or made the Playoffs since 1963 (the NFL Championship Game loss to the Chicago Bears, Super Bowl -III), and he wanted a new GM and a new head coach.

Young had built the Baltimore Colts into the team that won Super Bowl V, and was now the GM of a perennial Playoff team, the Miami Dolphins, so he was the right GM. He hired Ray Perkins, who got the Giants into the Playoffs in 1981. When Perkins left to succeed his mentor Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama, Young hired Perkins' assistant, Bill Parcells, and that was the right coach, winning Super Bowls XXI and XXV. The Giants made the Playoffs 8 times while Young was GM, and nobody laughs at them anymore.
Honorable Mention to Parcells, who as both head coach and GM brought the Jets back from the disgrace and ineptitude of the Rich Kotite years. He's not on the main list because he didn't stick around long enough to finish the job for Gang Green the way he and Young did with Big Blue.

Honorable Mention to David "Sonny" Werblin, GM of the Jets who built their Super Bowl III Champions. If he'd been allowed to stick around longer, he might be on this list. As it is, he went on to run the New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority and helped Governor Brendan Byrne build the Meadowlands Sports Complex, then crossed back over the Hudson River to be President of the Madison Square Garden Corporation, helping the Rangers regain their respectability in the late Seventies and put the Knicks back on solid footing in the Eighties.

If you think about it, he helped out the Giants, Jets, Knicks, Rangers, Nets and Devils -- six teams! However, unless you count the one the Jets won shortly after he was fired, none of the teams won a title while he was involved with them.

9. Jacob Ruppert, Yankees, 1915-39. More specifically, 1915-20, before hiring Ed Barrow away from the Boston Red Sox, where he'd been field manager, to be his general manager. Barrow ranks considerably higher on this list, and he did have the help of Ruppert's vast personal fortune.

But it was "the Colonel" who insisted that the Yankees move from being New York's 3rd team to America's 1st team. The moves he made brought in manager Miller Huggins, pitchers Bob Shawkey and Carl Mays, and, of course, Babe Ruth.
And he built Yankee Stadium. While "This Imposing Edifice," as his Monument Park Plaque called the original, is now gone, Ruppert's legacy lives. So why did it take until last fall for the greatest empire builder in the history of North American sport to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Ruppert is buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. In that same cemetery are interred Billy Martin, Yankee National Anthem singer Robert Merrill, and Harry Frazee, the Red Sox owner from whom Ruppert made the purchases that made the Yankees. It is virtually next-door to Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Valhalla, final resting place of the Babe, Billy Martin, and a different kind of "Yankee Doodle Dandy," although also a Yankee Fan, James Cagney.

8. George Weiss, Yankees, 1947-60, and Mets, 1961-66. He was the personnel man in the Yankees' most glorious period, the Casey Stengel years. It was Weiss who talked owners Dan Topping and Del Webb into hiring Stengel for the 1949 season, and the Yankees of the Fabulous Fifties were off and running.

Weiss was every bit the cheap, mean old bastard that his predecessor Ed Barrow was, but he was also the guy who brought in Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Roger Maris, and a bunch of veterans who seemed good bets to help the Yankees win the Pennant in a particular year, some of whom stuck around to win more than one, including Johnny Mize, Johnny Sain, Jim Konstanty, Bobby Schantz, Enos Slaughter. (Some of them may have been Stengel's idea, but Weiss saw the wisdom in the Ol' Perfesser's wishes.)
After the 1960 season, Topping and Webb fired Stengel. Weiss predicted that he would be next, and "got out of Dodge," so that it looked like his decision. He also predicted that within 5 years, the Yankee Dynasty would be over. He was right, and he knew why: Topping and Webb had begun looking for a buyer. They figured, we're not going to own the team in 5 years, so what do we care how good the team is? So the beautiful farm system that Weiss had built as Barrow's assistant dried up.

Still, Weiss is in the Hall of Fame -- but not, for some reason, in Monument Park. That reason may be racism: Although he finally let Elston Howard be the team's 1st black player in 1955, it could have been Vic Power anywhere up to 3 years earlier. The way Weiss treated Power was abominable.

When the Mets' organization was being built, he was hired, and rejoined Stengel. Nothing he did with the Mets brings him any higher on this list, though. That is not the case with the next man, who should be in the Hall of Fame, and I could say that even if he had never joined the Mets' organization:

7. Frank Cashen, Mets, 1980-91. He had been the GM that built the Baltimore Orioles into the 1966 and 1970 World Champions. In 1980, upon buying the Mets from Lorinda de Roulet, daughter of team founder Joan Payson, Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday hired Cashen as GM.

His job was more dire than that of Yankee GMs Gabe Paul in 1973 and Gene Michael in 1990. In fact, it may have been the most dire rebuilding job in New York sports since Larry MacPhail saved the Dodgers from possible bankruptcy and folding in 1938.

Think about it: The Mets weren't just no longer New York's 1st baseball team, they were barely its 2nd. Since the Mets' 1973 Pennant, the Yankees had won 3 Pennants and 2 World Series; the Rangers had been to the Stanley Cup Finals; the Islanders were on their way to the first of 4 straight Cups; the Nets had won 2 ABA titles; and, while they weren't very good at the moment, the Giants and Jets already had in place the rebuilding efforts that would make them Playoff contenders throughout the Eighties. Only the Knicks were in remotely as bad a shape. (The Devils hadn't arrived yet.) The Mets had been so decimated by the moves of team chairman M. Donald Grant (fired in 1978) that Shea Stadium was averaging 12,000 fans a night and got the nickname "Grant's Tomb."

Cashen's 1st draft pick was Darryl Strawberry. He drafted Dwight Gooden. He got perennial All-Stars (already) Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter, in each case for next to nothing. He traded for Ron Darling and Howard Johnson. And he hired the right manager for them, Davey Johnson.

(Although that may not be all that accurate: Davey may have looked too far the other way on Darryl's and Doc's substance abuse, and he has never won another Pennant with any of the 4 teams he has since managed, including botching the Washington Nationals' chances last fall.)

Cashen built a team that finished 1st or 2nd every season from 1984 to 1990, and won the 1986 World Series. The reason he isn't higher on this list is that the team won only the 1 Series, and that team did tarnish themselves in some ways. But for Cashen to have taken the Mets to where they were at the dawn of the 1980s -- Met fans, surrounded by Yankee Fans' gloating, probably felt as much like hostages as those in Iran at the moment -- to where they were in October 1986 was mind-boggling. The Mets weren't just on top of New York, they were on top of the world.
As late as 1991, Cashen's last season (he resigned after a 5th-place finish), they were still, beyond question, a better organization than the Yankees. That they have never been that again is not his fault, but neither did he do much to avoid it, and that's why he's not higher on this list.

6. Larry MacPhail, Dodgers 1938-41, Yankees 1945-47. He had already restored the Cincinnati Reds, putting up Major League Baseball's first stadium lights, negotiating a lucrative radio contract (although it helped that the Reds owner who hired him, Powel Crosley, was a radio manufacturer), and making the deals that built the team that won the 1939 Pennant and the 1940 World Series.

Desperate to keep from going out of business, the financially troubled Dodgers brought him in, and the Roaring Redhead did much the same thing: He put up lights at Ebbets Field (the Polo Grounds got lights in 1940), broke the "gentlemen's agreement" against the New York teams broadcasting on radio, brought his Cincinnati broadcaster Red Barber in, renovated Ebbets Field to make it clean and family-friendly, and made the transactions that built the 1941 Pennant winners.
But MacPhail had a serious drinking problem, and the other owners forced him out after the '41 Series. Still, the success of the Dodgers, from 1942 to 1988, under Branch Rickey, Walter O'Malley and Peter O'Malley, would not have been possible without MacPhail.

In 1945, he joined with metal-industry heir Dan Topping and real estate tycoon Del Webb to buy the Yankees from Colonel Ruppert's heirs, and they modernized the team, putting lights up at Yankee Stadium in 1946 and getting the team on local television.

After winning the 1947 World Series, MacPhail got drunk and nasty at the victory party, and shortly thereafter was bought out by Topping and Webb. He never worked in baseball again, and rarely gets credit for the rebuilding that turned the Yankees into a team that won 13 Pennants in 16 seasons from 1947 to 1964.

But his legacy lives on: Aside from the Frank McCourt divorce saga (which was a mess but not an existential crisis for the club), the Dodgers have never again been in financial difficulty, not in Brooklyn, not in Los Angeles. They remain one of the model franchises in the game.

MacPhail's son Bill became President of CBS Sports, his other son Lee became GM of the Orioles and Yankees and President of the American League (and they are the only father-son combination in the Hall of Fame); Lee's son Andy became GM of the Twins and president of the Cubs and Orioles; and Lee's grandson Leland Stanford MacPhail IV works with his uncle Andy in the Oriole front office.

5. Lou Lamoriello, Devils, 1987-2015. It took the former Providence College head coach just 1 season to get the Meadowlands Marauders (now the Mulberry Street Marauders) into the Conference Finals. Starting in 1990, he got them into the Playoffs every season but 1 (1996) until 2010. Starting in 1988, they reached the Conference Finals 7 times, the Cup Finals 5 times and won the Cup 3 times.
He hired Jacques Lemaire as head coach, then Larry Robinson, the Pat Burns, and each of them won a Stanley Cup (in 1995, 2000 and 2003, respectively). He drafted Martin Brodeur, Scott Niedermayer and Patrik Elias. And he engineered the move that got the St. Louis Blues to compensate for signing Brendan Shanahan away with Scott Stevens, the most consequential transaction in New York Tri-State Area hockey history. (More than the Rangers' acquisition of Mark Messier: I don't care how big you think that 1994 title was, 3 beats 1.)

But he also short-circuited the team's chances to win more by some truly baffling trades -- Claude Lemieux for Steve Thomas? John MacLean for Doug Bodger? -- and letting star players go to save money. Letting Scott Gomez get away was, I suppose, understandable... but to the Rangers? To The Scum?!?

And it is neither secret nor coincidence that, after he let defensemen Scott Niedermayer and Brian Rafalski go after the 2006 season, the next 2 Cups were won by Niedermayer's Anaheim Ducks and Rafalski's Detroit Red Wings. Sure, I understand, the Ducks were a good team and Nieder wanted to play with his brother Rob; and the Wings were great and Raffy's from the Detroit area.

But how exactly have the Devils done since they left? Okay, they got to the Finals in 2012. But they fell apart thereafter. They have hardly been any good since then. He did so much, but he stayed too long.

4. Gene Michael, Yankees, 1990-2017. The stereotypical "Good field, no hit" player in the late Sixties and early Seventies, "Stick" went on to serve the Yankees as minor league manager, major league coach, major league manager (twice), chief scout and general manager.

When Steinbrenner was suspended in 1990, Michael was given the keys to the kingdom, and had a hell of a mess to clean up: A number of George's trades, in the manner of the 1950s Yankees where 3 prospects would be traded for 1 guy who could help them win in a given year, hadn't panned out. And the Mets were, far and away, the Tri-State Area's most popular team.

Mariano Rivera and Bernie Williams had just come into the system. Michael's guidance led to the drafting of Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada. He engineered the trades for Paul O'Neill and David Cone, and the signings of Wade Boggs and Jimmy Key.
Back from suspension, George removed him from the GM post in 1995, although he was still a key man in the operations, and as "superscout" his suggestions remained part of the backbone of the building of the 1996-2003 dynasty.

George's children did not give him his Monument Park Plaque while he was still alive. They still haven't. They should have, because if it wasn't for Stick, George's Monument would be a joke.

3. Bill Torrey, Islanders, 1972-92. John Brush of the baseball Giants. Jacob Ruppert, Gabe Paul and Gene Michael of the Yankees. George Young of the football Giants. Bill Parcells of both the Giants and the Jets. Sonny Werblin of the Jets, Knicks and Rangers. Lou Lamoriello of the Devils. These men took awful, even disgraceful, franchises, and brought (or restored) them to glory. And Larry MacPhail may have saved the Dodgers completely.

But building a team from scratch, making them a Playoff contender within 3 years, and a World Champion within 8 years? Without Steinbrenner-type money? Impossible.

No, it's not. Torrey and Isles coach Al Arbour did it. By 1978, the team of Denis Potvin, Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy and Billy Smith was almost ready to go all the way. By 1980, they'd added Butch Goring and Clark Gillies, and 4 straight Stanley Cups followed. Torrey is in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and is honored with a banner with his signature bowtie on it in the rafters of the Nassau Coliseum.
2. Branch Rickey, Dodgers, 1942-50. MacPhail's successor as Dodger President & GM was already a baseball legend. As GM of the St. Louis Cardinals, he established the concept of the minor-league farm system. (He didn't totally invent it, but most teams had relationships with maybe one minor-league club: The Boston Red Sox with the Providence Grays, and the Philadelphia Athletics with the pre-1954 Baltimore Orioles.) That way of doing business helped the Cards win 9 Pennants and 6 World Series from 1926 to 1946.

This made Rickey a hot property when the Dodgers fired MacPhail, and Rickey built the team that won 8 Pennants (and just missed 2 others) and a World Series from 1947 to 1959. (By the Maury Wills season of 1962, nobody from the "Boys of Summer" was still contributing, and the L.A. Dodgers were Buzzie Bavasi's team all the way.) And if that had been the extent of Rickey's building, that would be enough to get him on this list, and maybe into the Hall of Fame.

But Rickey realized, from standpoints both moral and competitive, that it was time to bring nonwhite players into what was then nicknamed "Organized Baseball." He signed Jackie Robinson. He followed that with Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and Joe Black. (Jim Gilliam and Sandy Amoros came after Rickey left.)

Along with the already-present Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges, and Rickey acquisitions Duke Snider, Carl Furillo, Preacher Roe, Billy Cox, Carl Erskine and Clem Labine, these were what Roger Kahn, Dodger beat writer for the New York Herald Tribune in 1952 and '53, called "The Boys of Summer" in his 1972 book of the same title that romanticized the Dodgers for generations of fans that would never see them play. (Like me.)
After the 1950 season, part-owner Walter O'Malley, who hated Rickey's guts (and Rickey was no fan of the unscrupluous O'Malley, either), bought out his share and the shares of the other stockholders. Rickey moved on to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and although he was gone by the time his plans bore fruit, the team he built did win the 1960 World Series.

He is in the Hall of Fame, and, despite the claims of historian Robert W. Creamer that Babe Ruth and Casey Stengel (both of whom were the subject of Creamer biographies) were the two most interesting men ever involved with the game, I think a better case can be made for Wesley Branch Rickey and the man with whom he changed the game, and America, forever, Jack Roosevelt Robinson.

Honorable Mention to Emil "Buzzie" Bavasi, who took over as O'Malley's GM after Rickey was bought out, and continued to build the Dodgers up into a team that won 8 Pennants and 4 World Series from 1952 to 1966.

1. Ed Barrow, Yankees, 1921-46. He arrived in time to build the Yankees' 1st American League Pennant winner. By the time he quit, not happy with Dan Topping, Del Webb and Larry MacPhail, who had bought the team from Ruppert's heirs, he had built a team that won 14 Pennants and 10 World Series. He had brought Hall of Fame pitchers Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock to the team, and also Hall of Fame center fielder Earle Combs, and his greatest signing, Hall of Fame 1st baseman Lou Gehrig. And that was just from 1921 to 1925.

In 1930, he brought in 2 more Hall of Fame pitchers, Charles "Red" Ruffing (who went from a lousy pitcher with the Red Sox to brilliance with the Yankees) and Vernon "Lefty" Gomez. He ran the scouting department that found the Hall of Fame Yankees at the position of shortstop, Phil Rizzuto, and catcher, Yogi Berra.

And, in 1934, when a bad ankle caused many big-league clubs to shy away from the Pacific Coast League superstar, Barrow took a chance on Joe DiMaggio. It paid off. Top that. Barrow is in the Hall of Fame, and in Monument Park.

All of these disasters are pretty much in my lifetime, 1969 onward.

10. George Steinbrenner, Yankees, 1980-90. Okay, officially, George wasn't the GM. But, let's face it, he was the man making the personnel decisions, no matter how much he blamed his bad transactions on "my baseball people."

When he had Gabe Paul from 1973 to '77, Al Rosen in '78 and '79, Gene Michael stepping in after his suspension in 1990, Bob Watson in '96 and '97, and Brian Cashman from 1998 to 2010, George was a great owner, which is why he's only Number 10 on this list. But he was a horrible "GM," and that's why he makes this list at all.

9. "The Secaucus Seven," Nets, 1978-98. Led by Joe Taub and Alan Cohen, these guys got little to work with, and they made less out of it. Having to pay $8 million just to get into the NBA following the collapse of the ABA, and to pay off the Knicks for "territorial indemnification," the Nets had to sell off their best player, Long Island native Julius "Dr. J" Erving, and a year later trade their next-best player, Bronx native Nate "Tiny" Archibald.

In other words, just to remain in the Tri-State Area, the Nets had to dump 2 of the men who would be named in 1996 to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players.

So how many times did the Nets make the Playoffs in those 20 seasons that the S7 owned them? 10. Which isn't actually all that bad. But how many Playoff series did they win? One. That was in 1984, against the defending World Champion Philadelphia 76ers -- with Erving -- before falling in 6 in the next round against the Milwaukee Bucks. How many Playoff games did they win? 9, with 5 of those coming, as I said, in '84.

It's not so much how often they made the Playoffs, it's how bad they were when they didn't. And the bad draft picks... Dennis Hopson, Ed O'Bannon, Yinka Dare... Maybe the Nets weren't as big a joke as the other "little brother" team in the NBA, the Los Angeles Clippers... but even when they were a good team, 1982-86 and 1992-94, they didn't exactly sell out the Meadowlands. Partly because the established, glamorous Knicks were also good at the same time.

The general managers over that time included part-owner Roy Boe, 1973-74 (he was also an owner of the Islanders), Dave DeBusschere, 1974-75; Boe again, 1975-78, including the decisions to trade Erving and Archibald; Charles Theokas, 1978-81; Bob MacKinnon, 1981-83; Lewis Schaffel, 1983-86; MacKinnon again, 1986-87; Harry Weltman, 1987-90; Willis Reed, 1990-96; and John Calipari, 1996-99. So there were some guys who really knew their basketball, but, given the Nets' situation, were in over their heads as GMs.

The S7 sold the Nets in 1998, and in 2001 new ownership made the trade for Jason Kidd and the team made 2 NBA Finals, reaching the Playoffs 6 straight seasons, before Bruce Ratner bought the team and put their breakup and move to Brooklyn into motion.

Despite a 20-year record of ineptitude, I can't rank the S7 any higher, for 2 reasons: There were 7 of them, not any 1 that was more responsible than any other; and the Nets have always been the 2nd basketball team in a 2-team town. Sometimes 3rd, when you consider St. John's.

In fact, counting all the area's major league teams, they're the 9th team in a 9-team town. And, frankly, counting the Liberty and the Red Bulls may not be doing the Nets any favors, either. We'll see if the current management team, led by owner Joseph Tsai and GM Sean Marks, can turn them around in Brooklyn, but don't hold your breath.

8. Mike Milbury, Islanders, 1995-2006. He was one of the players who typified the Boston Bruins' late 1970s-early 1980s "Lunch Pail Athletic Club": Not especially talented, but hard-working, the kind of guy you needed to win. As head coach of the Bruins, he got them to the 1990 Stanley Cup Finals, but got swept by the Edmonton Oilers, whose GM and former head coach was Glen Sather. (See #5 below.)

In 1995, the Islanders named him head coach and GM. He was asked by a reporter how he expected to compete with the Devils, who had just won the Cup, and the Rangers, who had won it the year before. He had the right attitude: "You know, fuck the Rangers and fuck the Devils! I'm running the New York Islanders!" From Flushing to Montauk, you could hear Isles fans saying, "Hell yeah!"

But even when they were winning 4 straight Stanley Cups, the Islanders have never been a team with deep pockets. The moves Milbury made were terrible, pretty much demolishing a team that had come within 3 games of the Finals just 2 years earlier. He removed himself as head coach, reinstalled himself, and removed himself again. He never hired a good head coach, and from his 1995 hiring until 2015, 20 seasons, the team made the Playoffs 6 times, winning 11 games and exactly zero series.
So the way he messed things up on the Jericho Turnpike well outlasted his tenure. When he was hired, they were a viable franchise that may have had an interesting future. When he was finally canned after 11 years, they were a team in trouble, and remain so.

Milbury's heart was in the right place, and no one could question his courage. If he only had a brain. He is not solely to blame for the club's post-1993 decline, but, competitively, it still doesn't look good for the team's long-term future.

7. Wilbur "Weeb" Ewbank, Jets, 1968-74. Bear with me: In order to make you truly understand what Weeb did to the Jets, I have to make this one long. A truly great football coach, he was the only man to be head coach of both an NFL Champion (1958 and '59 Baltimore Colts, both times over the New York Giants) and an AFL Champion (1968-69 New York Jets, over his former team, the Colts). But look at what he did with the team as GM after owner Leon Hess fired Sonny Werblin.

Imagine that it is August 1969, and you are the General Manager of the New York Jets. Your team has not only won the World Championship of American football in its last game that counted, but it did so in a fashion that stunned and excited the entire nation. You've just won an exhibition game (strangely, played at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut) in which you decisively defeated the Giants, the City's NFL aggregation. So now you are definitively the best team in your sport, both in New York and in the world.

The Knicks have glamorous stars like Walt Frazier and Bill Bradley and the courageous Willis Reed, but they haven't yet won their 1st title, and even after 2 titles they won't be as big as a popular football team would be.

The Mets are in their 1st Pennant race, but haven't yet gotten their "Miracle" fully onto the City's radar. And even when they do, their marquee player, Tom Seaver, as great as he is and will be, is a private man: He can handle the spotlight, but he does not relish it, and isn't the most bankable guy around.

You have Joe Namath, a glamour guy at the glamour position (quarterback), in the glamour city, in what's becoming the glamour sport, and he loves the spotlight, eats it up. You've just proven that the Giants stink. So do the Yankees, whose big star Mickey Mantle just retired. The Nets are in the ABA, out on Long Island, so they're an afterthought. The Rangers are a bunch of Canadians, not exactly popular in an America that elected Richard Nixon. The Islanders and Devils don't exist yet. No college team in the area is doing big things.

Maybe you don't own the New York Tri-State Area, but you're co-owning with the Mets and the Knicks, and that's pretty good. You've got it made.

And your franchise loses in the 1st round of the next season's Playoffs... and then doesn't reach the Playoffs again for 12 years! And doesn't win another Playoff game until a year after that!
Weeb couldn't keep the Super Bowl team together. He resigned as head coach prior to the 1973 season, by which point an oft-injured Namath was the only one from 1/12/69 still contributing. Weeb remained as GM, and hired his son-in-law, Charlie Wimmer, as head coach. Charlie didn't do too well. Overall, Weeb makes my list of New York's Top 10 Best Coaches, but also my list of New York's Top 10 Worst Executives.

The Jets could have become the team in New York football, instead of becoming a joke franchise, which they still are, at least for the moment. Considering the kind of opportunity Ewbank had in 1969, it is almost a crime that, by 1986, Sports Illustrated could put Lawrence Taylor and Mark Gastineau on their cover, with the words, "In the Big Apple, the Jets are always the second banana."

Weeb never should've been named GM. Jerry Izenberg, the legendary columnist of the Newark Star-Ledger, calls the Jets' inability to win a Super Bowl, or even to reach one, these last 41 seasons "The Curse of Sonny Werblin." That doesn't make much sense, since they did win the next Super Bowl after firing him. Maybe "The Curse of Weeb Ewbank" is better.

6. Mike Burke, Yankees, 1966-73. A genuine hero of America's effort in World War II. A great businessman. A man who loved sports. And, along with Mayor John Lindsay, the man who saved the original Yankee Stadium for an additional 2 generations. We should thank him for those things.

But while he loved baseball, he didn't know how to run a sports team. Granted, the Topping-Webb regime left CBS, and their handpicked team president Burke, a pig in a poke, basically a brand name and nothing else. But he didn't do much with it: When the team finally won the whole thing in 1977, only 4 players were left from before George Steinbrenner owned the team: Roy White, Thurman Munson, Sparky Lyle and Graig Nettles. I think when George came in, and then bought Burke out, it was a great relief to Burke.

5. Glen Sather, Rangers, 2000-present. A Ranger defenseman from 1971 to 1974, he became one of the great coaches and GMs in hockey history when he coached the Edmonton Oilers to 4 Stanley Cups and was GM for 5. But what has he done in 20 years in New York?
It took the Rangers 12 years under his leadership to reach the Conference Finals, and 2 more to reach the Stanley Cup Finals. They have not gotten that far again.

His head coaches have been abysmal: John Muckler (who succeeded him in Edmonton and won the 1990 Cup, but awful at the Garden), Ron Low (aptly-named), Bryan Trottier (real smart, hiring one of the greatest Islanders with no head coaching experience to run the Rangers), himself (not so easy when you don't have Gretzky, Messier, Kurri, Anderson, Coffey, Lowe and Fuhr all in their primes), Tom Renney, John Tortorella, Alain Vigneault, and now David Quinn.

And when the Rangers finally did reach the Conference Finals in 2012, they ended up losing to the Devils, a humiliation that well and truly pus the 1994 Cup win deep into the past, every bit as much as the Isles' 1980-83 Cups irrevocably are. Reaching the Stanley Cup Finals in 2014 didn't help, as they got embarrassed by the Los Angeles Kings.

Sather still holds the titles of Senior Advisor and Alternate Governor (the NHL calls their teams' operational owners "Governors"), while Jeff Gorton (not auto racer Jeff Gordon) is the official general manager.

Of course, Sather hasn't done as much damage to the Rangers as Milbury did to the Islanders in a shorter span of time. The Rangers were never in danger of getting moved out of the Tri-State Area. Besides, somebody had to make the mistake of hiring Sather, and then keeping him for this long.

4. Omar Minaya, Mets, 1995-2002, 2005-10, and 2017-present. Previously a scout under GM Steve Phillips, he left to become MLB's 1st Hispanic GM, with the Montreal Expos. With that team getting moved to become the Washington Nationals, the Mets brought him back as their GM.

He was going to lead the Latin Revolution in Flushing Meadow. He brought in Pedro Martinez, Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, Johan Santana and Francisco Rodriguez. And David Wright. (How'd that Gringo get in there?)

2005: No Playoffs, but that's okay, because they're still working their way up. No shame in that.

2006: One run from a Pennant, but a 9th-inning homer by the opposition, and Beltran leaves the bat on his shoulder. Okay, that's not good, but there's still plenty of reason for optimism.

2007: Up by 7 with 17 to go, and they don't even make the Playoffs. Now that is a disgrace.

2008: Up by 3 1/2 with 17 to go, and they don't even make the Playoffs. In this case, half a disgrace does not lessen the disgrace, it compounds it. They couldn't even win the last game at Shea Stadium. They couldn't let their beloved home "die with dignity."

2009: The 1st season at Citi Field is, competitively, an unmitigated disaster.

2010: Another sub-.500 season.

All the while, the Yankees remain the Number 1 team in town, winning a 27th World Championship. The Mets are still looking for a 3rd. The Yankees have won 40 Pennants; the Mets won a 5th after firing Minaya, but are still looking for a 6th.

Can't blame it on the manager, because the Mets failed under Willie Randolph and failed harder under Jerry Manuel. Nope, don't blame the waiter, blame the chef.
People said the Mets should spend more money, like the Yankees do. But the guys Minaya did spend money on didn't pan out. And then, of course, came the reckoning of Fred and Jeff Wilpon's dealings with Bernie Madoff, and so, under new GM Sandy Alderson, the Mets haven't been able to spend big.

Frankly, the Wilpons should have dumped Minaya after 2008. After all, '05 was a rebuilding year, '06 was pretty successful by Met standards, and '07 could be written off as a fluke -- a mind-numbing, nasty fluke, but a fluke nonetheless. But 2008 should have been the alarm bell. The Mets should've broken up with Minaya then.

Finally, in 2010, the Wilpons told him, "This relationship isn't working, and I think we should start seeing other executives." No, Omar, it's not them, it's you. The Latin Revolution left Met fans feeling so tortured, it should have been called the Spanish Inquisition.

For a while, he worked in the front office of the San Diego Padres. They didn't come close to a Pennant while he was there. He returned to the Mets after the 2017 season, as a "special assistant to the general manager." It seems that Fred Wilpon just can't quit Omar.

3. Isiah Thomas, Knicks, 2003-08. It was bad enough that Isiah made some bad moves as GM. It was worse that he trusted some guys who couldn't coach, including himself.  It led to the infamous T-shirts: "Don't hate the players, hate the coach." And if that had been the extent of it, that would have been bad enough, although perhaps not bad enough to make the top (or should that be "bottom"?) half of this list.

But through his private life becoming public, he dragged the Knicks through the tabloid muck. Once the team of Clyde Frazier, cool and stylish, a team the ladies could love as much as the guys, the Knicks had become a festering sewer, both competitively and morally.

Of course, Thomas didn't do as much damage to the Rangers as the Secaucus Seven did to the Nets. And the damage he did, while severe in terms of public relations and competitiveness, both on the court and in the boardroom, didn't put the Knicks in danger of moving or going out of business. Besides, somebody had to make the mistake of hiring Thomas, and then keeping him for that long.

2. M. Donald Grant, Mets, 1962-78. He was a friend of Mets founder Joan Payson, and she hired him to be the team's 1st chairman of the board. After the 1969 season, the Mets owned New York every bit as much as the Jets did. After the 1973 season, when they'd won another Pennant, they were so far ahead of the Yankees it wasn't funny -- though you can be sure Met fans were cackling with glee.

Surely, with their (relatively) new ballpark and exciting young players in a nice neighborhood, they had the advantage over the Yankees, with their old ballpark and failing players in a disastrous neighborhood, not to mention their crazy new owner.

The Mets, or rather Grant, frittered away so much of that goodwill, to the point where a few Met fans -- not many, but a few, including Brooklynite college student and aspiring filmmaker Spike Lee -- switched to the Yankees after they returned to the top, a rise coinciding with the Mets' collapse.
A blog called Mike's Mets -- not connected to me in any way -- pretty much sums Grant's mindset up:

Grant, a stockbroker, was Mrs. Payson's close personal advisor when she became the original owner of the Mets. He probably had very little influence in player movement for the first several years, and in the days before free agency, no one could say that the Mets were particularly cheap. But... Grant did not believe that a ballplayer deserved to be making as much money as a stockbroker or real estate magnate, and probably didn't think they belonged at the same parties or meetings, either.

Grant's meddling, no doubt, played a part in driving Mets' GM Bing Devine, who was doing a nice job of trying to build a winner, back to St. Louis. It was probably after Mets' GM Johnny Murphy passed away in 1970 that Grant's influence began to increase. Whitey Herzog was Mets' player development director and heir to the GM job, but Grant passed him by because he knew he wouldn't stand for any interference from someone who in Whitey's words "knew nothing about baseball".

The next two Mets' GM's, Bob Scheffing and Joe McDonald, probably had their hands tied by Grant, his frugality, and his belief that ballplayers should be quiet, sign their contracts, and just play ball. When a player became outspoken about salary issues, such as Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman did, it was only a matter of time before they would be sent away. When Gil Hodges died just before the 1972 season began, Grant again chose to bypass the outspoken Herzog, driving him out of the organization, in favor of Yogi Berra.

Probably the best example of how out of touch M. Donald Grant was with the average fan was when he tried to explain the Tom Seaver negotiations and subsequent trade in terms of bluffing and playing tricks in a hand of bridge. How many Mets fans have any idea how to even play bridge?

Things got worse when Mrs. Payson got sick, and died late in 1975. Her daughter, Lorinda de Roulet, inherited the team, and she knew that she knew nothing about baseball, so she trusted Grant even more.

Observe the breakup of the "Miracle" team: The autocratic Grant traded away Tommie Agee after the 1972 season, Tug McGraw after 1974, Rusty Staub (who would later return) and Cleon Jones after 1975, Jerry Grote after 1976, and Seaver and Kingman on June 15, 1977, a date which lives in Met infamy. Aside from the Dodgers and Giants getting moved out of town, this is the most hated transaction in the history of New York sports -- even if Steve Henderson had a few hits in him and Doug Flynn was a very good fielder.

Lorinda finally fired the old buzzard in 1978. By that point, attendance at Shea Stadium was so sparse it was being called Grant's Tomb: It had gone from a City record 2.7 million in 1970 to under 800,000 by 1979 -- or, per game, 33,000 to 9,740. Contrast that with the Yankees: 1972, 966,000 (12,000); 1980, 2.6 million (32,000).  Not until 1980, when Lorinda sold the team to Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday, did things begin to turn around at Shea.

Grant died on November 29, 1998, 16 days after the death of Weeb Ewbank, and 12 days after the death of the Knicks' title-winning head coach, Red Holzman. Weeb and Red got a lot of praise in the New York media. Grant's death was barely even noticed. Serves him right.

1. James Dolan, Knicks and Rangers, 1994 to the present. His father Charles Dolan hired him to run Cablevision. Which, until Charles sold Cablevision in 2016 but kept ownership of all of the following, owned ITT. Which owns Viacom. Which owns Paramount Communications. Which owns Gulf + Western. Which owns the Madison Square Garden Corporation. Which owns the Garden complex, the Knicks, the Rangers, the MSG Network, and the Garden's boxing, concert and other special-events promotion companies. (From the team's founding in 1997 until selling them to Nets owner Joseph Tsai in 2019, the Dolan conglomerate also owned the WNBA's New York Liberty.)

"Guitar Jimmy" has done great things. He has promoted the Concert For New York City after 9/11, the Big Apple to Big Easy Concert after Hurricane Katrina, and the 12-12-12 Concert to raise money for relief of Hurricane Sandy. He is one of the most charity-sustaining people in America. He is, by most accounts, a decent person. (I have heard suggestions of "Me Too" incidents, but these have not been seriously pursued.) I have no reason to dislike him. Especially since I am neither a Knicks nor a Rangers fan.

But this is the guy who hired Glen Sather to run the Broadway Blueshirts, and also the guy who hired Isiah Thomas to run the Knickerbockers. Through those 2 guys, whom he showed unbelievable loyalty, to the point where both New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica and I, independent of each other, have wondered what kind of pictures Isiah has of Dolan, he has managed to futz up one of the NBA's charter franchises and one of the NHL's so-called "Original Six" teams, the 3rd- and 4th-greatest franchises in the Tri-State Area in terms of historic success (behind the Yankees and football Giants), for over a decade.

Think about it: Starting with 2000-01, the first full season in which Dolan has, effectively, been the big boss of both teams, the Knicks have won 1 Playoff series, and only 9 Playoff games, despite spending more money (even with the league's salary cap) than any team in basketball history.

The Rangers have done a bit better, but even that took a few years to really get rolling. Over that stretch, they have won 10 Playoff series, but only 3 times have they gotten to the Conference Finals, and only once to the Stanley Cup Finals, despite spending more money (both without and then with the league's salary cap) than any team in hockey history.

Think about that: 2 teams, same building, 20 years, 11 Playoff series won. That roughly translates to 1 Playoff series win every 2 years, for each team, in what's promoted as "The World's Most Famous Arena." From 1998 to 2011, there was a 14-season stretch without either the Knicks or the Rangers making the Playoffs.

Messing up one franchise for a decade is bad enough. Jimmy Dolan has messed 2 up for 2 decades. He's not a cheap dirty bastard, like Walter O'Malley or Donald Grant. He's not a sleazeball, like Isiah Thomas, or an "ogre" as George Steinbrenner was often called  And he isn't a legend whose sport has passed him by, like Glen Sather.

On the other hand, he isn't a good man thrown into an awful situation, like Mike Burke. He's a (possibly) good man who made an awful situation -- indeed, 2 of them. Like Weeb Ewbank (as GM, anyway) and Mike Milbury, he is a guy in over his head. But it's Knick and Ranger fans who feel like they're drowning.

Eligibility: Has to be with a major league team. If I go to colleges, that means I have to go out to the suburbs and consider Rutgers, Princeton and Army... and they really don't feel like "New York teams."

So, sorry to Clair Bee of Long Island University, Nat Holman of City College, Howard Cann of NYU, and St. John's bee-ball bosses Joe Lapchick, Frank McGuire and Lou Carnesecca. And I won't even consider a manager/head coach unless he won at least one World Championship in his sport.

Honorable Mention to those New York Tri-State Area head coaches who didn't make this list despite winning World Championships: Miller Huggins, Yankees, 1923, '27 and '28; Bucky Harris, Yankees, 1947; Ralph Houk, Yankees, 1961 and '62; Davey Johnson, Mets, 1986; Earl Potteiger, football Giants, 1927; Steve Owen, football Giants, 1934 and '38; Jim Lee Howell, football Giants, 1956; Frank Boucher, Rangers, 1940; Mike Keenan, Rangers, 1994; Jacques Lemaire, Devils, 1995; Larry Robinson, Devils, 2000; Pat Burns, Devils, 2003; and Joe Girardi, Yankees, 2009.

Dishonorable Mention to Leo Durocher, Dodgers 1938-48 and Giants 1948-56. True, he led 2 different New York baseball franchises to Pennants -- something only Yogi Berra has also done -- and helped the restore the Dodgers from a joke franchise into a powerhouse.

But that was much more due to the maneuverings of executives Larry MacPhail and Branch Rickey. And we know that Durocher cheated to get the Giants the '51 Pennant. To say nothing of how he turned coat from Dodgers to Giants. That was simply not done. Besides, there was only room for one libertine New York baseball manager on this list.

Mention both Honorable and Dishonorable to Billy Martin, Yankees 1975-88 (on and off). He was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a free-spender, an umpire-baiter, a lunatic and a paranoiac -- in other words, things that Leo the Lip also was. But Billy the Brat had less to work with. True, he had Reggie Jackson -- against his will -- but he never had a Willie Mays.

And he still led the Yankees to the 1976 Pennant and the 1977 World Championship. With one more good starter, who knows, he might've gotten the Yankees at least the Division Title in 1985. The relationship between Billy and Yankee owner George Steinbrenner has been likened to that between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: They couldn't live with each other, but neither could they live without each other.

Who knows what Billy could have done if George had simply let him manage... aside from George stepping in in August 1977 and telling him, "Billy, bat Reggie 4th, or you're fired." That, as Lisa Swan of Subway Squawkers pointed out in a comment the first time I posted this list (when I had Billy ranked 10th), was one time that George knew a lot better than Billy.

10. Gil Hodges, Mets 1968-71. The great 1st baseman of the 1950s Dodgers only managed 4 seasons in New York, and only once in his career (including his earlier managing job with the Washington Senators) did he ever win more than 83 games in a season. But that was in 1969. A "miracle"? Not with Gil Hodges around. It shouldn't shock anyone that the even-tempered Hodges outmanaged the hotheaded Earl Weaver of the Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series.
Gil died of a heart attack, on the eve of his 48th birthday and the 1972 season. I wonder how Met history might have been changed had he simply still been alive on June 15, 1977 (he would've been just 53), and had been able to protect Tom Seaver from M. Donald Grant.

Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, because, once Mrs. Payson was no longer around to protect anyone, Grant probably would've fired Gil anyway. Face it, if he could trade Seaver, he could pretty much do whatever he wanted. It was only the sale of the team by Mrs. Payson's dimwitted daughter that stopped him.

That Hodges is not yet in the Baseball Hall of Fame can be explained by the fact that Hall voters do not combine achievements as a player and as a manager: You can be elected as one or the other, but not both.  But the Mets retired his Number 14, and elected him to their team Hall of Fame.

9. Joe McCarthy, Yankees 1931-46. They called him "a push-button manager," and the fact that he inherited Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey, Red Ruffing and Lefty Gomez prevents him from rising higher on this list. Then again, the man known as Marse Joe always knew which buttons to push.

The Yankees won the Pennant under his leadership in 1932, '36, '37, '38, '39, '41, '42 and '43, winning the World Series in all by '42. Seven World Series: No manager has ever won more. In postseason play, his teams were a whopping 29-10, including sweeps in '32, '38 and '39.
Oddly, even though he was managing in the major leagues as late as 1950, he never wore a number on his uniform. But he is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Yankees have honored him with a Plaque in Monument Park.

8. Tom Coughlin, Giants 2004-15.  His regular season record was 102-90, and 8-3 in postseason play. In the 2007 and 2011 seasons, each time, just when it looked like the players were about to revolt and lead to his firing, he settled everybody down, righted the ship, and led Big Blue to win the Super Bowl. That alone would get him into the Top 10. The fact that both of those wins are against the cheating bastards from Foxboro makes it all the sweeter.
Face it, when a team comes into the Super Bowl undefeated, and is going for a perfect season, it takes a damn good coach to prevent it. George Allen couldn't do it in 1973, but Tom Coughlin did it in 2008.

That Super Bowl XLVI win, on February 5, 2012, remains the last World Championship for any major league team in the New York Tri-State Area. Since then, the Mets have won a Pennant, the Rangers have reached a Stanley Cup Final, and the Red Bulls have won 3 Supporters' Shields for best regular-season record in Major League Soccer and reached a U.S. Open Cup Final. But that's it. Coughlin shouldn't still be the last Big Apple (and environs) field boss to have won a title.

7. Joe Torre, Yankees 1996-2007. Another "push-button manager"? Unlike pre-1969 managers, Joe had to go through not just 1 round of postseason play, but 2; and unlike 1969-93 managers, he had to go through not just 2 rounds, but 3. He won 17 postseason series, a total matched only by Tony LaRussa. (Bobby Cox? 12.) He was 17-8 in postseason series and 76-47 in postseason games. He won 6 Pennants and 4 World Championships. And he raised the Yankee legacy higher than anyone had before.
Sure, some of his moves (particularly with pitchers) seemed baffling, especially later on in his career. But "Clueless Joe," the name the Daily News gave to him on its back page after he was hired? As Joe McCarthy would have said, "My God, man, you were never that!"

He is now in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Yankees retired his Number 6 and given him a Plaque in Monument Park.

6. Lester Patrick, Rangers 1926-39. The Silver Fox had already been a great player, as had his brother Frank Patrick, and both would be elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame as players rather than "builders" (the HHOF's name for coaches and executives). But both men -- sometimes together, sometimes not -- made their biggest marks in suits rather than in sweaters.

Lester was the Rangers' head coach for their 1st 2 Stanley Cups (1928 and '33), and their general manager for their 1st 3 (add 1940). His greatest achievement came in Game 2 of the 1928 Stanley Cup Finals against the Montreal Maroons, when, at age 44, he had to substitute for his injured goalie Lorne Chabot. He volunteered, having played the position only once in his life, and not having played at all in 12 years (he had been a defenseman). Lots of players have since played to that age and beyond, including some goalies, but, at the time, it was unusual.

Putting on a Number 16 jersey (the NHL mandated uniform numbers starting with the 1926-27 season), he told his players, "Boys, don't let an old man down." With their help, he allowed just 1 goal as the Rangers beat the Maroons in overtime and went on to win their first Cup. It made him the oldest player ever to play in the Finals, a record that still stands. (In 2008, Chris Chelios was with the Detroit Red Wings at age 46, but did not appear in the Finals.)

He stepped aside for his former best player, Frank Boucher, and watched as Boucher led them to the '40 Cup. Put it this way: The Rangers didn't win a Cup without either Patrick or Boucher being involved until the franchise was 68 years old.

But as glorious as Patrick's career was, he wasn't the best hockey coach in Tri-State Area history. That would be...

5. Al Arbour, Islanders 1973-94. Like Lester Patrick, Al Arbour had been a pretty good defenseman, winning Stanley Cups with 3 different teams: The 1954 Detroit Red Wings, the 1961 Chicago Blackhaws, and the 1962, '63 and '64 Toronto Maple Leafs. He came close to winning with a 4th, reaching the Finals with the 1968, '69 and '70 St. Louis Blues.

As a head coach, he took the Islanders, then a 2nd-year expansion team, got them to the Stanley Cup Semifinals in only their 3rd season (beating the Rangers in the process), and built a force that dominated the division then named for Lester Patrick from 1978 to 1984, eventually reaching 5 straight Cup Finals and winning 4 straight Cups -- in each case, still a unique achievement for an American hockey team.
From April 1980 to May 1984, he won 19 straight postseason series -- a record for any coach, and for any team, in any sport, anywhere in North America. It's hard to believe that the Islanders, who have been so mediocre for so long, could have been that dominant, but they were: The Nassau Coliseum was nicknamed "Fort Neverlose."

Arbour stepped aside after the 1986 season, but came back 2 years later, and in 1993 got them back to the Conference Finals. Put it this way: Under Arbour as head coach, the Isles won 31 postseason series; with all others, they've won 3 -- and 2 of those came in 2016 and '18.

Having coached 1,499 NHL games, on November 3, 2007, at the request of Islanders coach Ted Nolan, Arbour was signed to a one-day contract to coach his 1,500th. At age 75, he became the oldest man ever to coach an NHL game. The Islanders beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 3–2, giving Arbour his 740th win. The banner honoring him with the number 739 on it, standing in for a retired number, was brought down from the Coliseum rafters, and was replaced with one with the number 1500. More even than Denis Potvin, Al Arbour was the New York Islanders. He is in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

4. Bill Parcells, Giants 1983-90, Jets 1997-99. He didn't just win games, he saved the reputations of franchises. That's plural. Both the Giants and the Jets were jokes when he stepped in. In between, so were the New England Patriots.

He got the Giants to win Super Bowls XXI and XXV, stepped aside for health reasons, took the Patriots' job (which, at the time, was not a job for a man with a heart condition -- but he hasn't had heart trouble since), got them into Super Bowl XXXI (but didn't win), and then saved the Jets from the 4-28 Rich Kotite disaster, getting them to the 1998 AFC Championship Game -- and they were leading John Elway and the Denver Broncos at the half at Mile High Stadium. The Broncos' talent won out, but the Big Tuna had brought Gang Green back from the abyss, as he had with Big Blue.
Parcells has the image of being what the average New York Tri-State Area football fan likes to think he is: Smart as a whip, but still in touch with his blue-collar roots (regardless of whether the jersey he wears over that blue collar is Giant blue or Jet green -- or even Rutgers scarlet), knowing just how much crap to take, and knowing what to do when you reach your limit thereof; finding the balance between having good humor and being a tough bastard.

Of course, with the way Parcells has left teams, and where he's gone afterward, and how he's teased teams he's ended up not joining, he seems to be missing one quality that New Yorkers and New Jerseyans tend to hold in very high esteem: Loyalty. And, whenever The One Great Scorer calls him to that great stadium in the sky, Parcells will have to answer for foisting Bill Belichick on America. But he is finally, rightfully, in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

3. Leonard "Red" Holzman, Knicks, 1967-82. Boston Celtics fans will say that their own Red Auerbach was the coach who invented modern pro basketball; but then, Auerbach was also the general manager who got the players, not just the coach who led them. Not having that amount of control, Red became the model for all NBA coaches who followed him.

With him, they won 2 out of 3 NBA Finals, beating Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and the Los Angeles Lakers in 1970 and '73, losing to the Lakers in '72. With all other head coaches combined, they are 0-5 in NBA Finals.
Keep in mind, the Knicks were the last of the "old" New York teams to win a World Championship; even the Mets and Jets, less than 10 years old at the time, had beaten them to it. That's what made 1970 so special. In '73, on the way to the Finals, they became the 1st team ever to beat the Celtics in a Playoff series Game 7 at the Boston Garden.

A very good player in the 1940s and '50s, who understood teamwork like few coaches ever has, he taught it to his players, leading with respect rather than fear like a Vince Lombardi would. He made a work ethic something to embrace, rather than something to consider drudgery. And still, his teams added sizzle to their steak. The 1970 Knicks, along with the 1955 Dodgers and the 1969 Mets, are probably one of the 3 most beloved single-year sports teams in the City's history.

Red is the only man in the Basketball Hall of Fame based on having coached a professional team in the New York Tri-State Area, and a banner with the number 613 on it, signifying his regular-season wins as Knick head coach, hangs in Madison Square Garden, standing in for a retired uniform number.

2. John McGraw, baseball Giants 1902-32. I know I said I was going to limit this to 1920 onward, but he excelled in baseball management on both sides of that demarcation line. More even than Connie Mack, the Little Napoleon was the defining baseball manager of the 1st 1/3rd of the 20th Century.
A star 3rd baseman in the 1890s, he took his win-at-any-costs attitude to the Polo Grounds, and turned the baseball Giants from perhaps the worst team in the majors at that point to the best in just 2 years.

He won Pennants in 1904, '05, '11, '12, '13, '17, '21, '22, '23 and '24. He remains the only National League manager to win 4 straight, and one of only 2 to win 3 straight, which he did twice. He won the World Series in 1905, 1921 and 1922.

In 1937, he and Mack became the 1st 2 managers elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Anyone who remembers him as an active manager would be close to 100 years old, but he deserves to have his achievements remembered.  Although they haven't been in New York in over 60 years, the San Francisco Giants honor McGraw, and his favorite player, star pitcher Christy Mathewson, with "NY" signs with their retired numbers, as both served the club in the era before numbers were worn.

1. Casey Stengel, Dodgers 1934-36, Yankees 1949-60, Mets 1962-65. A former player of McGraw's, the Ol' Perfesser didn't do too well managing in Brooklyn. Nor in his next job, with the Boston Braves. He missed a few games after he was hit by a cab, and a Boston sportswriter named the driver as the man who did the most for Boston sports in 1943.

Casey had a young Warren Spahn at the time, and had Spahn at the end of each man's career with the 1965 Mets. Spahn said, "I'm the only man who played for Casey both before and after he was a genius." And no matter what kind of genius he was, he could do nothing with the early Metropolitans, except promote them and make them lovable losers: "Come and see my Amazin' Mets! I been in this game 100 years, but they've shown me ways to lose I never knew existed before!"

But while he brought fans to the Mets, he brought championships to the fans the Yankees already had. They were in a transition when he arrived in 1949, with the stars that McCarthy managed starting to age -- and some of them, such as Joe DiMaggio, Tommy Henrich and Phil Rizzuto, didn't exactly like him or his managing style.

But he got his own guys in: Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, the aforementioned Billy Martin, and, of course, Mickey Mantle. Remembering McGraw's platoon style, lefty hitters against righty pitchers and vice versa, he had guys who were starting half the time and pissed off at him the other half, so they were always trying to prove him wrong by playing great when they did play -- thus proving both sides right.

He managed 12 seasons, won 10 Pennants to tie McGraw's record (and break Mack's American League record), and won 7 World Series to tie McCarthy's record. He won the World Series in 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952 and 1953, making the Yankees the only MLB team to win 5 straight. He won the Pennant in 1955, the Series in 1956, the Pennant in 1957, the Series in 1958, and the Pennant in 1960 before being fired, allegedly due to his age (70, although others have managed that long, and well, including Torre.)

As Newark Star-Ledger columnist Jim Ogle said, "Well, 'the clown' did pretty well. He won 10 Pennants in 12 years, and he made the Yankee legend and mystique grow volumes." More than at any other time in their history, under Huggins, under McCarthy, under Houk, under Martin, even under Torre, these were "the lordly Yankees."

Both the Yankees and the Mets have retired his Number 37. The Yankees gave him a Plaque in Monument Park, and the Mets gave him the equivalent honor by electing him to their team Hall of Fame. The road around Shea Stadium, and now the one around Citi Field, were named Casey Stengel Plaza. And the MTA rail yard between the ballpark and Flushing Meadow-Corona Park is named for him.

Was Casey Stengel the greatest baseball manager ever? The greatest game boss in New York sports history? It is my opinion that he is both of those things. The facts to support this opinion? There is a large body of work full of them. As the man himself would say, "You can look it up."

Once again, I'm going to limit "history" to 1920 on forward, since we have a much more detailed record of what they've done, and it's also the beginning of baseball's Lively Ball Era, the founding year of the NFL (with the Giants having been founded in 1925), and the 1st full decade of the NHL (with the Rangers having been founded in 1926).

This exempts the worst manager in Yankee history, statistically speaking, Harry Wolverton, who managed them for just 1 season, 1912, and went 50-102. Say this for George Steinbrenner: Of all the guys he hired and fired as manager, he didn't allow any of them to stay long enough to do serious damage.

It also exempts, though hardly absolves, Hal Chase, whose fixing of games as Yankee 1st baseman in 1910 led manager George Stallings to tell the owners, "Either he goes, or I go." Since Chase was easily the team's best and most popular player, Stallings was treated like an NBA coach who'd run afoul of the local prima donna player, and sent packing. And Prince Hal was named manager, for the end of 1910 and all of 1911.

Some great players, such as Rogers Hornsby and Lou Boudreau, were a lot better as managers when they had themselves as players. Chase the manager didn't do very well with Chase the player, and was fired, for Wolverton. It would be 1917 before new ownership hired Miller Huggins as the first successful Yankee manager.

Note that these are not necessarily managers (in baseball) or head coaches (in the other sports) who put up losing seasons, but the list also includes those who had presumably good teams that blew it late in the regular season or in the postseason.

Note also that, since they won with the Yankees, Torre and Casey Stengel are excused for their awful performances managing National League teams in New York (both with the Mets, Casey also with the Dodgers).

I'm also limiting this to the 4 major league sports, which means college coaches, the leaders of the WNBA's Liberty and pro soccer's Cosmos, Arrows and MetroStars/Red Bulls are off the hook. (Terry Shea, Craig Littlepage, Mike Jarvis, Pat Coyle, and Juan Carlos Osorio, you can all thank me later.) And expansion-team coaches (such as Casey with the Mets, and those of the early Titans/Jets, Nets, Islanders and Devils) get a free pass, because of the odds being stacked against them.

I could find no Devils coach who lasted long enough to have more than one significant postseason failure without also winning a Stanley Cup, unless you want to count Lou Lamoriello himself, who was a really good coach at Providence College but not at the NHL level.

Although I have said on a number of occasions that Rex Ryan failed as Jet coach, he got them to 2 AFC Championship Games.  And, theoretically, he could turn it around.

Furthermore, let's exempt the 9 current coaches:

* Luis Rojas of the Mets, Joe Judge of the Giants and Lindy Ruff of the Devils are all newly hired, so we have nothing to go on. (Ruff is the only one of these who's ever been a top man anywhere before, and he got the Buffalo Sabres to the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals -- but that was 21 years ago.)

* Mike Miller of the Knicks and Jacque Vaughn of the Nets are still, officially, interim head coaches. "Caretaker managers," as they would say in English soccer. Vaughn might still be head coach of the Nets whenever the 2020-21 NBA season begins, but the Knicks are already publicly looking for a replacement for Miller.

* Adam Gase of the Jets is about to enter his 2nd season, and, given what he had to work with in his 1st season, 7-9 was not bad at all.

* David Quinn of the Rangers and Barry Trotz of the Islanders are each in their 2nd season with their current team, and they had them playing well before the Coronavirus shutdown hit. Both will be in the expanded NHL Playoffs about to begin.

* Aaron Boone of the Yankees has had 2 seasons, and has made the Playoffs both times. He could be doing better, but he's certainly \not doing badly.

So here's the Top 10 -- or the Bottom 10, if you prefer:

10. Allie Sherman, Giants, 1961-68. 57-51-4, .528. Doesn't look like such a bad record, does it? Well, in 1961, he inherited a team that had already been to 3 of the last 5 NFL Championship Games, and had won the title in 1956.

He got them back to the title game in each of his first 3 seasons. He lost the 1961 title game to the Green Bay Packers, 37-0 in the snow at Lambeau Field. He lost the 1962 title game to the Packers, 16-7 on a frozen field at Yankee Stadium. The Packers were 13-1 that season. He lost the 1963 title game to the Chicago Bears, 14-10 on a frozen surface at Wrigley Field, with quarterback Y.A. Tittle injured during the game. Can't fault him for any of those losses.
Then everybody seemed to get old at once in 1964, including Tittle and Frank Gifford playing their final seasons. From 1964 onward, he was 24-43-3 for a .364 percentage, and in 1968, the fans at Yankee Stadium sang, "Goodbye, Allie" to the tune of "Good Night, Ladies," a precursor to "Joe Must Go,""Ray Must Go," and "Fi-re Ko-tite! (Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!)" Still, Allie did get them to those title games, and he faced a better team each time.

Allie was a rare lefthanded quarterback, getting the Philadelphia Eagles to a 2nd place finish in 1944, but he was relegated to backup duty in 1947, and it was Tommy Thompson who, starting that year, got them to 3 straight title games, winning in '48 and '49, neither of which Allie was involved in, because he'd been cut after '47.

Allie's replacement was Alex Webster. He had been a very good player, once the G-Men's all-time leading rusher. But, as coach, he didn't have a whole lot to work with, and ended up going 29-40-1 from 1969 to 1973.

The truth is, no Giant coach has lasted particularly long with a bad record. Bill Arnsparger, hailed as a genius for building the Miami Dolphins'"No-Name Defense" that reached 3 Super Bowls and won 2, replaced Webster as Giant coach from 1974 to 1976, and had the worst record in team history, 7-28. But he had even less to work with by that point, and also had the chaotic stadium situation to deal with.

Ray Handley went 8-8 his 1st season, and 6-10 the next, but he was only there for 2 seasons, not long enough to truly do some damage, so he doesn't get on this list. Nor does the other "Must Go" guy, Joe Walton of the 1983-89 Jets: He got them to the Playoffs twice, despite being in the same division at the same time as the Don Shula & Dan Marino Miami Dolphins and a pretty good New England Patriots team coached by Raymond Berry. It was the rise of Marv Levy's Buffalo Bills that really doomed Walton.

More recent Giant coaches? Ben McAdoo went 13-15 in 2016 and '17, and Pat Shurmur went 9-23 in 2018 and '19. But they were dealing with an aging team and a front office that wasn't really with it. I can't put either of them on this list. And even Jet coaches like Eric "Mangenius" Mangini and Rex Ryan weren't bad enough to make this list. Disappointing, certainly. Bad, no.

9. Phil Watson, Rangers, 1955-59. 119-124-52, .492.  Through the 2020 season, he remains the only man to coach the Rangers at least 4 full seasons with an overall losing record. He did, however, win 2 Stanley Cups as a player, with the 1940 Rangers and the 1944 Montreal Canadiens.

8. John Hynes, Devils, 2015-19. He had a good goalie in Cory Schneider, a Hart Trophy winner in Taylor Hall, a legend in Patrik Elias, and decent players like Travis Zajac, Adam Henrique, Andy Greene, Kyle Palmieri, Jordin Tootoo, Eric Gelinas, Michael Cammalleri, Miles Wood, Sami Vatanen, Brian Boyle...

And he made the Playoffs once in 4 seasons, and left the Devils worse off than when he arrived, going 150-159-45 -- and, since you should really count those 45 overtime and/or shootout losses as losses, that's actually 150-203, for a percentage of .425. Pathetic.
After all the work put in by Lou Lamoriello, Hynes effectively made the Devils a Mickey Mouse operation again.

. Mike Milbury, Islanders, 2 terms between 1995 and 1999. 57-112-24, .358. Perhaps his biggest problem was that, at the time, the Atlantic Division had very strong teams in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, and, sometimes, Madison Square Garden.

Or, perhaps, his biggest problem was Islander ownership not having money to spend on good players. Or, perhaps, his biggest problem was that his general manager was an idiot. Who was his general manager? Mike Milbury.
He was, however, a decent player with the Boston Bruins, reaching the 1977 and '78 Stanley Cup Finals.

6. Isiah Thomas, Knicks, 2006-08. 56-108, .341. Only 2 seasons, so I can't rank him higher. (Or would that be "lower"?) And, let's face it, like Milbury, he had an idiot for a general manager. Of course, like Milbury, his general manager was himself. But, although he was a true all-time great as a player with the Detroit Pistons, as Knick boss, he was an embarrassment, on the basketball court, in civil court, and in the court of public opinion.
It got so bad that Isaiah Thomas, no relation and with a different spelling, got booed at The Garden when he played there for the Sacramento Kings. Like former Islander and Toronto Maple Leaf goalie Felix Potvin, who always heard the "Potvin sucks!" chant from Ranger fans, he must have wondered, "What did I do? I've never done anything to these people!"

The true problem was that, as long as Charles Dolan had a job, James Dolan had a job; as long as James had a job, Isiah the GM had a job; and as long as Isiah the GM had a job, Isiah the coach had a job. Finally, James -- with prodding from Charles, perhaps? -- fired Isiah from both roles.

5. Eddie Donovan, Knicks, 1961-65. 84-194, .302. He was just 43 years old when he left the head coach's post, and never coached another game in the NBA. However, let the record show that, at the time, the NBA's Eastern Division was dominated by Red Auerbach's Boston Celtics and Wilt Chamberlain's Philadelphia Warriors.
Let it also show that Donovan became the team's general manager and, with head coach Red Holzman, built the 1970 and 1973 NBA Champions. So while he's on the list of the Top 10 Worst Coaches, he is also one of the Top 10 Best Executives.

4. Bill Fitch, Nets, 1989-92. 83-163, .337. He won 944 games in NBA regular-season play, which is 8th all-time. He got the Cleveland Cavaliers to their 1st-ever Eastern Conference Finals in 1976, won a World Championship with the Boston Celtics in 1981, and got the Houston Rockets to the Finals in 1986, and if the Celtics didn't have one of the best teams ever that season he might've won another title.

But he also lost 1,106 regular-season games, more than any coach before him, and the last 2 NBA teams who thought he could be trusted were the Nets and the Los Angeles Clippers, the 2 "little brother teams." Only in his last season with the Nets did he get close to .500, 40-42. (Lenny Wilkens now has more losses, but Lenny also once had the most wins, and, like Don Nelson who has surpassed him in that regard, is well over .500.)
3. Willis Reed, Knicks 1977-79 and Nets 1987-89. 82-124, .398. He was a truly great player for the Knicks, but great players often don't make good coaches. Aside from Stephon Marbury, he may be the only man ever to so badly cock up both area NBA franchises.
2. Charlie Dressen, Dodgers, 1951-53. 298-166, .642. A baseball season was 154 games back then, and in each of his 3 seasons, Dressen got the Dodgers to at least a 157th game. And he won 64 percent of his regular-season games. So how could he be so high on this list? Observe:

* 1951: The Dodgers led the National League by 13 games on August 11. They blew it, and faced their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, in a best 2-out-of-3 playoff. We all know how that ended: Bobby Thomson hits one out off Ralph Branca, and "The Giants win the Pennant!"

Dressen had Branca and Carl Erskine in his bullpen. Erskine had a great curve, but Dressen brought in Branca, who had only a fastball, to face Thomson, who couldn't hit anything but a fastball, and who had already homered off Branca in the first game of the playoff. Branca didn't lose that Pennant, Dressen did.

* 1952: The Dodgers won the Pennant, but lost the World Series to the Yankees in 7 games. True, the Dodgers were without their best pitcher, Don Newcombe, who was serving in the Korean War -- but so was the Yankees' best pitcher, Whitey Ford. And Dressen trusted Billy Loes twice, with disastrous results.

* 1953: The Dodgers won 104 games, tying a franchise record that still stands, and ran away with the Pennant.  Again, they lost to the World Series to the Yankees. Dressen still didn't have Newcombe, and the Yankees had Ford back (but then, Ford was serving in '51 and Newcombe hadn't yet been drafted), and Dressen trusted Johnny Podres 2 years too soon in Game 5, where he got rocked, and trusted Erskine too little in Game 6, and pulled him too early and the Yanks clinched.
After the '53 season, Dressen's wife told him to demand a 3-year contract from Dodger owner Walter O'Malley. O'Malley's policy was to give his managers only 1-year contracts, figuring it would motivate them more. Mr. and especially Mrs. Dressen wanted the security. O'Malley wanted the control and the fear factor. He fired Dressen, not for his mismanaging, but for his impudence. O'Malley hired Walter Alston, and 2 years later, the Dodgers finally won it all. (In fact, it was on October 4, 1955, 55 years ago today.)

Still, as my Grandma, an old Dodger fan from Queens would say, "Oh, that Dressen! He was so
stupid!" I tried to tell her Bobby Valentine, who managed the Mets from 1996 to 2002, was dumber. She wouldn't buy it. She was right: Bobby V made his share of mistakes, but never got the chance to make as many big ones as Dressen. (However, if I were making this list for Boston, Bobby V would be on the list, even if he did manage there for only 1 season.)

1. Rich Kotite, Jets, 1995-96. Here we go, the one we cannot top. Or "bottom," as the case may be. Born in Brooklyn, grew up on Staten Island, went to that Borough's Wagner College, played tight end for the Giants from 1967 to 1972, not at all a bad player.  But he did play for 2 guys on this list, Sherman and Webster. And he was an assistant coach under Joe "Must Go" Walton. Were these bad omens?

In 1991 and '92, he got the Philadelphia Eagles into the Playoffs. In 1993, 8-8 wasn't enough to get in. In 1994, he got the Eagles off to a 7-2 start. Then, trailing the Dallas Cowboys by 17 points in the 4th quarter on a soggy afternoon, James Joseph scored a touchdown to pull the Eagles within 24-13. Kotite decided to go for the two-point conversion. Huh? Going for 1 would've gotten them within 10, just a touchdown and a field goal from a tie; going for 2 would've gotten them within 9, but the touchdown they still needed could've been the time to go for 2. The Eagles didn't get it, and lost.

During the post-game press conference, Kotite went the Milli Vanilli route, and blamed it on the rain: "I must have read my chart wrong. It must have gotten wet." You mean you knew it was raining, and didn't have a protective sheet over the chart to keep it dry? How about this: Don't rely on the chart, dumbass! Down by 15, maybe you go for 2; down by 11, no way!

The Eagles lost all their remaining games, finished 7-9, missed the Playoffs, and Kotite was fired. Crap like this is what makes people in Philly go up to cops and say, "Officer, I want to report a crime: The Eagles are killing me!"

On January 4, 1995, a date which lives in infamy, Jets owner Leon Hess announced that he had hired Kotite to be the team's head coach and, effectively, also its GM. Why Kotite? Well, he was a local guy, and a blue-collar guy who could appeal to local fans. But Hess knew that Kotite had led the Eagles to a couple of Playoff berths. Words that Hess should have guessed would outlive him: "I'm 80 years old. I want results now!"

He got results, all right. In 1995, the Jets went 3-13. One of those losses was the 1st win in franchise history for the expansion Carolina Panthers. (While the Panthers did reach the NFC Championship Game the next season, that 1st year, they were only 4-12.)

Mimi dropped 52 points on them; Oakland, 47. They got held to 7 points by New England, 3 points by Atlanta, and in their last 2 games of the season, they got held to 6 points by Houston and shut out at home by New Orleans. They only drew 28,885 for that game. Don't tell me that it was Christmas Eve, and the day after the Giants'"Snowball Bowl": NFL fans will sit through anything. Not once all season did they get a home attendance over 69,000.

In 1996, the Jets had they worst season in the history of Tri-State Area football, 1-15. The only win came in Week 9, October 27, 31-21 away to Arizona. They didn't give up more than 36 points in any game, but gave up at least 31 points in 10 games. They got held to 6 points by the Giants and Denver, and 7 by Indianapolis.

On the one hand, it wasn't as bad as it looked: They only lost to Philadelphia by 1, Buffalo and Miami by 3 each, Jacksonville and New England by 4 each, Indianapolis by 5, and the Giants by 7. On the other hand, that means they had a legitimate chance to go 8-8, and couldn't get the job done.

Two days before the team's '96 finale, GM Kotite fired coach Kotite. The last 2 home games before this, the Jets drew 21,731 and 29,176; knowing that it was his last game, they came out 49,933 strong for the finale.

Owner Hess then hired Bill Parcells, and got much better results, although Hess died before Parcells could get the ultimate result for the Jets, like he did twice for the Giants.

Kotite was just 54 years old when he left Weeb Ewbank Hall, but has never again even been hired as an assistant coach. Anywhere. Not the pros, not college, not even in high school.  However, at age 77, he has been a contributor to various NFL Network broadcasts.

In 2004, in a book titled The Great Philadelphia Sports Debate, co-authors Glen Macnow and Angelo Cataldi, both hosts on Philly's sports-talk radio station WIP, took the question of who was the worst coach in Philadelphia sports history. Macnow said it was Doug Moe, who'd been a good coach with the Denver Nuggets, but was a disaster in his half-season with the 76ers. After Macnow's 2 pages detailing this choice, Cataldi said, "No, the worst coach in Philadelphia sports history was Rich Kotite," and then provided an explanation that any prosecutor would love to have thought of for his closing argument.

Think about this: The worst team in the history of Philadelphia sports was the Quakers, who played one season in the NHL, 1930-31, and finished 4-36-4, for a "winning" percentage of .136 that makes the decades of ineptitude of the Phillies (pre-Charlie Manuel), A's and Eagles look brilliant by comparison. The worst single-season team in that city was the 1972-73 76ers, 9-73, .110.

In his last 39 games as an NFL head coach, with 2 different sets of players, Rich Kotite was 4-35. That's a percentage of .103. In neither case, of the '94 Eagles or the '95 and '96 Jets, could he use the excuse of leading an expansion team, or not having a lot of money to spend. (Eagles owner Jeff Lurie was a Hollywood studio head, Hess was an oilman, both were billionaires, and, besides, the NFL has a salary cap, which means you can't spend like the Yankees or Manchester City.)

Nor were his Eagles and his Jets beset by long-term injuries to multiple key players. Nor was there trouble in the locker rooms: The Jets may have had Keyshawn Johnson in '96, but he wasn't causing trouble at the time. And blaming the media or the fans doesn't change the fact that Kotite put himself in position to get ripped by the media and booed by the fans.

There is no viable excuse to explain it: Rich Kotite is the worst head coach in the sports histories of both Philadelphia and New York.

Tonight, at 7:08 PM, the New York Yankees will play the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park in Washington, District of Columbia.

It will be the 1st time since August 16, 1925 that the Yankees have played a Washington team that had won the World Series the year before. They beat the Washington Senators 3-2 at Griffith Stadium. That was a little short of 95 years ago.

More to the point, this game, and today's slate of games, will be the 1st regular-season Major League Baseball games that count since the Nationals won Game 7 of last year's World Series, beating the Houston Astros, 6-2 at Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas.

That was on October 30, 2019. That was 266 days ago. Almost 9 full months. Three-quarters of a year. A full-term pregnancy. How long has that been?

Surely, the world hasn't changed that much in 266 days, has it?

*

With the COVID-19 epidemic having killed over 144,000 Americans -- equivalent to the 9/11 attacks 48 times over -- one of the jokes going around is that 2020 is only half-over, and, already, we've added several new verses to Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the lead man on our response to the virus, has gone from someone who name was known by very few Americans to perhaps the most trusted person in the country. The Nationals invited him to throw out the ceremonial first ball on Opening Night.

This is a direct slap in the face to Donald Trump. Historically, when the Washington Senators were the team of the Nation's Capital, they invited the President of the United States to throw out the first ball on Opening Day.

It started in 1910, because they knew that, unlike his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, who preferred other sports, William Howard Taft loved baseball. From then until the Senators left after the 1971 season, it was usually the President who did it, though sometimes a substitute (the Vice President or some other official) was sent in his place. In 1984, with Baltimore as the closest MLB city to Washington, Ronald Reagan revived the tradition, and he, both George Bushes, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did it.

But Trump has never been invited to do it. He attended Game 5 of last year's World Series, on what was, to this day, his best day as President, with the news of U.S. Special Forces having killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS.

He had not been asked to throw out the ceremonial first ball. It was Washington-based celebrity chef Jose Andres. Trump took his wife Melania. He did not take Barron, his 13-year-old son who is a known sports fan. The World Series was 2 miles from his house, and he had tickets, and he didn't take his 13-year-old son.

Yeah, sure, it's a school night. I think a note from the President of the United States would carry some weight. Well, it would, if it were any other President.

When a group of veterans was shown on the scoreboard, the sellout crowd of 43,910 cheered them. When the image shifted to Trump, it was about 60-40 boos, and the boos were louder than the cheers. Fans chanted, "Lock him up!" The scoreboard operator had to switch back to the camera on the veterans, and the crowd went back to cheering.

Washington Nationals fans, for this, you, and your team, for beating the cheating Astros in that World Series, you have my thanks forever.

A whopping 10 out of the 30 MLB teams have changed managers. However, 2 did not do so by choice, and 1 did, and then had to do so again, not by choice. The Astros' cheating scandal meant that the Astros had to fire manager A.J. Hinch, and they replaced him with Dusty Baker. The Boston Red Sox had to fire Alex Cora, who was an Astro coach during their 2017 World Championship season, and replaced him with Ron Roenicke.

For merely competitive reasons, the Mets fired Mickey Callaway, and hired Carlos Beltran, who had finished his career with the 2017 Astros. With the scandal growing, Beltran agreed to step aside, and was replaced with Luis Rojas.

Also for competitive reasons, the Philadelphia Phillies fired Gabe Kapler, and replaced him with former Yankee manager Joe Girardi. Bruce Bochy retired as manager of the San Francisco Giants, and they hired Kapler. Joe Maddon left the Chicago Cubs at the end of his contract, and they hired former Cub player David Ross. The Los Angeles Angels fired Brad Ausmus, and hired Maddon.

Ned Yost retired as manager of the Kansas City Royals, and they hired former St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Matheny. The San Diego Padres fired Andy Green, and hired Rangers coach Jayce Tingler. And the Pittsburgh Pirates fired Clint Hurdle, and hired Minnesota Twins coach Derek Shelton.

The only new arena that has opened since is the Chase Center in San Francisco, the new home of the NBA's Golden State Warriors. The Texas Rangers were supposed to open Globe Life Field in Arlington, their replacement for a 26-year-old ballpark that had replaced a 29-year-old ballpark. That opening, as far as fans are concerned, will likely have to wait until April 2021 -- if then.

Major League Soccer debuted Inter Miami CF, owned by David Beckham, but they only played 3 games before the shutdown. With the "MLS Is Back Tournament" underway, they've now played 5 games, and lost them all. Beckham had played for Manchester United, Real Madrid and the Los Angeles Galaxy. Not so easy when you have to pay the referees out of your own pocket, is it, Becks?

The Yankees signed Gerrit Cole, a big reason why the Astros won 2 Pennants in 3 years. The Red Sox refused to sign Mookie Betts to a contract extension, and traded him to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who, yesterday, extended his contract. For a while, it looked like Dodger fans' dream of seeing Betts play for them would never happen, as his contract would end at the end of 2020 whether there was a season or not. Now, it is Sox fans' dream of getting Betts back for 2021 that appear to be dashed.

In the New York Tri-State Area, the Giants, the Knicks, the Brooklyn Nets and the New Jersey Devils have all changed head coaches. Except for the Nets, each of those has also changed general managers.

The Kansas City Chiefs won their 1st Super Bowl in 50 years, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers won their 1st Grey Cup in 29 years, the Seattle Sounders won their 2nd MLS Cup, the Raleigh-area-based North Carolina Courage won the NWSL title. Liverpool FC won their 1st title in the top flight of English soccer in 30 years, while Arsenal and Chelsea advanced to the FA Cup Final.

The NCAA awarded its football National Championship to Louisiana State University (LSU), but, with the COVID-19 shutdown happening as Conference Tournaments got underway, canceled its Tournaments for both men's and women's basketball.

Anthony Joshua took the IBF Heavyweight Championship of the World back from Andy Ruiz Jr., and Tyson Fury took the WBC edition from Deontay Wilder. The WBA version is currently held by Mahmoud Charr, but he hasn't fought in 3 years. He should have been stripped of it by now, for failing to defend it.

The Washington Redskins agreed to change their name, effective with the 2021 season. The Edmonton Eskimos changed their name immediately, taking the interim name of Edmonton Football Team. Neither team has selected a permanent new name yet. The Cleveland Indians are also considering changing their name.

Abiy Ahmed has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts in settling the border dispute between his native Ethopia and Eritrea. Boris Johnson increased his majority and remained Prime Minister of Britain, while Justin Trudeau saw his reduced, but kept enough to remain Prime Minster of Canada. Benjamin Netanyahu faced 2 inconclusive elections, and forged a coalition government that will allow him to remain in power until November 17, 2021, when he hands the office over to Opposition Leader Benny Gantz. But Netanyahu was also indicted on corruption charges, and may be gone sooner than that, anyway.

Major films in theaters when we last had baseball included some reboots of classic stories: Joker, Dolemite Is My Name, The Addams Family, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and The King, starring Timothee Chalamet as King Henry V of England. There was also a sequel to the TV show Breaking Bad, titled El Camino; the sequel Zombieland: Double Tap; and Jojo Rabbit, which a boy in World War II Germany has Adolf Hitler -- as Germans then perceived him to be -- as an "imaginary friend."

Two days after that World Series ended saw the releases of Terminator: Dark Fate, Motherless Brooklyn, and The Irishman, described by one reviewer as "Martin Scorcese has made The Avengers of Mob movies."

Since we last had baseball, The CW Network brought its superhero shows together for the 5-part crossover epic Crisis On Infinite Earths, saw Ruby Rose leave as the title character of Batwoman after just 1 season, and debuted the "Earth-2" superhero show Stargirl.

We've also seen the debuts of the Star Wars series The Mandalorian, the sequel series Star Trek: Picard and The L Word: Generation Q, the companion series FBI: Most Wanted, a series version of High Fidelity, a show based on the video game The Witcher, and a reboot of Perry Mason, set at the beginning of the original novels, in 1932, with Mason, played by Matthew Rhys, then a private investigator, not yet a crusading lawyer.

The Number 1 song in America when we last had baseball was "Truth Hurts" by Melissa Viviane Jefferson, a.k.a. Lizzo. In between, "All I Want for Christmas" by Mariah Carey set a record, reaching Number 1 25 years after it was first released.

And, since Game 7 of the 2019 World Series, we have seen, from COVID-19 and other causes, the deaths of many people we cared about, including, but not limited to, the following:

* From Sports: Harrison Dillard, Peter Snell, Martin Peters, David Stern, Hans Tilkowski, Rob Rensenbrink, Kobe Bryant, Harry Gregg, Éva Székely, Henri Richard, Dana Zátopková, Peter Bonetti, Stirling Moss, Norman Hunter, Trevor Cherry, Jerry Sloan, Bobby Morrow, Wes Unseld, Pete Rademacher, Tony Dunne, Mario Corso, Jack Charlton and Wim Surrbier. 

* From Acting: Michael J. Pollard, Shelley Morrison, D.C. Fontana, René Auberjonois, Caroll Spinney, Danny Aiello, Claudine Auger, Sue Lyon, Edd Byrnes, Buck Henry, Terry Jones, Kirk Douglas, Orson Bean, Robert Conrad, Zoe Caldwell, Diana "Baby Peggy" Cary, James Lipton, Max von Sydow, Stuart Whitman, Honor Blackman, Shirley Douglas, Brian Dennehy, Jerry Stiller, Fred Willard, Ian Holm, Carl Reiner, Naya Rivera and Kelly Preston; and directors Lynn Shelton and Joel Schumacher. 

* From Music: Allee Willis, Jerry Herman, Marie Fredriksson, Neal Peart, Andy Gill, McCoy Tyner, Kenny Rogers, Bill Withers, John Prine, Millie Small, Little Richard, Betty Wright, Jimmy Cobb, Vera Lynn, Johnny Mandel, Charlie Daniels and Ennio Morricone.

* From Politics and Public Service: Paul Volcker, Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, Hosni Mubarak, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Betty Williams, Jean Kennedy Smith and John Lewis.

* From Other Fields: Ram Dass, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Jim Lehrer, Mary Higgins Clark, Clive Cussler, Katharine Johnson, Freeman Dyson, Jack Welch, Alfred Worden, Terrence McNally, Margaret Burbidge, Michael McClure, Roy Horn, Astrid Kirchherr, Larry Kramer, Dennis O'Neil, Hugh Downs and Grant Imahara.

October 30, 2019. A Major League Baseball game that counted was played.

July 23, 2020. 266 days later. They count again.

You may not be able to Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and you can't put me in, Coach, I am by no means ready to play today. But it's still A Beautiful Day for a Ballgame.

Finally: Baseball is back. It was Opening Day at last. Or Opening Night. And even that got cut short, for reasons that no one in the stadium could control.

But it's results that count.

Before the game between the New York Yankees and the defending World Champion Washington Nationals at Nationals Park in Washington last night, both teams took a knee, in recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement. And, instead of the usual lining up on the baselines for player introductions on Opening Day, they held a black tapestry, again in solidarity with BLM. This was before, not during, the playing of the National Anthem.

There are currently 2 BLM signs at Nats Park, which is just 3 miles from the White House. A BLM logo was also drawn on the pitcher's mound.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the fight against COVID-19, threw out the ceremonial first ball. It was an awful pitch, way off to his left. True, he's 79 years old, and he's been busy. But he's from Brooklyn. Baseball should be in his blood.

On the other hand, we're not paying Fauci to play baseball, and we're not paying Giancarlo Stanton to find a vaccine.

What we are paying Stanton to do is get hits with men on base. If he can do that, as he has done seemingly so rarely in his 1st 2 seasons with the Yankees, then the rest of baseball is in trouble.

With 1 out in the top of the 1st, Aaron Judge hit a double. And then Stanton hit a tremendous blast to left-center, 459 feet from home plate. Already, the Yankees were up 2-0.

Gerrit Cole made his Yankee debut. He allowed a home run to Adam Eaton, but that was the only hit he allowed. He struck out 5 and walked 1.

The Yankees got to Max Scherzer again in the 3rd, with Judge doubling home Tyler Wade. Then they loaded the bases in the top of the 5th, and Stanton singled home a run.

There were 5 innings completed, making it official if there was inclement weather. Sure enough, in the top of the 6th, the umpires called for the tarpaulin. They waited about an hour before calling, it, and, with the weather reporters not encouraging, called it.

It must be weird for John Sterling to be on the radio and get the word. He might be like, "Well, they just called it, because of the weather. So, ballgame over, Yankees win. The-e-e-e Yankees win."

Yankees 4, Nationals 1. WP: Cole (1-0). No save. LP: Scherzer (0-1).

The teams will take today off, and then play again on Saturday night at 7:15, with James Paxton starting for the Bronx Bombers, and Stephen Strasburg for the... uh... District Destroyers. They go again on Sunday afternoon at 1:00. Patrick Corbin starts for Washington, and this is where the Yankees had hoped to start Masahiro Tanaka, but, due to that line shot off his head a few days ago, they decided to scratch him from his 1st start of the season. So Sunday's starter is undecided at press time.

The Mets open at home this afternoon, at 4:00, against the Atlanta Braves. In the other direction, the Phillies open at home tonight, at 7:00, against the Miami Marlins.

There are 55 players on an NFL team roster. There are 32 teams. That's 1,760 players. The COVID-19 death rate in America is 3.75 percent.

Imagine. It's 2040. It's been 20 years since the pandemic. At the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, an official memorial is dedicated to the 66 players who died from it.

There were 131 players selected to the Pro Bowl at the end of last season. At that rate, 5 Pro Bowlers will have died from it. It could be 3 players who might make the Hall of Fame anyway.

Because the NFL remains as tone-deaf as ever, the unveiling of the memorial is done by the Commissioner, Jared Kushner, who bribed the team owners into selecting him.

*

This past Wednesday, the NFL mandated that all fans coming into games wear masks. The Giants and Jets went a step further: In line with Governor Phil Murphy keeping restrictions on large gatherings in New Jersey, they won't let any fans into their respective home games at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford.

Somebody once told me that, with the TV rights and the merchandising, the NFL could play all 16 games a week behind closed doors, and still make a profit for that week.

It may come to that.

None of the major sports played in North America has as much physical contact as football. No sport is sweatier. No sport gives the Coronavirus a greater chance of being spread.

The NFL is considering special helmets, with faceguards, as shown in the sample Baltimore Ravens helmet shown above, to better protect against the virus.

Will it work? I don't know. Several people in sports have caught it. Nearly all have recovered. But all it takes is one death to make us wonder what else we could have done, short of canceling the season.

Given how much damage football does to the human body, even without COVID-19, maybe canceling one season wouldn't be the worst of ideas.

Exhibition games may end up being canceled outright. For now, the regular season starts on Thursday night, September 10, with the defending champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, hosting the Houston Texans at Arrowhead Stadium. That gives the current Commissioner, Roger Goodell, 47 days -- a little under 7 weeks -- to make the big decision.

We shall see.

*

Each of the following is tentative, and we don't yet know which of them will actually have anyone in attendance:

Days until Arsenal play again: 1. They play tomorrow, at 11:00 AM my time, home to Hertfordshire team Watford. Arsenal can finish as high as 8th in the Premier League if they win, as low as 10th if they lose. Either way, it will be the worst finish for the team in 25 years. And all the "real fans who actually go to the games," and "care," told us that anybody could do a better job managing the team than Arsène Wenger. They were wrong. Unai Emery couldn't. Mikel Arteta is trying, and he's gotten Arsenal into the FA Cup Final on the following Saturday, at 12:30 PM my time, at the new Wembley Stadium in London, against Chelsea. As for Watford, they need to win to avoid relegation, so they will be ready for us.

Days until the next Yankees-Red Sox series begins: 20, on Friday, August 14, at Yankee Stadium II.

Days until the New York Red Bulls play again: 21, on Saturday night, August 15, home to the Chicago Fire. They crashed out of the MLS is Back Tournament, which is being held entirely behind closed doors at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, which is part of the Walt Disney World Resort, in the Orlando suburb of Bay Lake, Florida.

Days until the Red Bulls next play a "derby": 29, on Sunday night, August 22, home to New York City FC.

Days until the next North London Derby: Unknown. The 2020-21 Premier League season is now scheduled to begin on Saturday, September 12. That's 49 days, or 7 weeks. But the fixture list can't be set until the League knows who's getting promoted and who's getting relegated, and it will take another couple of weeks to get all the answers. But it's incredibly unlikely that Arsenal will open the season against Tottenham.

Days until Rutgers University plays football again: 63, on Saturday, September 26, at noon.Just 9 weeks. The Big Ten's non-conference schedule has been canceled. So it's only league games this season, presuming they don't cancel it all outright. The 1st game is away to Ohio State. Pray for the Scarlet Knights. And Greg Schiano is back as head coach, but he is no god.

Days until East Brunswick High School plays football again: Unknown, and if they play at all this season, we don't know if fans will be let in. I have heard that it will be on Friday night, October 2, which would be 69 days, almost 10 weeks, but I can't be sure.

Days until the next East Brunswick-Old Bridge football game: See the previous answer.

Days until the next Presidential election, when we can dump the Trump-Pence regime and elect a real Administration: 101, on November 3, 2020. A little over 3 months.

Days until the next Rutgers-Penn State football game: 126, on Saturday, November 28, at home.

Days until the New Jersey Devils play again: Unknown, since the 2020-21 NHL schedule has not yet been released. We do know that the regular season won't start until at least December 1, which is 129 days away, and it is unlikely that the Devils will open the season against a nearby rival.

Days until the New Jersey Devils next play a local rival: See the previous answer.

Days until the U.S. national soccer team plays again: Unknown.

Days until a fully-Democratic-controlled Congress can convene: 162, on January 3, 2021. A little over 5 months.

Days until Liberation Day: 179, at noon on January 20, 2021. Note that this is liberation from the Republican Party, not just from Donald Trump. Having Mike Pence as President wouldn't be better, just differently bad, mixing theocracy with plutocracy, rather than mixing kleptocracy with plutocracy. But it is now under 6 months. You've made it this far. Stay with us.

Days until the Yankees' 2021 Opening Day: 250, on Thursday afternoon, April 1, 2021, home to the Tampa Bay Rays.

Days until Euro 2020 begins, a tournament being held all over Europe instead of in a single host nation: 321, on Friday, June 11, 2021. Under 11 months.

Days until the next Summer Olympics begins in Tokyo, Japan: 363, on July 23, 2021. Under 1 year, or under 12 months.

We all knew the Yankees weren't going to go 162-0 -- or even 60-0. Still, this was a bad loss.

It shouldn't matter that we were playing away to the defending World Champions. We should do better than this.

Instead, last night, the Yankees made their fans suffer -- not from COVID-19, but from ENNUI-20. I hate losing, but, worse, is not even putting up the effort.

James Paxton started, and didn't even get an out in the 2nd inning, allowing 3 runs before Aaron Boone pulled him. Had he gone the "Chad Green and a cast of thousands" route used too often last season, it wouldn't have been any worse. Mike King came in, and he had no answer, either. Jonathan Holder and David Hale didn't allow any runs, and Ben Heller and Luis Avilan only allowed 1 run each. But the damage was done.

The Yankees didn't get the job done with the bats, either. DJ LeMahieu drove in a run in the 3rd inning, and Giancarlo Stanton -- after taking a knee, along with Aaron Hicks, during the playing of the National Anthem -- hit a tremendous blast to left-center in the 4th, to close it to within 3-2. So, despite no one being on base, that was a clutch hit for him.

(It was also, it appears, the longest home run in the 13-season history of Nationals Park. Officially, the longest was hit by Domingo Santana, then of the Milwaukee Brewers, in 2017, 476 feet.)

But that was it. After the 4th inning, when it still could have made a difference, the Yankees got nothing going. Nationals 9, Yankees 2. WP: Tanner Rainey (1-0). No save. LP: Paxton (0-1).

The series concludes this afternoon. Jonathan Loiasiga starts against Patrick Corbin. Come on you Bombers! Fight for it this time!