The Yankees played a 3-game series against the Orioles in Baltimore this weekend, and a good time was not had by all.

On Friday night, the Yankees hit 3 home runs: Carlos Beltran (his 13th of the season), Alex Rodriguez (his 7th) and Austin Romine (his 2nd).

It wasn't enough: Nathan Eovaldi did not pitch well, Kirby Yates didn't, either, and Dellin Betances finished the bad pitching job in the 7th.

Orioles 6, Yankees 5. WP: Mychal Givens (5-0). SV: Zach Britton (16). LP: Betances (2-3).

*

On Saturday night, they still didn't get good pitching, but, at first, it looked like they got enough hitting to cover it. There were no home runs in the Baltimore Bandox (not by the Yankees, anyway), but A-Rod and Starlin Castro each got 3 hits, while Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner each got 2. A 4-run 5th inning was the key to victory, or so it seemed. It was 7-0 Yankees going into the bottom of the 7th.

For once, though, Joe Girardi made the opposite of his usual mistake: He left the starting pitcher in too long. Ivan Nova began to fall apart in the 7th, and Nick Goody, brought in to face one batter, didn't get him out. When is Girardi going to realize that this tactic is stupid?

Andrew Miller got all 3 outs in the 7th (since Girardi didn't want to use Betances again), and all 3 in the 8th. Aroldis Chapman finished the win off.

Yankees 8, Orioles 6. WP: Nova (4-3). SV: Chapman (now a perfect 9-for-9 in save opportunities). LP: Tyler Wilson (2-5).

*

Sunday afternoon featured a tense pitching duel between CC Sabathia and Kevin Gausman. With 1 out in the top of the 3rd, Ellsbury singled, advanced to 2nd on a wild pitch, and was singled home by A-Rod.

CC kept that 1-0 lead through the 5th. Goody, surprisingly, pitched a perfect 6th. In the top of the 7th, the Yankees had men on 1st & 2nd with 1 out, 2nd & 3rd with 2 out, but didn't score. That would prove to be big.

Girardi brought Betances on to pitch the bottom of the 7th. Why he didn't let CC pitch the 6th, I'll never know, but he blew this one, too. Betances ran into trouble, but got out of it. Still 1-0 Yankees, a most unlikely score at Camden Yards.

Then, in the bottom of the 8th, Girardi left Betances in. Why not bring in Miller? Because he'd pitched Miller for 2 innings 19 hours before. Betances gave up a walk to Mark Trumbo, then a single to Chris Davis. He struck out Nolan Reimold...

And then the rains came. The tarp was put on the field. Those of us old enough to remember 1978 remember Earl Weaver,then managing the Orioles, leaving a waterlogged tarp on long enough to ruin the field and give the Orioles a win over the Yankees.

The delay lasted over an hour and a half. That was no tarp: It was a wet blanket. There was no way Girardi was going to let Betances back out there. But he wasn't going to let Miller take the mound, either. So he sent out his closer, Chapman, to get a 5-out save.

Chapman struck out Jonathan Schoop. But he gave up a single to Francisco Pena, loading the bases. And then Matt Wieters singled to center. And Ellsbury bobbled it. All the runners scored.

Of course, the Yankees went out meekly in the 9th. Orioles 3, Yankees 1. WP: T.J. McFarland (1-1). SV: Britton (17). LP: Betances (2-4), although this is yet another one on Girardi.

*

You can complain all you want about hitters, runners, fielders, starters or relievers not getting the job done. But if Joe Girardi had a clue about handling pitchers (which, as an ex-catcher, he should have), the Yankees would be right up there with the American League leaders.

Instead, 9 weeks into a 26-week MLB season -- more than 1/3rd of the way through -- the Yankees are 26-30, 6 1/2 games behind the 1st-place Orioles, 7 in the loss column.

The Yankees have come home, and begin a series with the Whatever They're Calling Themselves This Season Angels of Anaheim. Here are the projected starting pitching matchups:

* Tonight: Masahiro Tanaka vs. Matt Shoemaker.

* Tomorrow: Michael Pineda vs. former Yankee lefthander David Huff.

* Wednesday: Eovaldi vs. Jered Weaver.

All games are listed as 7:05 PM starts.

Come on you Pinstripes! Snap out of it! And, while you're at it...

The Yankees started a home series last night, against the...

The joke isn't all that funny anymore: While the name remains stupid, they've kept it since 2004.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Masahiro Tanaka fell behind 2-0 after 2 innings, but because he hadn't yet thrown 100 pitches, Joe Girardi let him pitch 7 full innings: 2 runs, 6 hits, 2 walks.

But through 6 innings, the Yankees only had 4 baserunners. It looked like it was going to be one of those games.

Then, in the 7th, the Yankees got Tanaka off the hook. As John Sterling would say, Brian McCann and Starlin Castro went back-to-back-and-a-belly-to-belly. For each, it was his 8th home run of the season. Tie game.

Andrew Miller came in and pitched a perfect top of the 8th. In the bottom of the 8th, with 1 out, Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner hit back-to-back singles. That finally knocked Matt Shoemaker out of the box, as Mike Scioscia replaced him with Jose Alvarez. Carlos Beltran crushed his 2nd pitch into the right field stands, for his 14th homer of the season.

Trading deadline, schmading deadline: Beltran's not going anywhere.

Aroldis Chapman bounced back from his blown save in the previous game, and pitched a perfect 9th. Yankees 5, Angels 2. WP: Miller (3-0). SV: Chapman (10). LP: Shoemaker (3-7).

The series continues tonight. Michael Pineda starts against former Yankee David Huff.

Last night, Joe Girardi allowed Michael Pineda to pitch 7 innings, and he allowed just 3 runs on 4 hits and 2 walks.

If Pineda is straightened out, and can stay straightened out, it will be a big boost for the Yankees the rest of the way.

Of course, they need to hit, too. Lately, they've been hitting better. Particularly Carlos Beltran, whom I recently believed to be washed-up. Last night, he hit 15th home run of the season, part of a 3-run 1st inning that gave Pineda a cushion to work with against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The Yankees tacked on runs in the 2nd and the 3rd, the latter on Starlin Castro's 9th homer.

Pineda ran into "onebadinningitis," allowing 3 runs in the 5th. But he shook it off, and the Angels got no closer. The Yankees added another run in the 7th. Dellin Betances pitched a perfect 8th, and Andrew Miller a scoreless 9th. Yankees 6, Angels 3. WP: Pineda (3-6). SV: Miller (7). LP: David Huff (0-1).

The series continues tonight. Nathan Eovaldi starts against Jered Weaver.

*

Days until Euro 2016 kicks off in France: 2, this coming Friday.

Last night, the Yankees needed a spark. They got it, and blew up the house.

Nathan Eovaldi started against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and fell behind in the top of the 1st inning. But in their 1st 4 batters of the game, the Yankees got a double from Jacoby Ellsbury, an RBI double by Brett Gardner, a popup from Carlos Beltran (easily forgivable due to his current hot streak), and an RBI single from Alex Rodriguez. 2-1 Yankees.

The Angels struck back with 2 runs in the 2nd, 1 in the 3rd, and 1 in the 5th. Nasty Nate did not have his good stuff. But Ellsbury led off the bottom of the 3rd with a home run, his 3rd of the season, off Jered Weaver, brother of Jeff F. Weaver (and you know what the F stands for). In the 4th, Chris Parmelee doubled, and came home on a Gardner single. That tied it at 4-4, before the Angels made it 5-4 in the top of the 5th.

Then came the bottom of the 6th, and the aforementioned needed spark. Parmelee took Weaver deep, with his 1st homer as a Yankee, to tie the game. With 1 out, Ellsbury walked, Gardner singled, Beltran doubled, A-Rod grounded out, and Brian McCann singled. 8-5 Yankees.

Didi Gregorius led off the bottom of the 7th with a single, and Parmelee hit his 2nd Yankee homer. Ronald Torreyes reached on an error, and Beltran hit one out, continuing said hot streak with his 16th homer.

Anthony Swarzak, a true journeyman (he even spent part of last season in Korea's baseball league), finished the 6th inning for Eovaldi, became the pitcher of record, and also pitched the 7th, allowing just 1 baserunner. Kirby Yates pitched a scoreless 8th, and Nick Goody allowed a meaningless homer by Mike Trout in the 9th.

Yankees 12, Angels 6. WP: Swarzak (1-0). No save. LP: Weaver (5-5).

The Yankees have now taken the 1st 3 games of the series, and go for the sweep tonight. Ivan Nova starts against Jhoulys Chacín, whom the LAAOA recently acquired from the Atlanta Braves. His name is pronounced "Yo-LEASE Sha-SHEEN." He's Venezuelan, but the pronunciation looks more Gaelic.

I'm hoping to see more of the heavy hitting the Yankees have put up lately.

I'll have a memorial post for Gordie Howe later tonight. My trip guide for next weekend's Yankee visit to Minnesota may have to wait until tomorrow.

Have the Yankees snapped out of it yet? They're currently playing better than they have in 4 years -- since the Summer of 2012, before they stopped hitting, and basically didn't start again until a couple of weeks ago.

Ivan Nova started last night, and over the 1st 6 innings, allowed just 1 run, unearned, on 4 hits, a walk, a hit batsman and an error (hence the unearned run). If he's your Number 1 starting pitcher, you've got problems. But if he's your Number 5 starter, you're fine.

The Yankees trailed 1-0 going into the bottom of the 5th, but took care of that. Didi Gregorius led off the inning with a walk, and advanced to 2nd base on a Chase Headley groundout. Chris Parmelee, the previous night's hero -- who later had to leave last night's game with an injury -- singled Didi home to tie the score. Jacoby Ellsbury singled. Brett Gardner walked. Carlos Beltran continued his hot streak by sending a drive to right field, and it bounced into the stands, scoring Parmelee and Ellsbury to give the Yankees the lead. Alex Rodriguez got Gardner home on a sacrifice fly. And Brian McCann doubled home Beltran. 5-1 Yankees.

Joe Girardi once again let the pitch count make his decision for him, and left Nova in to begin the top of the 7th. At first glance, this appeared to be the right thing to do, as Nova was pitching very well. But he allowed a double and a home run, allowing the Angels to close within 2 runs.

So Girardi went to the bullpen, to the combination that some Yankee Fans were calling "The Three-Headed Monster." But Modell's is already printing up T-shirts with their other nickname, based on the Queens rap trio of the 1980s: "NO RUNS DMC." D, Dellin Betances; M, Andrew Miller; C, Aroldis Chapman. (I think calling them "DMC" is a bit of a stretch, but if it excited the fans and doesn't hurt anybody, who am I, a white guy who grew up in the suburbs when Run-DMC were "Tougher Than Leather," to judge?)

Betances got the last 2 outs in the 7th. A Gardner single, a wild pitch, a balk, and an A-Rod double got the Yankees an insurance run. Miller allowed a leadoff single in the 8th, but got the next 3 batters to end that minor threat. Chapman got the 1st 2 outs in the 9th, allowed a double, and then got a strikeout to end the game.

Yankees 6, Angels 3. A 4-game sweep. WP: Nova (5-3). SV: Chapman (11). LP: Jhoulys Chacin (2-4).

*

The Yankees are now back to .500, at 30-30. They are 6 1/2 games behind the American League Eastern Division-leading Baltimore Orioles, 7 in the loss column. My research going back to the start of Divisional Play in 1969 shows that the teams that finish 2nd in the AL East average 92 wins. That means that, more often than not, 93 wins is enough to win the AL East. Therefore, to get to 93 wins, the Yankees will have to go at least 63-42 the rest of the way -- a winning percentage of .618, a 162-game pace for 100 wins.

I'm not going to doubt it at this point. The Yankees look like they really have turned the corner.

Tonight, the Yankees begin a 3-game home series with the Detroit Tigers. Here are the projected pitching matchups:

* Tonight, 7:05 PM: CC Sabathia vs. former Met Mike Pelfrey.

* Tomorrow, 7:15 PM: Masahiro Tanaka vs. Justin Verlander.

* Sunday, 2:05 PM: Michael Pineda vs. Michael Fulmer. This will be Old-Timers' Day, and the ceremonies will begin at 11:30 AM. There has been no announcement of a new Plaque for Monument Park. Then again, on last year's Old-Timers' Day, they announced they were giving one to Willie Randolph, and surprised that other Number 30, Mel Stottlemyre, with one. So if anything is planned, the Yankee brass isn't telling.

The greatest hockey player who ever lived has died.

No, I don't mean Bobby Orr. Last I heard, he's fine.

And that other guy? Well, he sided with the owners in the 2004-05 lockout, so you won't find a working heart in him. But he's still alive, too.

But today, we lost Mr. Hockey. The greatest of them all. Just 1 week after we lost the greatest of all boxers, Muhammad Ali.

Pelé, take care of yourself.

*

Gordon Howe, no middle name, was born on March 31, 1928 in Floral, Saskatchewan, Canada. The family soon moved to nearby Saskatoon. Gordie quit school to work alongside his father in the construction industry.

At the age of 15, his hockey skills had attracted the attention of the New York Rangers, who invited him to a training camp they were holding in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He impressed them enough that they offered him a "C form," which would have given them his NHL rights. But they wanted to enroll him at a Catholic school in nearby Wilcox, Saskatchewan that was already known for turning out good hockey players. Gordie didn't want to go to that school, and turned the Rangers down.

It would be much more difficult for New Jersey Devils and New York Islanders fans to use the "Rangers suck" chant if Gordie Howe had been the Rangers' big star in the 1950s and '60s. The team was bad for much of that period, but since the Rangers lost to Howe's team in a Finals, that's at least one more Stanley Cup the Rangers would have won. And, admit it: "NINE-teen-FIF-ty!" doesn't sound as strong as "NINE-teen-FOR-ty!" However, Gordie's younger brother Vic Howe, also a right wing, did play for the Rangers: 3 games in 1951, 1 game in 1954, and 29 games in the 1954-55 season.

In 1944, when he was 16, the Detroit Red Wings invited Gordie to their camp in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit. This time, he and his father signed the C form. He was sent to the Galt Red Wings, in what's now the city of Cambridge, Ontario, near Hamilton. Due to a technicality, the Wings had to move him to another farm team, the Omaha Knights -- so Gordie got a taste of the American West well before his famed moved to Houston.

There was another moment at which Gordie Howe could have become a legend for anoher NHL team. Frank Selke noticed another technicality, which showed that Gordie was not properly listed as property of the Red Wings. Selke was then working for the Toronto Maple Leafs, with whom he had helped to build 3 Stanley Cups, and his efforts would result in 4 more. But due to a dispute with Leafs coach and general manager Conn Smythe, Selke soon left, and was hired by the Montreal Canadiens, whom he helped build 6 more Cup winners.

Selke, whose name is now on the trophy given annually to the NHL's best defensive forward, was friends with Wings coach Jack Adams, and let him know about the problem, thus securing Gordie's services for the Wings for a generation. A less principled man might have tried to get Howe to the Leafs... or waited until he was with the Canadiens, and tried to get Howe there.

The Leafs of the late 1940s and early '50s with Howe? That would have been pretty amazing, at least as amazing as what actually happened in Detroit. But a Canadiens team on which a line change meant that Maurice "The Rocket" Richard was replaced on the right wing with Gordie Howe? With Toe Blake, Elmer Lach and Butch Bouchard already on the roster? And, in a few years, Jean Beliveau, Bernie Geoffrion, Dickie Moore, Doug Harvey, Jacques Plante, and the Rocket's brother Henri Richard? That might have been the greatest team in the history of North American sports.

*

Gordie Howe made his NHL debut on October 16, 1946, at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit (like the Chicago Stadium, it was named a "stadium" but was actually an indoor arena), wearing Number 17. He was just 18 years old, but he scored, and against future Hall-of-Famer Walter "Turk" Broda of the Maple Leafs, no less. But the game ended in a 3-3 tie.

Before the next season, the Wings traded Roy Conacher, and Gordie was offered Conacher's Number 9. (Roy was the brother of legendary hockey players Charlie and Lionel Conacher. Charlie was one of the 1st players to be a star while wearing Number 9, as uniform numbers began to be worn in the 1920s.) Gordie was told that, with a single-digit number, he would get a lower berth in the sleeping car of the team's train. So he took it.

Howe, Maurice Richard, Ted "Teeder" Kennedy of the Leafs, and later Andy Bathgate of the Rangers, Bobby Hull of the Chicago Blackhawks, and Johnny Bucyk of the Boston Bruins would make 9 hockey's most iconic uniform number. Indeed, all of the "Original Six" now have the number retired, except for the Leafs, who instead use an "Honoured Number" system, and commemorate Charlie Conacher and Teeder Kennedy with it. Number 9 became so identified with hockey greatness, mainly due to Howe, Richard and Hull in the early days of television, that, when he was a boy, and he wanted to wear 9 on a youth team, and was told it was already being worn, Wayne Gretky asked for Number 99.
Gordie quickly became known for his physicality. The nickname "Elbows" would stick with him through his entire career. The term "Gordie Howe Hat Trick" would come to mean a player scoring a goal, assisting another, and winning a fight, all in the same game. Oddly, Gordie did that only twice in his career, both times in the 1953-54 season.

Gordie played on the right wing with center Sid Abel and left wing Ted Lindsay. With Detroit's auto industry in mind, this forward line became known as the Production Line. From 1949 to 1956, they finished 1st overall in the NHL in 7 straight seasons. (This was before that particular achievement was rewarded with the Presidents' Trophy.) That had never been done before, nor has since, not even by any of the great Montreal teams.

The Wings reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 1948 and 1949, but lost to the Leafs both times. In 1950, Howe led the NHL in scoring (winning the Art Ross Trophy), Abel finished 2nd, and Lindsay finished 3rd. This time, they faced the Leafs in the Semifinals, and won, but not before Howe tried to check Kennedy, and ended up crashing head-first into the boards. He was taken to the hospital, and needed emergency surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. At one point, a newspaper published a story that he had died. The Wings went on to beat the Rangers for the Cup without him. The next season, he recovered well enough to win the scoring title by 20 points.

In 1952, the Wings did something that had never been done before: With 2 rounds of Playoffs, each a best-4-out-of-7, they swept to the Cup in the minimum 8 games, beating first the Wings, then the Canadiens. Pete Cusimano, owner of a local fish market, noted that an octopus has 8 legs, 1 for each necessary win. So he brought an octopus from his store to the Olympia, and threw it onto the ice. This started a rather disgusting tradition that the NHL has tried, without much success, to curb. It has been copied in other cities: Boston with lobster, Edmonton with steak, San Jose with a leopard shark (bigger than most of these, but smaller than most sharks), Nashville with catfish. (Did I mention that the tradition was disgusting?)

At any rate, the Wings completed the 8-game sweep, and Gordie Howe finally got to be on the ice to receive the Stanley Cup with his teammates. Only once more, in the 2-round structure of the Playoffs before the 1967 expansion, would a team go 8-0 in the Playoffs: The 1960 Canadiens.

Abel retired after that 1952 Cup, but Alex Delvecchio was ready to step in at center, and the name "Production Line" continued through 1957, when Lindsay was traded. The Wings lost in the Semifinals in 1953, but beat the Canadiens in the Finals in 1954 and 1955, making it 4 Cups in 6 years. In addition to Howe, Lindsay, Abel and Delvecchio, defensemen Leonard "Red" Kelly and Marcel Pronovost, and goaltender Terry Sawchuk, would all make the Hockey Hall of Fame. They couldn't make it 3 straight in 1956, losing the Finals to the Canadiens, who began a streak of 5 straight Cups.

Richard retired after that 5th straight Cup, and on November 10, 1963, Howe scored the 545th goal of his career, breaking Richard's record. At that point, Richard and Howe were usually considered the 2 greatest players in the game's history. Howe never publicly said he was the best ever, although he didn't exactly refuse the nickname he already had, "Mr. Hockey." Richard, however, understood, saying, "I wasn't the best player. I was the best scorer," and "Gordie could do everything."

When Gordie broke the Rocket's record, he was 35 years old. What nobody yet knew was that a child could have been born in the Wings' home State of Michigan that day, and get his driver's license before Gordie Howe played what turned out to be his last NHL game.

The Wings reached the Finals again in 1961, losing to the Blackhawks; in 1963 and 1964, losing to the Maple Leafs; and in 1966, losing to the Canadiens. They would not get that far again until 1995, largely due to the machinations of Bruce Norris, who had inherited ownership of the team from his father, James E. Norris (for whom the trophy for best NHL defenseman is named). He also inherited his father's stubbornness and his cheapness, but not his sharp mind.

With the expansion of 1967, the schedule was expanded as well. In the 1968-69 season, turning 41, and playing on a "Production Line III" with Delvecchio and former Leafs star Frank Mahovlich, Gordie topped 100 points for the 1st time: 44 goals and 59 assists, for 103 points.
But after the season, Gordie discovered that he was only the team's 3rd-highest-paid player, at $45,000. Norris gave him a raise to $100,000, making him the 1st hockey player to make that much. But Norris fumed: He was one of those sports team owners who couldn't stand to have his authority challenged. To him, players were merely means to an end.

Especially angering this old-school old-boy-networker was the fact that Gordie's agent was his wife, Colleen Howe -- who would eventually be known as "Mrs. Hockey." Norris blamed Colleen for Gordie being out of order enough to demand a raise. (This foreshadowed M. Donald Grant blaming Nancy Seaver for Tom's demand for a raise on the 1977 Mets.) The relationship between Norris and the Howes had begun to be poisoned, and it was all Norris' fault: If he had paid Gordie as if he was the best player in the game, all the trouble afterward could have been avoided.

*

After the 1971 season, his record 25th in the NHL, Gordie was convinced by a nagging wrist injury to retire at age 43. He was given a job in the Wings' front office, but, essentially, he was just a schmoozer, shaking hands with corporate clients, and allowing the Wings to put his magic name on their corporate letterhead.

Stan Musial, when asked what he did in his nice office at the St. Louis Cardinals' Busch Stadium, smiled and said, "I don't know, but they pay me a lot of money for it!" In contrast, Gordie grumbled about not having any actual input in the running of the organization. He wasn't head coach, or assistant coach, or general manager, or chief scout, or anything. In his words, he was "vice president in charge of paper clips."

Before the 1972-73 season, the expansion Islanders offered to make him their 1st head coach. He turned it down. It was probably for the best: The World Hockey Association was launching at the same time, and their Quebec Nordiques offered their head coaching job to Maurice Richard. He took it, and hated it. He lost his 1st game, quit on the spot, was talked into keeping the job until they could find someone else, won his 2nd game, and left anyway, and never coached again. But that's 2 more games than Gordie ever had as a head coach.

Bill Dineen, a teammate of Gordie's on the '54 and '55 Cup winners, was named head coach of the WHA's Houston Aeros. In the 1973 WHA Draft, he took Gordie's sons Mark and Marty. To help the WHA get better publicity -- they'd already gotten Hull onto the Winnipeg Jets, a team essentially named for him (the Golden Jet, although their uniforms were blue), Dineen asked Gordie to come out of retirement. He was willing to get surgery on his troubled wrist, and give it a shot.

Bruce Norris told the Howes that if Gordie quit the Wings' front office, not only would he be blackballed from the NHL, never to work in it again in any capacity, but that Mark and Marty would also be blackballed -- and since they were players just starting out, this would affect them much more. It may not be the biggest dick move in the history of hockey, but it's the best-known dick move in NHL history.

And it backfired. Few decisions in the history of sports have backfired this much. Gordie and Mark -- or Gordie and Marty -- became the 1st father and son teammates in professional hockey history. They played on a line together. Mark and Marty got the traditional rookie hazings, and Gordie did not use his influence to stop it. On the other hand, the sons referred to their father as "Gordie," and even called him that to his face, in their teammates' presence, knowing that if they called him "Dad," they'd never heard the end of it.

Attendance went up all over the WHA, as people wanted to see the Howes. It probably kept league going long enough for a merger with the NHL to be plausible. The Aeros won the AVCO World Trophy as WHA Champions in 1974. And Gordie, age 46, was awarded the Gary Davidson Trophy as Most Valuable Player.
Davidson was the founder of the league. He was also a co-founder of the American Basketball Association and the World Football League. (There would be 4 teams each from the ABA and the WHA that would be admitted to the established leagues. The WFL, on the other hand, totally flopped.)

The next season, the WHA MVP award was renamed the Gordie Howe Trophy. Gordie didn't win it again, but the Aeros again won the AVCO Trophy. They reached the Finals again in 1976, but lost to the Jets.

The 1970s were a thrilling time for performances on the ice, in both leagues. But most hockey teams, in both leagues, were struggling financially. The Aeros needed money badly, and the New England Whalers were one of the few WHA teams that had it. So they bought all 3 Howes. Gordie was still a WHA All-Star.

In the 1979 off-season, the WHA folded, and 4 of its teams were admitted to the NHL. One was the renamed Hartford Whalers. The Wings still held Gordie's NHL rights, meaning that he could not legally play for any NHL team except Detroit. And Bruce Norris still owned the Wings. But, despite being Chairman of the NHL's Board of Governors, Norris was outflanked by a former Wings executive, now President of the NHL, John Ziegler. Gordie was allowed to play in the NHL for Hartford. In that final season, Gordie played all 80 games, scored 15 goals, and helped the Whalers make the Playoffs.

Norris' world had fallen in on him. The Wings had been so bad in Gordie's absence, they'd been nicknamed the Dead Things. And building the Joe Louis Arena to replace the aging Olympia had put a major kink in his finances. Now, he had to watch as his blackballing of Gordie, Mark and Marty Howe fell apart, and they were welcomed back into the NHL, and not for his team.

The 1980 NHL All-Star Game was given to Detroit and its new arena, as kind of a "gold watch" for him, as it was clear he would soon have to sell. (He did so, in 1982, to Mike Ilitch, who still owns the team.) And when Scotty Bowman, coaching the Wales Conference All-Star Team in that game, used his prerogative to fill out the roster with non-starters, he chose 3 legends: Jean Ratelle, Phil Esposito... and the nearly 52-year-old Gordie Howe, who got an ovation from the Detroit crowd that went on and on and on. It was a massive middle finger to Bruce Norris -- not from any member of the Howe family, but from the Detroit fans.
Gordie got an assist, and the Wales Conference team beat the Campbell Conference team. Playing for the Campbell Conference team was 19-year-old Wayne Gretzky of another team that came in from the WHA, the Edmonton Oilers. The previous year, Howe and Gretzky had played together on a WHA All-Star Team that played legendary Soviet club Dinamo Moscow. It was the only time that "Mr. Hockey" and the man who would surpass him as the NHL's all-time leader in goals, assists and points would play together.

After playing professional hockey in 5 different decades, Gordie was offered the chance to make it 6. At the start of the 1997-98 season, the Detroit Vipers, an International Hockey League team playing at the Palace of Auburn Hills (home of the NBA's Detroit Pistons), signed him to a one-day contract, and he played the opening shift of their opening game. He played 45 seconds and didn't touch the puck, and when the line shift came, he received a standing ovation from a sellout crowd, most of which had never seen him play. He was 69 years old.

This came right after the Wings, led by Captain Steve Yzerman, finally won their 1st Stanley Cup in 42 years, since Howe and his Production Line were at their peak. Of Yzerman, then 32 years old, Howe said, "I'm just so dang happy for the kid, it's unbelievable."

The Wings would win again in 1998, 2002 and 2008. Gordie would live to see all of them.

*

In NHL play, Gordie scored 801 goals and 1,049 assists, for 1,850 points. Counting the WHA, he scored 975 goals and 1,383 assists, for 2,358 points. Throw in what he did in the Playoffs, and his totals were 1,071 goals and 1,518 assists, for 2,589 points.

He still holds the records for seasons (26, shared with Chris Chelios, but is all alone with 32 counting the WHA) and games played (1,767 in regular season play, 2,421 counting the WHA and the Playoffs of both leagues). He appeared in 23 NHL All-Star Games and 6 WHA All-Star Games. He was the 1st player to score at least 1,000 goals at the top level, counting the Playoffs, and only Gretzky has joined him.

He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame immediately upon his first retirement, the 3-year waiting period waived. The Detroit Red Wings and the Hartford Whalers retired his Number 9. The Whalers are now the Carolina Hurricanes, but they have continued to consider 9 retired.

He was honored (or, since it's "spelt" that way there, "honoured") by his country, by being awarded the Order of Canada in 1971, and being inducted into the country's Walk of Fame on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in 2000. Statues of him have been dedicated outside the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit (presumably, it will be moved to the new Little Caesar's Arena when it opens) and the SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon. He lived long enough to know that a new bridge over the Detroit River, linking Detroit with Windsor, will be named the Gordie Howe Bridge.

In 1998, in honor of their 50th Anniversary, The Hockey News named their 100 Greatest Hockey Players. Gordie Howe came in at Number 3, behind Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr. Orr said, however, that Gordie was the best.

Who was really the greatest hockey player of all time? Sadly, injuries prevented Orr from reaching that status. He ended up playing only 12 seasons, enough games to add up to 8 full seasons. And he is still widely regarded as the best defenseman ever.

So it comes down to Howe and Gretzky. Yes, Gretzky blew away Howe, Maurice Richard, and everybody else in terms of offensive production. Yes, he had more assists than anyone else has had points. But he didn't play defense. He didn't have to. But he didn't. Howe did.

To put it another way: In 1999, Gretzky's recurring back injury led him to retire, at the age of 38. When he was 38, in 1966, Howe was still the best defensive forward in the NHL. In 1969, at 41, he had 103 points, in a 12-team league with a 76-game schedule; Gretzky's last time coming close to that was at age 36, in a 26-team league with an 82-game schedule.

Wayne Gretzky was, at peak, the best hockey player ever: He rewrote the offensive records in his sport the way Babe Ruth and Wilt Chamberlain did for theirs. But the greatest hockey player for a career was Gordie Howe. It's not just the longevity: He was 1 of the 3 best players in the NHL for 20 years.

In 2013, Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story aired on CBC and the Hallmark Channel. It focuses on a specific part of Howe's story: The comeback with his sons in the WHA and the feud with Bruce Norris. Most of the film takes place in that landmark 1973-74 season, but it ends with his standing ovation at the 1980 All-Star Game in Detroit. Fittingly, the actor who played Norris is not shown at that moment. Michael Shanks, of the Stargate franchise and now the Canadian medical drama series Saving Hope, played Howe.

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As 2013 turned to 2014, Gordie appeared at the NHL Winter Classic between Detroit and Toronto, at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the warmup act, an alumni game at Comerica Park in downtown Detroit. Shortly thereafter, he suffered a devastating stroke, and never truly recovered.

Gordie Howe died today, June 10, 2016, at the age of 88, in Toledo, Ohio, at the home of his son Murray Howe, a radiologist.

Since his wife Colleen, who managed the family's many enterprises, fell victim to a long-term illness before dying in 2009, Gordie had been living with their 4 children on a rotating basis: Mark, Marty, Murray, and daughter Cathy in Lubbock, Texas.

Both Mark Howe and Marty Howe were moved to defense after their family line was broken up by their father's retirement. Marty remained with the Whalers until 1985. He made a brief, 3-game comeback with the minor-league Flint Bulldogs in 1993, and is now a house designer and builder.

Mark would be traded by the Whalers to the Philadelphia Flyers in 1982, helping them reach the Stanley Cup Finals in 1985 and 1987. They sent him back home to Detroit in 1992, and he closed his playing career by helping the Wings reach the Finals in 1995, their 1st trip there in 29 years. But they were swept by the New Jersey Devils.

He was a 5-time NHL All-Star, and holds the league record for most shorthanded goals by a defenseman: 28. He joined his father in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and the Flyers have retired his Number 2 -- their only retired number for a player not on their back-to-back Cup winners of 1974 and 1975.

Gordie and Mark joined Bobby and Brett Hull as the only father-son pair to both have their numbers retired in North American sports. (Although no Baltimore Oriole has worn the 7 of Cal Ripken Sr. since his death, it is not officially retired, as is the 8 of Cal Ripken Jr. Despite all the other fine father-son combos in professional sports, this is the closest that any of them comes to this achievement of the Howes and the Hulls.)

With Gordie's death, there are now 5 surviving players from the 1950 Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings, 66 years later: Ted Lindsay, Red Kelly, Marty Pavelich, Doug McKay, and Pete Babando, whose overtime goal in Game 7 beat the New York Rangers. (Pavelich appears not to be related to 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey hero Mark Pavelich.)

From the 1952 Champion Wings, 7 players are still alive: Lindsay, Kelly, Pavelich, Glenn Hall, Alex Delvecchio, Vic Stasiuk and Benny Woit. (Hall would soon be displaced by Terry Sawchuk, and become better known for  playing for the Chicago Blackhawks.)

From the 1954 Champion Wings, 10 players are still alive: Lindsay, Kelly, Pavelich, Delvecchio, Stasiuk, Woit, Bill Dineen, Gilles Dube, Jim Hay and Dave Gatherum.

From the 1955 Champion Wings, 9 players are still alive: All of the surviving '54 Wings except Gatherum, who was Sawchuk's backup in goal and never played in the NHL again after '54.

I'm taking a step away from my usual shtick of blogging about sports to present you with a piece on one of my favorite movies of all time. This piece is only tangentially about sports, in that one character wears a hockey jersey through much of the film, and one scene takes place at a big-league ballpark.

Also, if you haven't seen the movie: SPOILER ALERT. In order for this article to make any damn sense, I have to reveal not just pertinent details, but the ending.

June 11, 1986, 30 years ago today: The film Ferris Bueller's Day Off premiered. In spite of my post, honoring the film's 25th Anniversary, showing that Ferris could really be a douche, it remains one of my top 5 favorite films of all time, and the only film I have ever, literally, laughed all the way home from seeing.

Directed by John Hughes, the voice of a generation that wasn't his (but he was between them and their parents, so "they had a common enemy"), it starred Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara and Alan Ruck as teenagers in the Chicago suburbs: The title character, his girlfriend Sloane Peterson, and his best friend Cameron Frye, respectively.

Ferris fakes being sick so he can stay home from school, floats a phony story about Sloane's grandmother dying so she can get out, and Cameron is actually sick (though he shows few signs of it once they actually get to the big city).

Ferris swipes a 1961 Ferrari convertible, belonging to Cameron's father, and off they go for a day on the town: Going to the top of the Sears Tower; watching the frenzied trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange; having lunch at a snooty, snotty, very expensive French restaurant; taking in a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field; staring at paintings at the Chicago Museum of Art; and crashing the city's Von Steuben Day Parade.

There are two subplots: Their high school's principal, Ed Rooney (played by Jeffrey Jones), angry that Ferris keeps cutting school, and his sister, Jeannie (played by Jennifer Grey), angry that he's the favored child, are both determined to bust him.

In the end, he is not busted. Not because he doesn't get caught: He actually does, by Rooney. But he also gets saved, as Jeannie has a change of heart (and, really, don't we all have a change of heart after an intimate conversation with an admittedly-on-drugs Charlie Sheen?), and she pretends to be his mother, and tells Rooney, yes, my boy really was sick.
Ferris (and, in some cases, Sloane and Cam) gets out of numerous close calls, and even gets the entire town to take up the cause of his fake illness: The words "SAVE FERRIS" appear everywhere, from graffiti to the town's water tower to the famous Wrigley Field marquee. (A school sign and a policeman's badge confirm that the film is set in the same fictional town of Hughes' previous film, The Breakfast Club: Shermer, Illinois, based on Hughes' hometown, the real-life northern suburb of Northbrook.)

How does Ferris do all this stuff? Even more perplexing, how does he get away with it all?

He's a high school senior. That makes him 18 years old -- maybe 17 at the lowest. (Never mind that Broderick was 23 when it was filmed in September 1985.) Teenagers don't always think straight. Hell, grownups don't always think straight. Think of all the mistakes you made in high school, and even in college. I made a bunch of mistakes in my teenage years. Most ended up not mattering much in the short term, let alone in the long run. There were a couple that could have gone horribly wrong, but I got lucky and they didn't. But there were some that were doozies, and I wish I could take them back.

And it's not like Ferris has to be super-resourceful because he was a kid growing up in a hardscrabble neighborhood in the city -- God forbid, in the now-demolished, then-nightmarish Cabrini-Green housing project. Take a look at the music posters on his wall: They're not rappers like Run-DMC (and this was before N.W.A. and the acts they influenced anyway), they're British New Wave acts like the Pretenders and Simple Minds (whose lead singers, Chrissie Hynde and Jim Kerr, were then married to each other, and of course Simple Minds did "Don't You (Forget About Me)," the theme song to The Breakfast Club). Not even British punk acts like the Sex Pistols or the Clash, but much less aggressive New Wavers.

Ferris was a classic suburban rich kid. Both of his parents had high-paying jobs, either of which could have kept things comfortable without the other's income. His biggest concern was, "How can I stop Rooney from preventing me from graduating on time?" Not, "How can I keep from getting shot" or, "How can I keep my sister from getting involved with that horny-as-hell drug dealer?" (Ironic, since she did end up getting caught kissing Charlie Sheen's character. Yeah, that, their mother sees.) So there's not any reason for him to have to be a teenage Angus MacGyver or Jason Bourne. He's more of a teenage Richard Castle: "In my dreams? Look at my life: My dreams come true."

I'd like to think Ithat 'm pretty resourceful. I thought I was pretty resourceful when I was in high school. Certainly, my parents weren't as rich as the Buellers, although we certainly weren't poor.
If, in the waning days of my senior year, I had tried all the shit that Ferris tried, you know what would have happened?

First of all, I would have had to bail in the first stages of planning it all, because, in the spring of 1987, my computer was a Commodore 64. I don't know what kind of computer Ferris was using to pull some of the stunts he pulled, but Broderick must've stolen it from the set of WarGames: In that film, 3 years earlier, he hacked into NORAD, and, more benignly, hacked into his school's computer and changed his grade in a course from an F to a C, and changed that of Ally Sheedy (who was in Breakfast Club) from an F to an A. In FBDO, he hacks into Shermer High's computer and changes his number of unexcused absences from "NINE TIMES!" to two. As far as I know, that couldn't be done on a C64.

But suppose that it could. Then, could I have done the Day Off? Gotten myself, my girlfriend and my best friend out of school, gone into the nearest big city (New York), and done the equivalents (the Empire State Building or the World Trade Center, the New York Stock Exchange, the Russian Tea Room, Yankee Stadium, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a parade?

Well, no, I couldn't have done it. A, I didn't have a girlfriend at the time. Girls liked me, until they found out I was interested in them, and suddenly they all either needed to wash their hair or were lesbians for 2 minutes. B, I didn't have a best friend -- certainly not one I could trust to keep quiet with the plan and not blow it during the execution thereof. And forget the fact that New York's most significant spring parade is on St. Patrick's Day, before baseball starts: That's a minor issue in comparison to these others.

But suppose I did have the computer, the girlfriend, the best friend, and the car. (I did have a car, but, let's face it, a 1979 Mercury Zephyr is not a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California.) And I did have the big city nearby, with all that it has to offer. Could I have done it?

No! For one very simple reason: My family. You see, unlike Ferris' parents, my parents were not blithering idiots, too stupid to have the kind of corporate jobs the Buellers appear to have in the film. My mother is very attentive to details, such as seeing little things in her cabinets and plants that are not quite right, and spotting expiration dates and other important notes on coupons. I think she would have seen through my ruse in about five seconds.

(Well, maybe not: I asked her about this a while back, and she pointed out that I generally didn't get sick back then, nor pretended to be. So she might've thought, "He doesn't get sick often, so maybe this is for real." Maybe she would have bought it. On the other hand, as Ferris pointed out, "You have a nervous mother, you could get taken to the doctor's office, and that's worse than school." He was so right. My father, who has since died, was in the room when I asked her about this, and although he was a smart man with two science degrees from the school now known as NJIT, he looked at me like he had no idea of what I was talking about.)

But it's not just Ferris' parents: Every adult in the movie is an idiot. (This is hardly an original thought: Nearly everyone who discusses the movie points it out.) If Rooney were smart, the first thing he would have done upon hearing that Sloane was being taken out of school due to a grandmother who's died was look in his records to see if, in fact, she had a living grandmother at last check. He would have done that before asking if Sloane had a boyfriend who might be trying to pull something. The first place he would have gone to check out Ferris' story about being sick would have been the house. Okay, the Rottweiler was there, but he did find a way to subdue the dog; surely, somewhere in or around the house, there was a way to do it sooner.

Grace, his secretary (Edie McClurg), is a little smarter (witty enough to tell Jeanie that Rooney being "out on personal business" means, "It's personal, and it's none of your business"), but if she's the sharpest knife in Shermer High's drawer, then that school is in trouble. The history teacher (Ben Stein) is a bad teacher, because he speaks in a style that is called -- Anybody? Anybody? -- "monotone." And the English teacher, although perhaps not dumb, has a speaking style that is even weirder: "In... what... way... does the author's use of... prison... symbolize... "

Okay, there are some smart adults. The Avery Schreiber-like guy at the lunch counter at the bowling alley where Rooney looks for Ferris tells Rooney the score of the ballgame is "Nothing-nothing," and when Rooney asks, "Who's winning?" he sneers, "The Bears." And, like Ferris himself, the skeevy-looking parking-deck attendant isn't fool enough to let an opportunity to drive a '61 Ferrari around the City of Big Shoulders go to waste.

But the maître d' at Chez Quis? The people running the parade? The 911 operator that Jeannie calls about the intruder (who she doesn't realize, at first, is Rooney)? The cops who then arrest her instead, for making what they think is a crank call to 911? Every adult who buys into the SAVE FERRIS scam? Cameron's father -- Who leaves the keys to a very rare, very expensive antique sports car in the ignition? These people are morons.

FBDO only works of one of two things is true:

1. The film takes place in an alternate timeline where, as opposed to in real life, the world's first controlled nuclear chain reaction, which happened at the University of Chicago in 1942, wasn't as controlled as everyone thought, and 99 percent of the people living and/or born in the "Chicagoland" area over the next quarter-century or so (leaving 1 percent to be smart, like Ferris and Sloane, Cam not so much), ended up stupid enough to fall for all of Ferris' schemes. Or something similar happened to produce such widespread stupidity. Or...

2. It's all just an elaborate fantasy.

"Duh," you're thinking. "Of course it's a fantasy, Mike. It's John Hughes' fantasy. You know, the man who wrote the screenplay and directed the film."

Yes, I know. In a fantasy film, including science fiction, some suspension of disbelief is required. None of us have super-strength, the ability to fly, or the ability to conduct magic. Our technology goes to a certain point, and no farther -- farther than it did in 1986, but still not that much farther.

(God only knows what Ferris could have done with a smartphone and a GPS. Then again, a smart Rooney might have been able to track Ferris' phone, and the movie would have been over in about 15 minutes. Someday, I've got to do that piece on Films That Can't Be Remade Today Due to Advancing Tech.)

There is a theory that the entire movie happens in Cameron's mind. As said in that article:

My favorite thought-piece about Ferris Bueller is the "Fight Club" theory, in which Ferris Bueller, the person, is just a figment of Cameron's imagination, like Tyler Durden, and Sloane is the girl Cameron secretly loves.

One day, while he's lying sick in bed, Cameron lets "Ferris" steal his father's car and take the day off, and as Cameron wanders around the city, all of his interactions with Ferris and Sloane, and all the impossible hijinks, are all just played out in his head. This is part of the reason why the "three" characters can see so much of Chicago in less than one day -- Cameron is alone, just imagining it all.

It isn't until he destroys the front of the car in a fugue state does he finally get a grip and decide to confront his father, after which he imagines a final, impossible escape for Ferris and a storybook happy ending for Sloane ("He's gonna marry me!"), the girl that Cameron knows he can never have.

Check out this video. As with the parody Brokeback to the Future, you will never look at the original movie the same way again:

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"Just a second, Mike," you're thinking. "Fight Club came out in 1999. Ferris came out in 1986. How can Ferris be based on Fight Club?"

Fight Club was a film that premiered in 1999, based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk that was published in 1996. Still, that's a 10-year gap after Ferris.

But I'm not saying that Fight Club was based on Ferris. Only that there is a theory (not my own) that they have the same basic idea: Guy feels powerless, imagines a more powerful friend, becomes that friend, and has to face the consequences. The theory is called Ferris Club.

So is this theory correct? I have to admit, it makes a lot of things in the movie make sense.

I'll list the reasons -- first, why it might be true; second, why it might not be -- in chronological order, as seen in the film.

Reasons Why It Might Be True:

* Ferris Breaking the Fourth Wall. Ferris talks to the audience throughout the movie. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be possible.

* The characters' ages. This is one thing I’ve always hated about movies & TV shows set in high schools: The kids are, all too often, played by grownups. Ferris and Cameron are seniors, probably already 18 years old. Sloane and Jeanie are juniors, making them 16 or 17.

At the time of filming, September through November 1985, Broderick was 23 and had a serious 5:00 shadow. Grey was 25, and didn't seem to make Jones' Rooney think, "Wait a minute, Mrs. Bueller looks damn good for a woman in her early 40s." Iinstead, she played Ferris' mother and Rooney bought it.  Ruck was a whopping 29. Only Sara, 18, was actually of high school age.

(To be fair, at 56, Grey looks phenomenal. Sara, however, turns 49 in a few days, and hasn't aged nearly as well.)

* Ferris actually comes right out and says it: It's all in Cameron's head. He says it in the phone call near the film's start:

Cameron: Where are you?
Ferris: I'm taking the day off, come on over.
Cameron: I can't, stupid. I'm sick.
Ferris: That's all in your head.

* Ferris' popularity. Exactly what is this based on? It's the 1980s, and the movie came out a little less than 2 years after Revenge of the Nerds. Ferris is not a stereotypical pre-computer era nerd: He doesn't have horn-rim glasses (he wears the kind of shades that Tom Cruise was already known for wearing, including in Top Gun, which came out the previous month), and doesn't wear a dress shirt with a pocket protector full of pens. He wears a leather jacket, for crying out loud. He's more Fonzie than Lewis Skolnik.

But, in the Eighties, it wasn't cool kids who were skilled with computers. And Ferris, clearly, is considered a cool kid.

* Sloane is the girl Cameron wants, but can't have, because, in real life, she's dating a popular guy. So Cameron imagines a guy even more popular, and lives vicariously through him.

* Cameron's roleplay. Can he "be Ferris"? Why not? He gets on the phone and plays Sloane's father to Rooney. Later, he gets on the phone and plays a cop to the maître d' at Chez Quis. And those are pretty much the only times in the movie where he exhibits any confidence: When he's not being Cameron Frye.

* Cameron's "invisibility." This might be the best reason in favor of the theory. Like the song "Mr. Cellophane" in the musical Chicago (set in the same city, of course), you can look right through him, walk right by him, and never even know he's there.

Case in point: Rooney asks Grace who Sloane's boyfriend is. Clearly, he has a hunch that it might be Ferris. (So he's not totally stupid.) He could just as easily have asked who Ferris' girlfriend is. Funny, but he never bothers to get suspicious about Cameron's absence, or asks who Ferris' best friend is.

And we know Cameron gets sick a lot. Has he missed school NINE TIMES? We don't know, but it's plausible. Yet Cameron's absence doesn't ring a bell with Rooney. He doesn't think, "Hmmmm, Frye is out, claiming to be sick. Bueller is out, claiming to be sick. Don't I often see those two together in the hall? Like they're best friends or something. Something's going on, goddamnit... " Rooney knows about Ferris and Sloane, but it's like he doesn't even know Cameron exists.

And if Cameron really is sick that often, you'd think somebody would be concerned about him. After all, if Ferris is that popular, wouldn't his best friend have some residual popularity? Surely, Cam could "pick up some of Ferris' leftovers" -- friends, and girlfriends, if Ferris had had girlfriends before Sloane. Yet nobody wants to "SAVE CAMERON." You say he doesn't need "saving"? After all, it's only a cold. Well, let's face it, as Ferris points out, nobody in the film needs saving more than Cameron.

And yet, in the entire film, there's only three people who say so much as a word to Cameron: Ferris, Sloane, and the parking deck attendant, who says exactly one word to him: "Relax!" (If the movie were remade today, I can easily see the scriptwriter changing it to "Chillax!") And then he says, not to Cameron, but to all three of them...

Attendant: Uh, you fellas have nothing to worry about. I'm a professional.
Cameron: A professional WHAT?
Ferris (giving Cameron a belt in the ribs): He heard you!

Did he, Ferris? Did he really? Or did he only hear you, the projection of Cameron's mind?

"But, Mike," you say, "Rooney talked to Cameron. On the phone, when Cameron was pretending to be Sloane's father." Exactly: Rooney didn't know he was talking to Cameron. Hell, he didn't even see who he was talking to. Again: For all Rooney knows, Cameron doesn't exist. (Of course, it's usually a good thing if the man in Rooney's job doesn't know you exist. It's a good way to stay out of trouble.)

Indeed, the entire Chicago metropolitan area seems to be rallying around Ferris, to the point where the famed Wrigley Field marquee puts "SAVE FERRIS" up.
* Ferris proposing to Sloane. Such a mature, responsible act is totally out of character for him, to the point where Sloane thinks he's kidding, and, without changing her facial expression, calmly says, "Sure." Until he says, "I'm serious," and she laughs and says, "I'm not getting married!" And when Ferris asks for a good reason why not, Cameron is the one who, in a rare level-headed moment for him, comes up with what he thinks are two good reasons: His parents.

Now, why would Cameron say that? Because his fantasy is that Sloane is his girlfriend. But if she's his wife, that means a lot of new responsibilities. Cameron is trying to avoid responsibility, every bit as much as his imagined Ferris does.

* Chez Quis. A restaurant like that, there's going to be a dress code, and no matter who Ferris can convince he's Abe Froman, he's not getting in dressed like that. Nor is Sloane. Nor is Cameron -- who's wearing a hockey jersey, for crying out loud! Unless the scene is taking place in Cameron's mind, and he's never been in a restaurant like that, in which case the thought of a dress code might not have occurred to Cameron, in which case the restaurant in his mind doesn't have one.

Also, when Cameron impersonates a cop at Chez Quis, he calls himself "Sergeant Peterson," not "Sergeant Frye." It's not so much that he uses Sloane's family name, but that he doesn't use his own. He is so determined to not be Cameron Frye, or any Frye, that he continues to use a phony name.

* The real Abe Froman. He does have a reservation for that time. And yet, he never shows up to claim it. Would that happen in reality? No.

* Cameron's parents. Here's what Ferris says about them, as if he knows them very well... as if this is Ferris speaking Cameron's thoughts:

I used to think that my family was the only one with weirdness in it. Then I saw Cameron's family. His home life is really twisted. That's why he's sick all the time. It really bothers him. He feels better when he's sick.

If I had to live in that house, I'd pray for a disease, too. The place is like a museum: It's very beautiful and very cold, and you're not allowed to touch anything. Can you appreciate what it must have been like to be there as a baby? I'm amazed that I got the car out. I caught Cameron digging the ride. It's good for him. It teaches him to deal with his fear.

Cameron's parents are usually cold and absent, but when he's sick, they show affection. We see Ferris's parents doting on him when he is sick, but that's not the norm. The rest of his life, Cameron feels alone and ignored. When Cameron withdraws and becomes Ferris, he is loved and adored by his parents and everyone else.

There's also a theory that Ferris is real (within the confines of the movie, of course), that these things are actually happening to Cameron, but that... Ferris is having an affair with Cameron's mother, which is why Ferris wants to take the car, and why Cameron's father hates him. It doesn't have much to it, beyond circumstantial evidence, but it is plausible.

* The timing of the parade. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben was a German baron and general who helped George Washington straighten out the Continental Army during the War of the American Revolution. German-American heritage is celebrated by some cities, including New York and Chicago, with the Steuben Parade. It's usually held on the 3rd Saturday in September, since his birthday was September 17.

The movie makes a big point of this day being in the Spring, and on a weekday -- on a Saturday at the beginning of Autumn, when that particular parade takes place. Hughes filmed during a real Steuben Parade in Chicago, on September 14, 1985. Its identification as such is clearly visible on the film: It's not a generic parade with a lot of West German (at the time) flags and people in German folk costumes: It's the Steuben Parade. So why would this particular parade be on a Spring weekday? (New York holds the St. Patrick's Day Parade every March 17, regardless of the day of the week, but the Steuben Parade is held on Saturdays.)

My guess is, Cameron wanted to imagine a parade, and realized that the kid he's made up is named Bueller, and that's a German name, and he thought of the Steuben Parade. If it had been Ferris O'Leary, he might have imagined the St. Patrick's Day Parade -- but that would have eliminated the ballgame as a possibility, since the Cubs would still have been at spring training in Arizona.

* The odometer. Would Ferris not know that you can't roll an odometer back by driving in reverse? It's Ferris freakin' Bueller! Yet we're to believe that he makes this mistake? Setting aside Ed Rooney hitting the doorbell multiple times, this is the only mistake that Ferris makes in the entire film that leaves behind incriminating, unexplainable, physical evidence!

There's a reason for this. It's not Ferris' mistake, it's Cameron's mistake. Setting the car up to go in reverse is something hardluck Cameron would try to do and fail. Ferris says, "We'll have to crack the engine open, and roll the odometer back by hand." Well, sure, but Cameron nixes the idea, because he knows he doesn't have the skill to do that in the real world. He's screwed, and his imaginary friend can't help him here.

* Jeanie is playing Ferris' mother. Hey, maybe Jeanie exists, and she's the girl Cameron really wants.

* Rooney doesn't recognize Jeanie. Surely, with all his intent to "get" Ferris, he knows Ferris has a sister in the same school.

* Jeanie's save at the end. Why does Jeanie help Ferris get out of trouble at the end of the movie if she was trying to get home before him so that he would be caught?


* If Ferris is the kid that Cameron imagines that he would like to be, why would he imagine that Ferris doesn't have a car, and needs to steal his father's Ferrari? Why wouldn't he simply imagine that the Ferrari belongs to Ferris?

After all, Ferris calls Cameron's car "a piece of shit." But then, he adds, "I don't even have a piece of shit. I have to envy yours." If Ferris is nothing more than Cameron's fantasy, why would he have Ferris envy something of his? Especially that dinky little car?

* Why would he imagine Ferris slapping him while he's on the phone with Rooney? Shouldn't he imagine a cool best friend who wouldn't do that?

* Why would Cameron be fantasizing about Ferris' sister? I don't mean sexually (at least, no such fantasy of Cameron's is shown onscreen). Rather, Cameron is imagining scenes where the central figure is Jeanie. Jeanie hearing "Save Ferris" talk. Jeanie standing alone in the hall. Jeanie driving away. Jeanie in the house, trying to catch Ferris in the act. Jeanie interacting with Rooney, the Shermer police, and Charlie Sheen.

These are scenes where Ferris isn't even in the room. There's also scenes with Rooney where Ferris isn't in the room. In each case, that makes no sense -- unless Ferris and Jeanie are real, and the movie isn't Cam's fantasy.
* If the film is actually about Cameron, and the point of it is that Cameron has to realize that he finally has to stand up to his father, then he no longer needs "Ferris." So Ferris and Sloane should then disappear, who cares what happens to them.

Starting this Thursday, the Yankees play the Minnesota Twins in Minneapolis.

In the photo above, you can see Target Field.  Behind that, the Target Center. (The Target store company is headquartered in Minneapolis.) Behind that, downtown Minneapolis. And, in the upper-left corner, the Metrodome, since demolished.

By a weird twist, on the day that my twin nieces were born, 9 summers ago, the Yankees were playing, you guessed it, the Twins. The Yankees won. Nevertheless, the girls have become Yankee Fans.

I've tried to teach them the irony of it all, but, personally, I have nothing against the Minnesota ballclub. I used to, because of the (George Carlin word)ing Metrodome. But that is no longer a factor.

I know, I sometimes curse on this page, but these "How to Be a Yankee/New York Fan In…" pages are meant to be family-friendly.

Before You Go. It's a little soon to post the weather forecast, but, since the Twins do not play in the Metrodome anymore, you should consult the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press websites for their forecasts. Seeing as how this will be mid-June, the legend of cold Minnesota winters that last from October to early May will not apply in this series. Temperatures are projected to be in the high 70s in daylight, low 60s at night, with a chance of rain early Sunday, but probably not during the game.

Minnesota is in the Central Time Zone, 1 hour behind New York. Adjust your timepieces accordingly.

Tickets. The Twins’ success of the 2000s (but not, as yet, the 2010s) and the building of Target Field led to an average per-game attendance of 39,112 in 2011, pretty much a sellout every night, in spite of their not having a very good season (mainly due to injuries). But the novelty of the new park has worn off, and they're averaging 24,418 so far this season. So getting tickets shouldn't be a big problem. Still, I advise getting them ahead of time.

The Twins use "demand-based pricing." For games against the Yankees, and for regional rivals like the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago White Sox, prices are higher because the demand is greater. Here are the listings for the Yankee games: Diamond Box, $71; Field Box, $55; Home Plate Terrace, $53; Home Plate View, $44; Field Terrace, $44; LF Bleachers (the U.S. Bank Home Run Porch), $42; RF Bleachers (Grandstand), $31; Skyline View, $29; Field View, $27.

Getting There. It’s 1,199 road miles from Times Square in New York to Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis (the spot where Mary Tyler Moore threw her hat in the air in the opening sequence of her 1970-77 CBS sitcom), and 1,204 miles from Yankee Stadium to Target Field. Knowing this, your first reaction is going to be to fly out there.

But it’s kind of an expensive flight. Even if you order early, chances are you’ll have to pay at least $900 round-trip for a flight from Newark to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. And you'll have to change planes in Chicago, Charlotte, or even Dallas (which would piss off not just the New York Giants football fan that you might be, but also the Minnesota Vikings fans you may be flying to Minneapolis with). But when you do get there, the Number 55 light rail takes you from the airport to downtown in under an hour, so at least that is convenient.

Bus? Not a good idea. Greyhound runs 3 buses a day between Port Authority and Minneapolis, all with at least one transfer, in Chicago and possibly elsewhere as well. The total time, depending on the number of stops, is between 26 and 31 hours, and costs $330 round-trip, although it can be dropped to $274 with advanced purchase. The Greyhound terminal is at 950 Hawthorne Avenue, at 9th Street North, just 3 blocks from Nicollet Mall, 2 from the Target Center arena, and from there just across the 7th Street overpass over Interstate 394 from Target Field.

Train? An even worse idea. Amtrak will make you leave Penn Station on the Lake Shore Limited at 3:40 PM Eastern Time, arrive at Union Station in Chicago at 9:45 AM Central Time, and then the Empire Builder, their Chicago-to-Seattle run, will leave at 2:15 PM and arrive in St. Paul (not Minneapolis) at 10:01 PM. From there, 730 Transfer Road, you’d have to take the Number 16 or 50 bus to downtown Minneapolis. And it’s $368 round-trip.

If you decide to drive, it’s far enough that it will help to get someone to go with you and split the duties, and to trade off driving and sleeping. You'll need to get into New Jersey, and take Interstate 80 West. You'll be on I-80 for the vast majority of the trip, through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. In Ohio, in the western suburbs of Cleveland, I-80 will merge with Interstate 90. From this point onward, you won’t need to think about I-80 until you head home; I-90 is now the key, through the rest of Ohio and Indiana.

Just outside Chicago, I-80 will split off from I-90, which you will keep, until it merges with Interstate 94. For the moment, though, you will ignore I-94. Stay on I-90 through Illinois, until reaching Madison, Wisconsin, where you will once again merge with I-94. Now, I-94 is what you want, taking it into Minnesota and the Twin Cities, with Exit 233A being your exit for downtown Minneapolis.

If you do it right, you should spend about an hour and a half in New Jersey, 5 hours and 15 minutes in Pennsylvania, 4 hours in Ohio, 2 and a half hours in Indiana, an hour and a half in Illinois, 2 and a half hours in Wisconsin, and half an hour in Minnesota. That’s 17 hours and 45 minutes. Counting rest stops, preferably halfway through Pennsylvania and just after you enter both Ohio and Indiana, outside Chicago and halfway across Wisconsin, and accounting for traffic in New York, the Chicago suburbs and the Twin Cities, it should be no more than 23 hours, which would save you time on both Greyhound and Amtrak, if not on flying.

Once In the City. The Twins' original ballpark, Metropolitan Stadium, was in the suburb of Bloomington, on the Minneapolis side of the Mississippi River, but roughly equidistant from the downtowns of both Minneapolis and St. Paul. (Or as close as could have been hoped for: Minneapolis' City Hall is 9.6 miles away from the site, St. Paul's is 11.1 miles.) The team is called "Minnesota," because they didn't want to slight either city. It is called the "Twins" because Minneapolis and St. Paul are the "Twin Cities."

Well, these "twins" are not identical: They have different mindsets, and, manifesting in several ways that included both having Triple-A teams until the MLB team arrived, have been known to feud as much as San Francisco and Oakland, Dallas and Fort Worth, and Baltimore and Washington, if not as much as Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Minneapolis has about 400,000 people, St. Paul 300,000, and the combined metropolitan area about 3.7 million, ranking 16th in the U.S. -- roughly the combined population of Manhattan, The Bronx and Staten Island -- or that of Manhattan and Queens. Denver is the only metropolitan area with teams in all 4 sports that's smaller.

"Minneapolis" is a combination of the Dakota tribal word for water, and the Greek word for city. It was founded in 1867 with the name St. Anthony Falls, and, of course, St. Paul, founded in 1854, is also named for an early Christian saint. In Minneapolis, Hennepin Avenue separates the numbered Streets from North and South, and the Mississippi River is the "zero point" for the Avenues, many (but not all) of which also have numbers.

Each city once had 2 daily papers, now each is down to 1: Minneapolis had the Star and the Tribune, merged in 1982; St. Paul the Pioneer and the Dispatch, merged into the Pioneer Press and Dispatch in 1985, with the Dispatch name dropped in 1990. Today, they are nicknamed the Strib and the Pi Press.

The sales tax in the State of Minnesota is 6.875 percent. It's 7.775 in Minneapolis' Hennepin County, and 7.625 percent in St. Paul's Ramsey County. Bus and Light Rail service is $2.25 per ride during rush hours, $1.75 otherwise.
Going In. Target Field is at the northwest edge of downtown Minneapolis, in a neighborhood called the Warehouse District. The Metro Transit Hiawatha Line, Minneapolis’ light rail system, has a Target Field Station.

Target Field is bounded by 5th Street (left field), 3rd Avenue (right field), 7th Street (1st base) and the Hiawatha Line (3rd base). Parking lots are all over downtown, although if you’ve driven all this way, most likely you’ll be staying at a hotel and walking or taking public transit from there.  The official address is 1 Twins Way.

If you’re walking from downtown, you’ll most likely be arriving over the I-394 overpass and entering at the right field or home plate gates. If you’re arriving by light rail, the station is outside the left field gate. If you're driving, parking is between $10 and $15, depending on the event.
The gates are numbered in honor of the men whose numbers had already been retired when the ballpark opened: Center field, Gate 3, Harmon Killebrew; Left field, Gate 6, Tony Oliva; Home plate, Gate 14, Kent Hrbek; Right field corner, Gate 29, Rod Carew; and another in right field, Gate 34, Kirby Puckett. Gate 29 has Target Plaza, with statues of those players, and also of former owners Calvin Griffith, and Carl and Eloise Pohlad, parents of current owner Jim Pohlad.  The Twins' team Hall of Fame display is also there.

The ballpark faces northeast, and, in stark contrast to the Metrodome, it is open at right field, has no stupid roof with stupid lighting, and has, yes, real grass. If you are old enough to remember Metropolitan Stadium, the double-decked left field bleachers will be reminiscent of that stadium, but, from some angles, will also bear a resemblance to Jack Murphy/Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego and the old Mile High Stadium in Denver (if you remember the baseball configurations of those stadiums).
Looking at the 1st base/right field stands, you may see a resemblance to Camden Yards in Baltimore. Target Field does seem to have a mixture of 1970s funkiness (which, aside from round entrance ramps, was rarely incorporated into the designs of the ballparks in use in that decade) and 1990s-to-the-present convenience.

Outfield distances are 339 to left, 377 to left-center, 411 to center, 365 to right center and 328 to right – favoring lefthanded hitters, although the ball doesn’t fly out of the yard the way it did at Metropolitan Stadium or the Metrodome.
In its brief history, the longest home run hit at Target is a 490-footer by Jim Thome in 2011. Ben Oglivie of the Milwaukee Brewers hit the longest at the Metrodome, 481 feet, although I can't find a reference to a date. The longest at The Met, as you might guess, was by Harmon Killebrew, 525 feet in 1967. The seat that it was painted, and is preserved at the Mall of America, at roughly its original location.

Above center field is a sign saying "TARGET FIELD," with the words separated by the Target store logo. Above that is the original team logo, with two ballplayers against an outline of the state. One is wearing an M logo on his sleeve, another an StP logo on his, and they’re reaching across a river to shake hands. This symbolizes the old minor-league teams in the American Association, the Minneapolis Millers and the St. Paul Saints, who went out of business when the original Washington Senators moved to Minnesota to become the Twins in 1961.

In 2010, Target Field's 1st season, ESPN The Magazine ranked it was the Number 1 baseball stadium experience in North America. It has also hosted concerts. On Saturday, June 25, it will be used as the home field by soccer team Minnesota United, in a friendly against Mexican team Club Leon.

Food. Considering that Minnesota is Big Ten Country, you would expect their ballpark to have lots of good food, in particular that Midwest staple, the sausage, including German, Italian, Polish and Kosher varieties. Fortunately, you would be right, as the influence of regional rivals Chicago and Milwaukee has taken hold. Something called Kramarczuk's Food Network Creations is at Section 114 (lower level behind home plate), and Mexican and Asian specialties also dot the walkways.

At Section 133 (right-center-field bleachers), they have "State Fair Classics" -- the State Fair, held from late August to Labor Day, in the small town of Falcon Heights, between the Twin Cities, is a very big deal, known as "The Great Minnesota Get-Together." These "classics" include Pork Chops on a Stick, Roasted Corn on the Cob, Corn Dogs, and Walleye Fingers – think a fish version of "chicken fingers." It's not something I would eat, but walleyes, a native fish, are very popular in Minnesota. The start of walleye fishing season, usually around May 10, is so big there, the Twins always request to be on the road that weekend, so as not to hurt attendance.

Being Midwestern, the Twins believe in beer and lots of it. (In their early days, the Twins heavily identified with Hamm's Beer, which was headquartered in St. Paul. Hamm's has since been bought out, although the brand is still sold in the Upper Midwest.) Being American, the Twins believe in ice cream and lots of it.

Team History Displays. The Twins are now in their 2nd half-century of play, so they certainly have some history. They have banners representing their titles atop the left field bleachers: Red with blue numbers for their 1987 and 1991 World Championships; white with red numbers for their 1965 American League Pennant; and white with blue numbers for their Division Championships (in the AL West in 1969 and 1970, and in the AL Central in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009 and 2010). The Twins have never reached the Playoffs via the Wild Card.
No mention is made of the titles won as "the old Washington Senators": The 1924 World Championship and the 1925 and 1933 AL Pennants. Nor is any mention made of the American Association Pennants won by the Millers (1896, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1915, 1932, 1935, 1955, 1958 and 1959) and the Saints (1924 and 1948).

The Twins' retired numbers are shown in stanchions on the facing of the upper deck in left field: 3, Harmon Killebrew, 3rd base & 1st base, 1961-74; 6, Tony Oliva, right field, 1962-76 and serving the club in several capacities since; 10, Tom Kelly, 1st baseman 1975, manager 1986-2001; 14, Kent Hrbek, 1st base, 1981-94; 28, Bert Blyleven, pitcher, 1970-76 and 1985-88; 29, Rod Carew, 2nd base and 1st base, 1967-78; and 34, Kirby Puckett, center field, 1984-95 -- plus Jackie Robinson's universally-retired 42.

Oddly, the numbers are listed in order of their retirement from right to left, as opposed to left to right (or numerically), so that, from left to right, they read: 42, 10, 28, 34, 14, 6, 29, 3. Killebrew (who died in 2011), Oliva, Carew, Hrbek, and Kirby Puckett Jr., standing in for his father, threw out the ceremonial first balls for the first game at the new park on April 12, 2010.

As stated, the Twins' team Hall of Fame is outside the park at Gate 29, with the statues. The members include:

* From the 1965-70 teams: Killebrew, Oliva, Carew, catcher Earl Battey, shortstop Zoilo Versalles, left fielder Bob Allison, and pitchers Camilo Pascual, Jim Kaat and Jim Perry.

* From the 1987 & ’91 teams: Kelly, Blyleven, Hrbek, Puckett, shortstop Greg Gagne, 3rd baseman Gary Gaetti, and pitchers Frank Viola and Rick Aguilera.

* From the 2000s: Pitchers Brad Radke and Eddie Guardado, and outfielder Torii Hunter.

* Spanning the eras: Founding owner Calvin Griffith, original team executive George Brophy, broadcasters Herb Carneal (who is in the Baseball Hall of Fame) and John Gordon, owner Carl Pohlad, minor-league director Jim Rantz, media relations director Tom Mee, and public address announcer Bob Casey.

No mention is made of Millers legends Joe Cantillon, Joe Hauser, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, Ray Dandridge, Hoyt Wilhelm, Orlando Cepeda, Felipe Alou and Carl Yastrzemski. (The Millers were a Red Sox farm team, then the Giants, then the Red Sox again.) Or of Saints legends Duke Snider and Roy Campanella. (The Saints were a Dodger farm team.)

Or of men who actually played for this franchise as the Washington Senators, aside from those who moved with the team and were members of the 1965 Pennant winners. In 1933, the 1st All-Star Game was held. There were 2 players from the Senators/future Twins selected: Shortstop Joe Cronin and pitcher Alvin Crowder, nicknamed "General" after memories of Enoch Crowder, the U.S. Army General who ran the military draft in World War I.

In 1999, Killebrew, Carew and Puckett were named to The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Baseball Players. In 2006, Twins fans chose Puckett for the DHL Hometown Heroes poll.

Stuff. The Majestic Twins Clubhouse Store is located next to Gate 29. The usual items that can be found at a souvenir store can be found there.

Books about the Twins are not exactly well-known. The staff of the Star-Tribune put together Minnesota Twins: The Complete Illustrated History in 2010, to coincide with moving into the new ballpark. Stew Thornley published Minnesota Twins Baseball: Hardball History on the Prairie in 2014. Cool of the Evening: The 1965 Minnesota Twins is Jim Thielman's look at Minnesota's 1st major league Pennant winner. Bill Gutman, Dave Weiner and Tony Seidl wrote From Worst to First! The Improbable 1991 Seasons of the Atlanta Braves and the Minnesota Twins.

There is, as yet, no Essential Games of the Minnesota Twins, or of either Metropolitan Stadium or the Metrodome. But the official 1987 and 1991 World Series highlight film packages are available.

During the Game. A recent Thrillist article on "Baseball's Most Intolerable Fans" listed Twins fans as 22nd -- meaning 10th most tolerable. It calls Twins fans "a model of the on-the-surface Midwestern affability mixed with deeply buried resentments that permeates so much of the local culture." It calls the unlamented Metrodome "a cold and unfeeling dome," and Target Field "generally pretty nice but ultimately uninteresting -- hey, another good metaphor for Twins fans!"

This is a bit harsh, but, essentially, true. Because of their Midwest/Heartland image, Twins fans like a "family atmosphere." Therefore, while they don't especially like the Yankees, they will not directly antagonize you. You'll probably be all right if you don't say anything unkind about Killebrew or Puckett, especially now that they're both dead. I would also advise against saying anything complimentary about the Green Bay Packers, the University of Wisconsin, the Dallas Stars (the hockey team that used to be the Minnesota North Stars) or Norm Green (the owner who moved them).

All 4 games will have promotions. Thursday night is LED Energy Efficient Light Bulb Night. I guess they're giving out free light bulbs. They have Friday Fireworks, sponsored by the South Dakota Department of Tourism. (South Dakota is within the Twins'"market." So is North Dakota.) Saturday is Miguel Sano  Bobblehead Day. And Sunday is Twins Socks Day. Good promotion for the Twins, since there has to be 2 of them.

The Twins' mascot is TC Bear -- TC for Twin Cities, and it's probably a bear in honor of that once-familiar Minnesota mascot/TV pitchanimal, the Hamm's Bear.
The Twins hold auditions for National Anthem singers, instead of having a regular. They have a theme song, "We're Gonna Win, Twins!" After every Twins home run, they play "Let's Go Crazy," and were doing so even before the recent death of Minneapolis native Prince. Their postgame victory song is "It's a Beautiful Day" by U2.

They still sell the Homer Hankies made famous during their 1987 postseason run. They did not, however, originate the idea: In 1977, the Cleveland Indians, desperate for attendance, held “Hate the Yankees Hanky Night.”

The Twins have "The Race at Target Field." It's a takeoff on the Milwaukee Brewers' Sausage Race, with 5 Minnesota-inspired characters: Louie the Loon (a bird, not a crazy man), Wanda the Walleye (a fish), Babe the Blue Ox (from the legend of Paul Bunyan), Skeeta the Mosquito (apparently they got him in a trade with the Houston Astros), and Bullseye the dog (mascot of Target, and apparently a descendant of former Bud Light pitchdog Spuds Mackenzie). No revival of the Hamm's Bear.

After the Game. An unfortunate part of the Twins' legacy is the fact that, when Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith, who would never have moved the team, died in 1955, his son Calvin Griffith wanted out of the increasingly-black D.C. At a Lions Club dinner in 1978, he freely admitted that he moved the Twins to Minnesota because it was mostly white. So the Twins exist primarily because of racism – albeit that of just one man.

Nevertheless, this racial homogeneity has kept Minneapolis comparatively safe – although the Twin Cities have since attracted more blacks, and had already produced some famous black people, including baseball legend Dave Winfield and the late music superstar Prince. (Along with the fictional character of Synclaire James, played by Kim Coles on the New York-based show Living Single.) At any rate, regardless of the races of the people you see on the streets, you should be safe.

If you want to be around other New Yorkers, I have one listing for a place that seems to cater to football Giants fans: O'Donovan's Irish Pub, downtown at 700 1st Avenue North at 7th St. I have also been told that Lyndale Tap House is a hangout for Jets fans. 2937 Lyndale Avenue South, about 2 1/2 miles south of downtown. Number 4 bus.

Another restaurant that may be of interest to New York baseball fans is Charley's Grill, downtown at 225 3rd Avenue South at 2nd Street. It was popular among visiting players from other American Association cities when they came to play the Millers and the Saints. Legend has it that, when the Yankees gathered for spring training in 1961, they were trying to figure out which restaurants in the new American League cities were good, and someone who'd recently played for the Denver Bears mentioned Charley's. But Yogi Berra, who'd gone there when the Yanks' top farm team was the Kansas City Blues, said, "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." Well, someone must still be going there, because it's still open.

(That Yogi said the line is almost certainly true, but the restaurant in question was almost certainly Ruggiero's, a place in his native St. Louis at which he and his neighbor Joe Garagiola waited tables.)

Sidelights. Minnesota's sports history is long, but very uneven. Teams have been born, moved in, moved around, and even moved out. But there are some local sites worth checking out.

* Site of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and U.S. Bank Stadium. Home of the Twins from 1982 to 2009, the University of Minnesota football team from 1982 to 2008, and the NFL's Vikings from 1982 to 2013, that infamous blizzard and roof collapse in 2010 brought the desire to get out and build a new stadium for the Vikes to the front burner, and it has finally led to action.
The Twins won the 1987 and 1991 World Series here – going 8-0 in World Series games in the Dome, and 0-6 in Series games outside of it. The Vikings, on the other hand, are just 6-4 in home Playoff games since moving there – including an overtime defeat in the 1998 NFC Championship Game after going 14-2 in the regular season.
From October 1991 to April 1992, the Metrodome hosted 3 major events: The World Series (Twins over Atlanta Braves), Super Bowl XXVI (Washington Redskins over Buffalo Bills), and the NCAA Final Four (Duke beating Michigan in the Final). It also hosted the Final Four in 2001 (Duke won that one, too, over Arizona).

In May 2012, faced with the serious possibility of the Vikings moving without getting a suitable stadium (Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Antonio had been rumored as locations, in descending order of likelihood), the Minnesota State legislature approved funding for a new stadium for the Vikings, to be built on the site of the Metrodome and on adjoining land.

The damn thing has now been fully demolished -- in a piece of poetic justice, just as it was built and completed ahead of schedule and under budget, so did the demolition take place. The people of Minnesota seemed to be proud of its having been built on the cheap and on time, but it served its purpose, to keep the Twins and Vikings from moving for a generation, and now replacement stadiums are achieving the same purpose. Billy Martin, who hated the place, had the best word on it, though the awkward wording of it may have been inspired in part by his pal Yogi Berra: "It's a shame a great guy like HHH had to be named after it." (Billy's first managing job was with the Twins, at the Met in 1969.)

The Vikings played at TCF Bank Stadium in 2014 and '15, and are scheduled to play their 1st game at U.S. Bank Stadium this coming September 18. It will host Super Bowl LII in February 2018. 900 South 5th Street at Centennial (Kirby Puckett) Place. The Light Rail station's name has been changed from "Metrodome" to "U.S. Bank Stadium."

* Mall of America and sites of Metropolitan Stadium and the Metropolitan Sports Center. In contrast to their performance at the Metrodome, the Vikings were far more successful at their first home, while the Twins were not (in each case, playing there from 1961 to 1981).

The Vikings reached 4 Super Bowls while playing at The Met, while the Twins won Games 1, 2 and 6 of the 1965 World Series there, but lost Game 7 to the Los Angeles Dodgers on a shutout by Sandy Koufax. (So the Twins are 11-1 all-time in World Series home games, but 0-9 on the road.) The Vikings were far more formidable in their ice tray of a stadium, which had no protection from the sun and nothing to block an Arctic blast of wind.
In fact, the Met had one deck along the 3rd base stands and in the right field bleachers, two decks from 1st base to right field and in the left field bleachers, and three decks behind home plate. Somebody once said the stadium looked like an Erector set that a kid was putting together, before his mother called him away to dinner and he never finished it. At 45,919 seats, it had a capacity that was just fine for baseball; but at 48,446, it was too small for the NFL.

Prior to the 1961 arrivals of the Twins and Vikings, the Met hosted the Minneapolis Millers from 1956 to 1960, and 5 NFL games over the same stretch, including 4 "home games" for the Packers. Viking fans may be sickened over that, but at least University of Minnesota fans can take heart in the University of Wisconsin never having played there.

The experiments worked: The Met, built equidistant from the downtowns of Minneapolis and St. Paul, in the southern suburb of Bloomington, was awarded the MLB and NFL teams, and Midway Stadium, built in 1957 as the new home of the St. Paul Saints (at 1000 N. Snelling Avenue in the city of St. Paul, also roughly equidistant from the two downtowns), struck out, and was used as a practice field by the Vikings before being demolished in 1981.

The NHL's Minnesota North Stars played at the adjoining Metropolitan Sports Center (or Met Center) from 1967 to 1993, before they were moved to become the Dallas Stars by owner Norm Green, earning him the nickname Norm Greed. The Stars reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 1981 and 1991, but never won the Cup until 1999 when they were in Dallas.

The Beatles played at Metropolitan Stadium on August 21, 1965 -- making one of only 3 facilities to host an All-Star Game, a Finals and a Beatles concert in the same year. (The others were the Boston Garden and Maple Leaf Gardens in 1964.) Elvis Presley sang at the Met Center on November 5, 1971 and October 17, 1976.

8000 Cedar Avenue South, at 80th Street -- near the airport, although legends of planes being an issue, as with Shea Stadium and Citi Field, seem to be absent. A street named Killebrew Drive, and the original location of home plate, have been preserved. A 45-minute ride on the Number 55 light rail (MOA station), which, unfortunately, didn't open until after the stadium and the arena were gone.

* Site of Nicollet Park. Home of the Millers from 1912 to 1955, it was one of the most historic minor-league parks, home to Ted Williams and Willie Mays before they reached the majors. With the Met nearing completion, its last game was Game 7 of the 1955 Junior World Series, in which the Millers beat the International League Champion Rochester Red Wings. A few early NFL games were played there in the 1920s. A bank is now on the site. Nicollet and Blaisdell Avenues, 30th and 31st Streets. Number 465 bus.
* Site of Lexington Park. Home of the Saints from 1897 to 1956, it wasn’t nearly as well regarded, although it did close with a Saints win over the arch-rival Millers. The site is now occupied by retail outlets. Lexington Parkway, University Avenue, Fuller & Dunlap Streets.
* Xcel Energy Center and site of the St. Paul Civic Center. Home of the NHL's Minnesota Wild since their debut in 2000, and site of the 2008 Republican Convention that nominated John McCain for President and, yes, Sarah Palin for Vice President. (The GOP met in Minneapolis in 1892, renominating President Benjamin Harrison at the Industrial Exposition Building at 101 Central Avenue SE. It was torn down in 1940, and condos are on the site now.)

The place is a veritable home and hall of fame for hockey in Minnesota, the most hockey-mad State in the Union, including the State high school championships that were previously held at the Civic Center.

That building was the home of the Minnesota Fighting Saints of the World Hockey Association from 1973 to 1977. The Fighting Saints had played their first few home games, in late 1972, at the St. Paul Auditorium. Elvis sang at the Civic Center on October 2 and 3, 1974, and April 30, 1977. The Civic Center is also where Bruce Springsteen and Courteney Cox filmed the video for Bruce's song "Dancing In the Dark." 199 Kellogg Blvd. West. at 7th Street.

* Target Center. Separated from Target Field by I-394 and 2nd Avenue, this arena has been home to the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves since the team debuted shortly after its 1989 opening. The T-Wolves have only made the Western Conference Finals once, and are probably best known as the team Kevin Garnett and GM (and Minnesota native) Kevin McHale couldn’t get over the hump, before Garnett went to McHale’s former team, the Boston Celtics. The WNBA's Minnesota Lynx also play here. 600 N. 1st Avenue at 6th Street.

* Site of Minneapolis Auditorium. Built in 1927, from 1947 to 1960 this was the home of the Minneapolis Lakers – and, as Minnesota is "the Land of 10,000 Lakes" (11,842, to be exact), now you know why a team in Los Angeles is named the Lakers. (The old Utah Jazz coach Frank Layden said his team and the Lakers should switch names, due to L.A.'s "West Coast jazz" scene and the Great Salt Lake: "Los Angeles Jazz" and "Utah Lakers" would both make more sense.)

The Lakers won the National Basketball League Championship in 1948, then moved into the NBA and won the Championship in 1949, 1950, 1952, 1953 and 1954. In fact, until the Celtics overtook them in 1963, the Minneapolis Lakers were the most successful team in NBA history, and have still won more World Championships than all the other Minnesota major league teams combined: Lakers 5, Twins 2, the rest a total of 0.

They were led by their enormous (for the time, 6-foot-10, 270-pound) center, the bespectacled (that's right, he wore glasses, not goggles, on the court) Number 99, George Mikan. The arrival of the 24-second shot clock for the 1954-55 season pretty much ended their run, although rookie Elgin Baylor did help them reach the Finals again in 1959. Ironically, the owner of the Lakers who moved them to Los Angeles was Bob Short – who later moved the "new" Washington Senators, the team established to replace the team that moved to become the Twins.

The Auditorium hosted the NCAA Final Four (although it wasn't yet called that) in 1951, won by Kentucky over Kansas State. Elvis sang there early in his career, on May 13, 1956. The Auditorium was demolished in 1989, and the Minneapolis Convention Center was built on the site. 1301 2nd Ave. South, at 12th Street. Within walking distance of Target Field, Target Center and the Metrodome.

* Minnesota United. Originally NSC Minnesota and then the Minnesota Stars, this team began play in 2010, and, except for the occasional game moved to the Metrodome for more seats, has played its home games at a 10,000-seat stadium at the National Sports Center in Blaine, about 15 miles north of downtown Minneapolis. 1700 105th Avenue NE at Davenport Street NE. Hard to reach by public transportation: You'll need at least 2 buses, and to then walk a mile and a half.

The team has been promoted from the new North American Soccer League to Major League Soccer, and will begin play in the 2018 season. Opening in time for that season (they hope) will be a new 20,000-seat, soccer-specific stadium, in St. Paul, at about 400 N. Snelling Avenue, at the intersection of St. Anthony Avenue, just off I-94/U.S. 12/U.S. 52, about a mile and a half south of the site of old Midway Stadium. Green Line light rail to Snelling Avenue.

Until MUFC (same initials as Manchester United Football Club, hopefully with less cheating) get underway, the closest MLS franchise to the Twin Cities will be the Chicago Fire, 416 miles away.

* University of Minnesota. TCF Bank Stadium, the new home of the University of Minnesota football team, opened in 2009. It was designed to resemble a classic 1920s college football stadium, with a reddish-brown brick exterior and a horseshoe shape, much like the 56,000-seat Memorial Stadium, where the Golden Gophers played from 1924 to 1981, before the Metrodome was built.

Its capacity of 50,805 makes it the 2nd-smallest stadium in the Big Ten, ahead of only Northwestern's Ryan Field/Dyche Stadium, but the Gophers' lack of success over the last 40 years or so has been overcome: They have regularly filled it. The Vikings played a home game here in 2010 after the Metrodome roof collapse, but the capacity (much like that of the even smaller Metropolitan Stadium) made it insufficient as a permanent new home for the Vikings, so they used it as a stopgap stadium in 2014 and 2015, waiting for U.S. Bank Stadium to be built. They played a home game at "Old Memorial" in 1969 due to the Twins making the Playoffs that season.

The new stadium is at 2009 University Avenue SE, at 420 SE 23rd Avenue. Stadium Village stop on the light rail Green Line.

"Old Memorial" was a block away from where the new stadium now stands, on Walnut Street between University Avenue and Beacon Street. The Vikings played a home game there in 1969 due to the Twins making the Playoffs that season and having dibs on Metropolitan Stadium. The McNamara Alumni Center now stands on the site, and the arched entrance to Memorial has been preserved and stands inside.

The Gophers play their basketball games at Williams Arena, a classic old barn built in 1928, across Oak Street from the open west end of TCF Bank Stadium. Across 4th Street from Williams is Mariucci Arena, home of the hockey team that has won National Championships in 1974, '76, '79, 2002 and '03. Named for John Mariucci, a member of the Chicago Blackhawks' 1938 Stanley Cup winners who coached the Gophers, the arena was built in 1993, after the team previously played hockey at Williams.

Legend has it that 4th Street is the "Positively 4th Street" used as the title of a song by former UM student Robert Zimmerman, a.k.a. Bob Dylan, although, as is often the case with Dylan songs, there is no mention of the title in the songs. Whether the "friend" who's "got a lot of nerve" was a fellow UM student, I don't know. It's also been suggested that the 4th Street in question is the one in New York's Greenwich Village.

* Museums. The Twin Cities are very artsy, and have their share of museums, including one of the five most-visited modern art museums in the country, the Walker Art Center, at 1750 Hennepin Avenue. Number 4, 6, 12 or 25 bus. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is at 2400 3rd Avenue South. Number 17 bus, then walk 2 blocks east on 24th Street. The Science Museum of Minnesota is at 120 W. Kellogg Blvd. in St. Paul, across from the Xcel Center.

Minnesota is famous for Presidential candidates that don’t win. Governor Harold Stassen failed to get the Republican nomination in 1948, and then ran several more times, becoming, pardon the choice of words, a running joke. Senator Eugene McCarthy opposed Lyndon B. Johnson in the Democratic Primaries in 1968, but lost his momentum when Robert Kennedy got into the race and LBJ got out, then ran in 1976 as a 3rd-party candidate and got 1 percent of the popular vote. Vice President Walter Mondale was the Democratic nominee in 1984, losing every State but Minnesota in his loss to Ronald Reagan. In the 2012 election cycle, the moderate former Governor Tim Pawlenty and the completely batty Congresswoman Michele Bachmann ran, and neither got anywhere.

Most notable is Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Elected Mayor of Minneapolis in 1945 and 1947, he became known for fighting organized crime, which put a price on his head, a price it was unable to pay off. In 1948, while running for the U.S. Senate, he gave a speech at the Democratic Convention, supporting a civil rights plank in the party platform, a movement which culminated in his guiding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through the Senate as Majority Whip.

He ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 1960, but lost to John F. Kennedy, then was elected LBJ's Vice President in 1964. He won the nomination in 1968, but lost to Richard Nixon by a hair. He returned to the Senate in 1970, and ran for President again in 1972, but lost the nomination to George McGovern. He might have run again in 1976 had his health not failed, as cancer killed him in 1978 at age 66. His wife Muriel briefly held his Senate seat.

Not having been President (he's come closer than any other Minnesotan ever has), he has no Presidential Library, but there is the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, 301 19th Avenue South, only a short walk from the Dome that would be named for him. Hubert and Muriel are laid to rest in Lakewood Cemetery, 3600 Hennepin Avenue. Number 6 bus.

The tallest building in Minnesota is the IDS Center, at 80 South 8th Street at Marquette Avenue, rising 792 feet high. The tallest in the State outside Minneapolis is Wells Fargo Place, at 30 East 7th Street at Cedar Street in St. Paul, 472 feet.

Nicollet Mall is a pedestrians-only shopping center that stretches from 2nd to 13th Streets downtown. At 7th Street, in front of Macy's, in roughly the same location that Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards threw her hat in the air in the opening to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, is a statue of "Mare" doing that. It was the first in a series of statues commissioned by TV Land that now includes Jackie Gleason outside Port Authority, Henry Winkler in Milwaukee, Bob Newhart in Chicago, Andy Griffith and Ron Howard in Raleigh, Elizabeth Montgomery in Salem, Massachusetts and Elvis in Honolulu. However, the show had no location shots in Minneapolis.

The sitcom Coach, which aired on ABC from 1989 to 1996, was set at Minnesota State University. At the time, there was not a real college with that name. But in 1999, Mankato State University was renamed Minnesota State University, Mankato; and in 2000, Moorhead State University became Minnesota State University, Moorhead.

The University of Minnesota was originally a model for the school on the show, but withdrew its support: Although some game action clearly shows the maroon and gold of the Golden Gophers, the uniforms shown in most scenes were light purple and gold. In one Season 1 episode, the Gophers are specifically mentioned as one of the Screaming Eagles' opponents, suggesting that Minnesota State might have been in the Big Ten. Show creator Barry Kemp is a graduate of the University of Iowa -- like Wisconsin, a major rival of the Gophers -- and most of the exterior shots you see of the campus were filmed there. In addition, the main character, Hayden Fox, was named after then-Iowa coach Hayden Fry. No scenes were actually shot in Minnesota, not even Hayden's oft-snowy lake house.

St. Paul is the capital of the State of Minnesota. The Capitol Building is at University Avenue and Capital Blvd. It's a half-hour ride from downtown on the Number 94 bus (named because most of its route is on I-94).

*

Bob Wood, a native of Kalamazoo, Michigan, and a graduate of Michigan State University, wrote a pair of sports travel guides: Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks, about his 1985 trip to all 26 stadiums then in MLB; and Big Ten Country, about his 1988 trip to all the Big Ten campuses and stadiums. (Penn State, Nebraska, and soon-to-be members Rutgers and Maryland were not yet in the league).

The Metrodome was the only stadium that featured in both books, although if either were updated to reflect current reality, it would feature in neither. In Big Ten Country, Wood said, "Now, don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't like Minneapolis. How can you not like Minneapolis?... No, Minneapolis is lovely. It’s the Metrodome that sucks!"

Thankfully, the Twins now play at Target Field, and, from what I understand, Minneapolis and St. Paul are still terrific cities, including for sports. A Yankee Fan should definitely take in a Yankees-Twins game there.

This is not about sports.

There are movies that are not period pieces, but still couldn't be remade and set in the present day, due to changes in technology and personal mores.

One that I thought could be included on this list was Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 thriller in which Jimmy Stewart, bored because he's laid up in a wheelchair with a broken leg, uses his binoculars to spy on his neighbors, and sees evidence that Raymond Burr may have murdered his wife, but as trouble convincing anyone to believe him.

Knowing that technology could make it easier to catch such a killer, producers remade the film in 1998, with Christopher Reeve, already a paraplegic, using the high tech in his apartment to set a trap for the killer. But it's still not quite the same story.

But the TV show Castle got around this, by playing it for laughs, as Rick, temporarily wheelchair-bound due to a skiing accident, tried to record evidence with his video camera, but he didn't hit the record button in time.

What movies -- not counting films set in a specific time, such as in a specific war -- could not be made today, because technology would render them obsolete?

Oh yeah: Spoiler alert.

1. Pretty much any film made from a play by Tennessee Williams. Or any other story in which a male protagonist doesn't dare admit that he's gay. Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie (first staged in 1944 and filmed by Irving Rapper in 1950 -- Williams' real name was Thomas Lanier Williams III) and Brick Pollitt in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (first staged in 1955 and filmed by Richard Brooks in 1958 -- Brick is married to Maggie, but he's been depressed over the suicide of his friend Skipper) are both clearly gay, and heavily closeted.

In the latter play, Skipper comes out to Brick, but Brick rejects him, probably because he doesn't want to lose face in Southern society. But the film version, with Paul Newman as Brick, has the gay element virtually eliminated. How gay is Brick? He's married to Maggie, who's played by Elizabeth Taylor at her finest, both in acting and in form, and he's not interested in her.

The role of Brick was originally offered to Ben Gazzara, who'd played Brick on Broadway, but because of the changes, he turned it down. Then it was offered to Elvis Presley. Elvis turned it down, too, possibly because the character was still too gay. Wouldn't that have been something: Elvis and La Liz in the same movie. It might have totally changed Elvis' reputation as an actor. (However, he did make probably his best film that year, also a very Southern story: King Creole.)

If the movie were remade today, Brick and Skipper would probably both be out, and preparing to get married, with Big Daddy, Big Mama and Brick's former girlfriend Maggie all angry, and ganging up on them to try to prevent it. And it would be a comedy. Actually, that might be worth watching.

2. Twelve Angry Men. This story first appeared as a TV play written by Reginald Rose in 1954, and was filmed by Sidney Lumet in 1957. A jury must decide if a teenage boy murdered his father, with the penalty being execution. Henry Fonda plays the only juror who doesn't seem sure. One by one, he convinces the other jurors, until only Lee J. Cobb is left thinking the kid is guilty.

At first glance, this would seem to be a story that could be done today -- although it would have to be Twelve Angry People, since women would certainly be on that jury. But the knife would be checked for fingerprints (namely, the son's) and DNA (namely, the father's blood). Since Jack Klugman's demonstration about how a killer would use a switchblade is correct, one or the other (the son's prints or the father's blood) might well be on the knife, but both wouldn't be. Thus, the police would know fairly quickly that the son didn't do it.

3. The Apartment -- or any other film made before the rise of feminism in the 1970s. Billy Wilder's The Apartment is set in late 1959, and was released the following year. Jack Lemmon plays an insurance agent, who lets the higher-ups at his company use his apartment for flings with their mistresses. One of them is Shirley MacLaine, who, finding out that the company's boss was never going to leave his wife for her, attempts suicide.

Both feminism and sexual harassment laws make this film obsolete as hell. Even by 1981, when 9 to 5 was released, The Apartment was an anachronism.

4. Play It Again Sam. Woody Allen wrote this as a play in 1969, and filmed it in 1972. Whenever Tony Roberts' character, a real estate agent, gets to a new location, the first thing he does is call his office, and tell them that he can be reached at that phone's number.

I first saw this movie when I was in high school, in the late 1980s. Even then, this pattern seemed ridiculous. At that point, mobile phones weren't very common, as they were still too big to fit in your pocket. Today, he'd have a smartphone. Hopefully, he wouldn't answer it as stupidly as today's biggest real estate agent in pop culture, Phil Dunphy on Modern Family.

5. Jaws. Premiering in 1975, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel, Roy Scheider plays a police chief who thinks there's a man-eating shark off the coast of an island, but the Mayor doesn't believe him. Better sonar would settle it quickly, and the big-money 4th of July weekend would arrive with no unnecessary fear.

6. The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training. The sequel to the original The Bad News Bears, directed by Michael Pressman, came out in 1977. There is no way a Little League team would be allowed to go from Los Angeles to Houston without a coach. And there's no way the State Police would see a 13-year-old boy driving a van and fail to pull him over.

7. Smokey and the Bandit. This movie, directed by Hal Needham, came out in 1977, when CBs -- citizens' band radios -- were huge. Much like ham radios, they were a precursor to the Internet. But with cellphones, CBs would be obsolete. Maybe the "Breaker, breaker" lingo could coexist with Leetspeak, but the CB systems themselves would now be quaint.

Also, the film's main plot wouldn't work, since, by 1988, shipping Coors beer was legal in all 50 States. A 2016 version of Big Enos Burdette could just go to any liquor store, and buy as many cases of that foul stuff as he wants. If he wants the Bandit to go get him something far away and bring it back under a deadline, it will have to be something else.

8. Manhattan. Woody Allen again. He made this movie 1979 -- before life imitated art and he hooked up with stepdaughter Soon-Yi Previn. As creepy as that was, it was legal, and he has now been with her longer than with all his previous loves combined.

But in Manhattan, his character is 42 years old, and has a 17-year-old girlfriend. No. Just no. If Woody wanted to admire Roman Polanski as a filmmaker, that was one thing. But to imitate Polanski's personal life... No. I don't know why he got away with filming that (without his character at least getting arrested) in the Disco Period. But even if Woody didn't get together with Soon-Yi, there's no way he would get away with that today.

Then again, today, Woody is 80, and Mariel Hemingway is 54. At those ages, it wouldn't be so bad.

9. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. As I said in a post on Friday, this John Hughes film came out exactly 30 years before, on June 11, 1986. This film couldn't be made today. And not because America's self-appointed moral arbiters would object to nearly every adult in the film being portrayed as a blithering idiot. Here's how it would be different in 2016:

* Grace's phone would have Caller ID. She'd know the call from "George Peterson" was coming from the Bueller house -- or, more likely, Cameron's cellphone. The scheme would fall apart right there. Failing that...

* Ed Rooney might have a friend in the police department, who could use a GPS to track Ferris' phone. He'd have the documentary evidence that proved Ferris was ditching. Then he'd show up at the Bueller house at 6:00, meet Ferris and his parents there, and say, "I've got him." Which, unlike in the actual movie (where all he could legally prove was that Ferris was home after school), he would. Failing that...

* Ferris wouldn't risk stealing the Ferrari belonging to Cameron's father. He'd call Uber.

* If Ferris could hack into the school's computer in 1986, in 2016, surely, he could hack into Chez Quis' website, and find out the names on their reservation list. He'd see only one name with a party of three for 12:00, see that it's Abe Froman, then Google the name, and see, "Oh, he's the Sausage King of Chicago. He'd be recognized. I'd better try another restaurant."

* Jeanie would use her phone's camera to take a picture of the knocked-out Rooney. Thus, the Shermer police would believe her, and Rooney would be arrested for unlawful entry. Even if he beats the rap, this would be very suspicious behavior on his part, and he'd be fired. At the least, Jeanie wouldn't be arrested.

10. Midnight Run. This one, directed by Martin Brest, was released in 1988. As with Ferris, this is one of my 5 favorite movies of all time. Also like Ferris, this one wouldn't work today. (Neither would the other 3: They're Casablanca, set in World War II; Star Wars, set "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away"; and V for Vendetta, set in a dystopian future.)

Robert De Niro plays a bounty hunter with 5 days to get embezzler Charles Grodin from New York to Los Angeles. As the promotional material said, The mob wants him dead, the FBI wants him alive, and De Niro just wants him to shut up.

The key to resolving this movie is that Grodin tells De Niro that he was arrested before he could put his safety net into action: After discovering the guy he was working for was a mob boss, he was going to record all of the crime family's dealings on computer disks (the old hard kind that we nonetheless still called "floppy disks"), and turn them over to the FBI. So De Niro gets fake disks, and gets the boss to take them. There's no evidence on the disks, but the boss doesn't know that: He thinks he's tampering with evidence, therefore he's guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice, and the FBI arrest him.

If this story happened today, Grodin would probably have everything he needed put on a flashdrive much faster than he could have put it on those old-style disks, and would have gone to the FBI, and be in the Witness Protection Program before the boss even knew it was too late.

If he had failed to do that, this would still be an awfully short movie, because the FBI would have found De Niro and Grodin using GPS. This would have happened before Grodin told De Niro about the flashdrive/disks, and before De Niro could tell the FBI this and cut the deal that sets him free from all of the charges he's racked up (from car theft to impersonating an FBI agent).

The Yankees were on a roll. Now, the roll has mold on it.

On Friday night, they began a 3-game home series with the Detroit Tigers. CC Sabathia was partying like it's 2009: 7 innings, no runs, 5 hits, 2 walks. Dellin Betances pitched a perfect 8th, and Anthony Swarzak a scoreless 9th.

Mike Pelfrey and Tiger reliever Blaine Hardy (the name sounds like a soap opera character) were far from equal to the task. In the 1st inning, Pelfrey allowed back-to-back singles by Brett Gardner and Carlos Beltran, and then back-to-back walks to Alex Rodriguez and Brian McCann to force in a run. Starlin Castro struck out, but Didi Gregorius doubled home Beltran and A-Rod. 3-0 Yankees.

Gardner walked in the 3rd, and a failed pickoff got him all the way to 3rd. Beltran singled him home, and that was it for the scoring. Yankees 4, Tigers 0. WP: Sabathia (4-4). No save. LP: Pelfrey (1-6).

*

The Yankees had won 6 straight, and were a game above .500. But on Saturday, things began to fall apart again. Justin Verlander has had a bad season so far, but he can never be written off, and he pitched very well. And Francisco Rodriguez -- yes, K-Rod, the nemesis from the 2002 Anaheim Angels -- pitched much better for the Tigers than did that other ex-Met, Pelfrey. Aside from an RBI single by Rob Refsnyder in the 3rd, the Yankees never really got going.

In contrast, Masahiro Tanaka did not have his good stuff. He got into the 7th inning, but allowed 5 runs. Tigers 6, Yankees 1. WP: Verlander (6-5). SV: Rodriguez (18). LP: Tanaka (3-2).

*

Sunday was Old-Timers' Day. The first one since the death of Yogi Berra, leaving Whitey Ford as the most-honored living Yankee. Fellow Hall-of-Famers Reggie Jackson and Goose Gossage also attended. The 1996 Yankees were honored on their 20th Anniversary, although Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Wade Boggs and Jim Leyritz weren't there. (This past week was the Yankees' annual HOPE Week, and Rivera did attend a connected event on Monday.)

Hideki Matsui (who didn't arrive until 2003, and isn't all that old, only 42) hit a home run off David Cone in the Old-Timers' Game. Reggie was on base at the time. Unfortunately, that homer was the highlight of the day.

Michael Pineda put together his 3rd straight decent start, going 6 innings, allowing 2 runs on 6 hits and 2 walks, striking out 8.

But the Yankees were already down 2-0 after 6. Aaron Hicks doubled to lead off the 3rd, and Austin Romine did the same in the 5th, but each was stranded. The Yankees loaded the bases with 2 out in the 5th, but Beltran flew out to blow the chance. Michael Fulmer, a 23-year-old rookie, the stereotypical "pitcher the Yankees have never seen before," shut them down.

Then Joe Girardi looked at his pitch count, saw that it was 114, and decided that Pineda could not be allowed to continue. And Girardi replaced Pineda with Swarzak, who allowed a homer that made it 4-0, and essentially put the game out of reach.

In the 8th, a single by Jacoby Ellsbury, a walk by Beltran and a single by Chase Headley got the Yankees on the board, but that was it. Tigers 4, Yankees 1. WP: Fulmer (7-1). SV: Rodriguez (19). LP: Pineda (3-7).

*

It's 10 weeks into a 26-week season, and the Yankees still haven't really gotten going. They're 31-32, 5 1/2 games (6 in the loss column) behind the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Eastern Division.

The Yankees are now in Denver for 2 games against the Colorado Rockies. Here are the projected starting pitchers:

* Tonight, 8:40 PM: Nathan Eovaldi vs. De La Rosa.

* Tomorrow, 3:10 PM: Ivan Nova vs. Bettis

Then it's 4 in Minneapolis against the Minnesota Twins. Pitching matchups have not yet been set.

The Yankees have to get back to that good run they were on that ended on Saturday, and stay on it. The occasional loss won't hurt much. Runs of 5 wins in 6 games, 8 in 10, 12 in 16, will put the Yankees in a position to make a run at the AL East.

But time is running out. They can't blow another chance.

June 14, 1926, 90 years ago: Donald Newcombe (no middle name) is born in Madison, Morris County, New Jersey, and grows up in Elizabeth, Union County. He might be the best pitcher not in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

This coming Wednesday night, the New York Red Bulls will visit the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Utah, to take on Real Salt Lake.

Note that they can call themselves "Real" -- in this case, not meaning "authentic" but meaning "royal" in Spanish, and pronounced "ree-AL" -- all they want, but nobody's going to confuse them with the now 11-time European Cup winners, Real Madrid. On the other hand, RSL have an MLS Cup, while Metro, to their dismay and that of their fans, do not.

Before You Go. We think of Utah, we think of the Wild West. Desert. National Monument Valley. We forget that it's also in the Rocky Mountains. I flipped out when I heard that it was chosen as the site of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Winter? Utah? But it's got mountains, and it's got snow. For years, the license plates even said, "Ski Utah."

Nevertheless, this is Utah in June. It's going to be hot. Very, very hot. The Salt Lake Tribune is predicting 97 degrees for daylight next Wednesday and Thursday, and high 60s for Wednesday evening. Wear light clothing, and this is not the away game to which you should wear a scarf. And keep hydrated: Dry heat or no, it's still heat.

Utah is in the Mountain Time Zone, 2 hours behind New York. Adjust your timepieces accordingly.

Tickets. Real Salt Lake averaged 20,160 fans per home game last season. That's nearly a sellout. Fortunately, as an away fan, you have the advantage of set-aside seats for fans of your team. Tickets are $30.

Getting There. It's 2,174 miles from Midtown Manhattan to downtown Salt Lake City, and 2,169 miles from Red Bull Arena in Harrison to Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy. In other words, if you're going, you're flying.

Because, driving, you'd have to get onto Interstate 80 West in New Jersey, and – though incredibly long, it’s also incredibly simple – you'll stay on I-80 for almost the entire trip, getting off at Exit 306 for downtown Salt Lake.

Not counting rest stops, you should be in New Jersey for an hour and a half, Pennsylvania for 5:15, Ohio for 4 hours, Indiana for 2:30, Illinois for 2:45, Iowa for 5 hours, Nebraska for 7:45, Wyoming for 6:45, and Utah for 1:30. That's about 37 hours, and with rest stops, and city traffic at each end, we're talking 2 full days.

That’s still faster than Greyhound and Amtrak. The station serving both, Salt Lake Central Station, is at 300 South 600 West. But the Greyhound trip averages about 49 hours, depending on the run, and will require you to change buses twice, most likely in Pittsburgh and Denver. And you'd have to leave no later than Monday morning at 7:10 to get there by Wednesday gametime. Round-trip fare is $378, but it can drop to $290 with advanced purchase.

On Amtrak, you would leave Penn Station on the Lake Shore Limited at 3:40 PM on Sunday, arrive at Union Station in Chicago at 9:45 AM Central Time on Monday, and switch to the California Zephyr at 2:00 PM, arriving at Salt Lake City at 11:05 PM Mountain Time on Tuesday, about 20 hours before kickoff. Getting back, the California Zephyr leaves Salt Lake City at 3:30 AM on Thursday, arrives in Chicago at 2:50 PM on Friday, and the Lake Shore Limited leaves at 9:30 PM and arrives in New York at 6:23 PM on Saturday. So we're talking a Sunday to the next week's Saturday operation by train. Round-trip fare: $743.

Newark to Salt Lake City is a relatively cheap flight, considering the distance. You can get a round-trip fare for less than the train, perhaps a little over $600. The problem is, you'll have to change planes, probably in Chicago, Dallas or Phoenix -- not, as you might guess, in Denver.

Once In the City. Founded in 1847 by Mormon leader Brigham Young (who famously found what he thought was the right spot for his followers and said, "This is the place") and named after the Great Salt Lake, Salt Lake City is the smallest anchor city in North American major league sports, except for Green Bay, Wisconsin: 191,000. But it has a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million and rising.

Society in the State and the City remain dominated by "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," a.k.a. the Mormons. So, in Star Trek IV, when Kirk, having traveled back in time with Spock, tells a woman that Spock was in Berkeley, California in the 1960s and "did a little too much LDS," it was a mistake, not a reference to Spock being a Mormon. I don't think there were very many Mormons at the University of California, Berkeley in those days. They were much more likely to have attended the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah State University in Logan, or Brigham Young University in Provo.

Nevertheless, like Austin in Texas, Little Rock in Arkansas, Atlanta in Georgia and Lincoln in Nebraska (but definitely not the suburbs of any of those), Salt Lake City is an increasingly liberal capital city in a very conservative State. I put it this way: In Salt Lake City, Mitt Romney is regarded as "severely conservative"; in the rest of Utah, he's "Massachusetts Moderate Mitt." (As Dick Smothers would say, "That was not a compliment.")

Salt Lake City has the most confusing street names I've ever seen. In place of numbered streets, such as "West 6th Street," they have "600 West," then divide them along the other access, so it reads as "South 600 West." I suppose that if you've lived there all your life, this would be second nature to you. Or North 200 Nature to you. But it would drive me bananas.

At any rate, Main Street is the east-west divider, with State Street taking the place of 100 East, and West Temple -- not "West Temple Street" or "West Temple Avenue" or anything like that, just "West Temple" -- taking the place of 100 West. There's also a North Temple and a South Temple, but not an East Temple. South Temple is the north-south divider. The exact centerpoint is Temple Square.

The Utah Transit Authority runs buses and TRAX light rail. Routes numbered 001 to 199 run east-to-west, 200 to 299 run north-to-south, 300-399 are express, 400 to 499 are intercounty, 500 to 599 are neighborhood routes, 600 to 699 are Weber/Davis County routes, 800 to 899 are Utah County Routes, and 900 to 999 are Ski Service/Seasonal routes.

A square bounded by Temple on the north, 200 East on the east, 500 South on the south, and 400 West on the west, plus the State Capitol, Salt Lake Central Station and Old Greektown Station, are a Free Fare Zone. Otherwise, within Salt Lake City, a one-way fare is $2.50, and a Day Pass is $6.25.

The "sales and use tax," as it's known in Utah, is 4.7 percent for the State, and rises to 6.85 percent in Salt Lake City.

Going In. The official address of Rio Tinto Stadium, or "The RioT," is 9256 South State Street, and it is 16 miles south of downtown Salt Lake City.

If you're driving in from downtown: Take I-15 South to Exit 295, and follow South 255 West and West 9400 South to the stadium. I've seen one source that says, "The stadium is unbelievable. The parking is just bad." This may be true: The map shows there isn't much parking on-site. However, the Jordan Commons mall, across State Street to the east, and the South Towne Exposition Center, across 9400 South to the south of that, may have more. I can find no reference to the cost of parking.

By public transit: Take the 701 TRAX, heading toward Draper, from City Center Station to Sandy Expo Station. It's a 32-minute ride. Then it's a 10-minute walk, west on 9400 South and north on the access road to the stadium.
The stadium, whose naming rights are owned by a British-based mining company (appropriate for a soccer team in a mining State, even if most of the company's business is in Australia) opened on October 9, 2008, and the Red Bulls were the visiting team, playing RSL to a 1-1 draw. The field is natural grass, and is aligned north-to-south.
RSL share the stadium with their development team, Real Monarchs SLC of the 3rd-tier United Soccer League (same league as NYRB II). The stadium hosted the 2009 MLS All-Star Game and the 2013 U.S. Open Cup Final. It has also hosted 3 U.S. soccer team matches, all victories, most recently a 2013 win over Cuba. The U.S. women's team also has a perfect 3-0 record there.

Food. The team comes right out and says it on their website: "Eating is not a spectator sport." Going clockwise around the stadium:

* The north end has Snowie (a snow cone stand), Real Faves, Twin Peaks, Chili Verde,Millcreek Pizza and Maverik Bonfire Grill.

* The northeast corner has Moki's Hawaiian and Totally Nuts.

* The east side has Border Burrito, Pass the Dog (a hot dog stand), Snowie, Chili Verde, Real Faves, Millcreek Pizza and another Snowie.

* The south end has Maverik Mayhem and Real Faves.

* The west side has Four Corners Smokehouse flanked by 2 Chili Verdes.

Team History Displays. RSL began play in 2005, and won the MLS Cup in 2009. But there is no banner honoring this in the fan-viewable areas of the stadium.

Oddly, while they have won a league title, they have never finished 1st in the Western Conference in the regular season, though they have finished 2nd 3 times. I suppose this makes them the Miami Marlins of MLS, except that their stadium isn't a garish airplane hangar, their uniforms aren't stupid, they've got insane heat but not the humidity to match, and their owner isn't a cheap asshole. (As far as I know.)

RSL were runners-up in the CONCACAF Champions League in 2011, and achieved a dubious "double" in 2013, losing the Finals of both the MLS Cup and the U.S. Open Cup.

(D.C. United won the American version of "The Double" in 1996, the Chicago Fire in 1998, and the Los Angels Galaxy in 2005. L.A. won the MLS Cup but lost the MLS Cup Final in 2002. D.C. won the Open Cup but lost the MLS Cup Final in 1997, L.A. did that in 2001, Chicago in 2003, Sporting Kansas City in 2004, the New England Revolution in 2007. But no other team has lost both Finals in the same season.)

There's also new viewable display for their only retired number, the 9 of Jason Kreis. That name should sound familiar to you: He was named MLS Most Valuable Player when helping the D.C. Scum to the 1999 title, and was the 1st head coach of New York City FC, before the club's pathetic performance led to him being fired after just 1 season.

He was acquired as RSL's 1st player, before their 1st season, in 2005, and he scored the 1st goal in club history -- which he also did for FC Dallas (then the Dallas Burn) in 1996. Early in the 2007 season, he retired as a player and was named RSL's head coach, a post he held through 2013, when he took over at Man City NYC. He's now an assistant to Jurgen Klinsmann on the national team -- which is ironic, because he played for it only 14 times, and never in a major tournament. (He could have been selected for the World Cup in 1994, 1998, 2002 or 2006; or for the CONCACAF Gold Cup in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003 or 2005. But he never was.)

RSL don't have a team hall of fame, and did not select an all-time team for their 10th Anniversary in 2015.

Stuff. The Real Salt Lake Team Store is in the northeast corner of the stadium. The usual team gear can be found there. Perhaps Utah's Western heritage could be invoked with the selling of cowboy hats with the team's logo on it.

Finding media about the team may be difficult. As far as I can tell, there's no books about the team, and the only video I could find was a record of their championship season, It's For Real - Real Salt Lake MLS Cup 2009 Champions.

During the Game. RSL's big rivalry is with the Denver-based Colorado Rapids, for a trophy called the Rocky Mountain Cup. The rivalry is a nasty one, much more so than the NBA's Utah Jazz and Denver Nuggets.

The Red Bulls are not the Rapids. But I saw one source that said, "If you are a supporter from another team STAY AWAY. The Real Salt Lake supporters in black shirts were rude and offensive. Security did nothing to prevent them from hassling and cursing away fans."

I don't know what this person meant by "hassling." But if it's anything up to and including what the Man City NYC fans tried outside Bello's last year, the collected RBNY fans should be able to handle it. The difference is, this time, you won't be on home turf. You will be outnumbered. Best not to escalate anything.

RSL holds auditions for National Anthem singers, instead of having a regular. Keeping with the "royal" image of Real Salt Lake, their mascot is Leo the Lion, as in "King of the Jungle."

In 2011, Branden Steineckert, the drummer for the punk band Rancid and an RSL fan, wrote the song "Believe" in honor of the club. It has since been adopted as the team's official anthem, being sung at the beginning of every home game, as well as after all goals scored by RSL.

Real Salt Lake has eight official supporters groups: Rogue Cavaliers Brigade (RCB -- "We have been called 'the best fans in the stadium,' our foes have called us 'scary,''childish' and 'immature'"), The Loyalists, Salt City United (SCU), Section 26, La Barra Real, Union de Real, The Royal Pride (TRP), and The Royal Army. Except for Section 26 and The Royal Army (which is dispersed throughout the stadium), all supporters groups sit in the south stands.

Their chants are mostly borrowed: "Carefree" from Chelsea, "When Real Goes Marching In,""Salt Lake 'Til I Die,""Can You Hear the (Opponent's Fans) Sing?", "Wings of an Eagle" (Sparrow), "Who the Fuck Is Colorado" (Are Man United), "Let's Go Fucking Mental,""I Believe That We Will Win," and an oldie but a goodie from American football, "Hit 'em again, hit 'em again, harder, harder!" They use "A rope, a tree, we'll hang the referee," but vary it with, "I'm blind, I'm deaf, I wanna be a ref!"

Like many teams, they've adapted the Beatles'"Yellow Submarine," in their case for a player who dives: "You go down like a Tijuana whore, a Tijuana whore, a Tijuana whore!"

After the Game. Salt Lake City is one of the safest cities in the country. You should have no trouble getting back to your car or your hotel all right.

If you want to go out for a postgame meal or drinks -- yes, alcohol can be purchased and consumed in Utah -- across South State Street, the Jordan Commons Mall has a Joe's Crab Shack and a Cold Stone Creamery. A little further down State are Crown Burgers and Iceberg Drive Inn.

Back in downtown Salt Lake, Lumpy's, at 145 S. Pierpont Avenue between 100 and 200 West, was recently cited on Thrillist's list of the best sports bars in every State as the best one in Utah.

As far as I know, there are no bars or restaurants anywhere near Salt Lake City that are known hangouts for New Yorkers.

If your game in Salt Lake is during the European soccer season (which this one isn't), there's one place that shows up whenever you look up area soccer bars: Fiddler's Elbow, at 1063 East 2100 South, 5 1/2 miles southeast of downtown, in the Sugarhouse area. Bus 209, then a 3-block walk east on 2100.

Sidelights. Aside from the Jazz, Salt Lake City doesn't have much sports history, but may still be worth a visit beyond the game.


For most of its history, it seated a little over 12,000 people. By the time the Jazz got good in the mid-1980s, among the NBA's 23 teams, only the Milwaukee Bucks had an arena with a smaller capacity. It was time to build a larger arena.

On of the last events there was an AC/DC concert on January 18, 1991, at which fans rushed the stage, and 3 of them were trampled to death. It took 20 minutes for someone to get word to the band about what had happened, and they stopped the concert. Most likely, you didn't hear about this (unless you were a fan of the band or a Utah native) because the Persian Gulf War had started 2 nights before, and that was all that TV news wanted to talk about. (As opposed to a similar incident at a Who concert in Cincinnati in 1979, which even got a WKRP episode about it.) A lawsuit was filed against the arena operators and the band, and was eventually settled out of court.

The Salt Palace was demolished in 1994. The Salt Palace Convention Center was built on the site, and includes the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and a concert hall, Abravanel Hall. 100 South Temple.

* Smith's Ballpark. This 15,411-seat ballpark, one of the largest in the minor leagues, has been the home of the Salt Lake team in the Pacific Coast League since 1994, known first as the Buzz, then as the Stingers starting in 2001, and as the Bees since 2006. They are currently a farm team of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

It was built on the site of Derks Field, which had been home to area baseball since 1947. The original Salt Lake City baseball team played from 1911 to 1984. As the Bees, they won the Pioneer League (then Class C) Pennant in 1946, 1948 and 1953, and the PCL Pennant in 1959. As the Salt Lake City Angels, they won the PCL Pennant in 1971. As the Salt Lake City Gulls, they won the PCL Pennant in 1979. But the current Bees have never won a Pennant, last making the Playoffs in 2013.

The Salt Lake Trappers won Pioneer League (now a Rookie League) Pennants in 1985, 1986, 1987 and 1991, making a total of 10 Pennants for Salt Lake City teams. En route to the 1987 Pennant, they won 29 straight games, to set a North American professional baseball record. In 1994, the Trappers moved upstate to become the Ogden Raptors. 1365 South West Temple, 2 1/2 miles south of Temple Square. Ballpark station on TRAX light rail.

* Rice-Eccles Stadium. Home to University of Utah football since 1998, this 45,807-seat stadium was the centerpiece of the 2002 Winter Olympics. It was built on the site of the previous Rice Stadium, built in 1927. It was Real Salt Lake's 1st home feld, from 2005 to 2008, and the U.S. soccer team beat Costa Rica there on June 4, 2005.
* Jon M. Huntsman Center. Home to University of Utah basketball since 1969, it was renamed for a major university contributor, the founder of Huntsman Chemical Corporation and the father of a former Governor. (Both Jon Huntsmans are still alive.)

Most notably, the arena then known as the Special Events Center hosted the 1979 NCAA Final Four, including the legendary Final, won by Earvin "Magic" Johnson's Michigan State over Larry Bird's Indiana State. It has hosted 81 NCAA Tournament games, 2nd only to the University of Dayton Arena's 91.

Both the stadium, at 451 1400 East, and the Huntsman Center, at 1825 East South Campus Drive, are about 3 miles east of downtown, and can be reached by TRAX light rail at University Campus South station.

Utah State is in Logan, 83 miles north on U.S. Route 89. It is not easily reachable by public transportation. BYU is in Provo, 45 miles south on I-15. TRAX does extend to Provo Central Station, taking about an hour, and then you can transfer to the 830 or 831 bus to the campus.

* Maverik Center. Originally known as the E Center, this 12,500-seat arena hosted the 2002 Winter Olympic hockey tournament. The East Coast Hockey League's Utah Grizzlies have played there since it opened in 1997. (Yes, I know: Utah is on neither the Pacific Coast nor the East Coast. I didn't name these leagues.) 3200 Decker Lake Drive, in the suburb of West Valley City. TRAX to Decker Lake station.

Don't count on Salt Lake City ever getting a team in a sport other than the NBA and MLS. Its metro area population would rank it 29th in MLB, 26th in the NFL, and 23rd in the NHL. For now, the closest teams in those leagues are in Denver, 523 miles away.

Utah has never produced a President. Mitt Romney, born in Detroit and living most of his life in Boston, but having a home in the Salt Lake suburb of Park City, was nominated for President in 2012, but didn't come all that close to winning. So there's no Presidential Library or Museum nearby.

The most famous Utahan remains Mormon leader Brigham Young, and his home, The Beehive House, is a Salt Lake City landmark. The spot where Young told his followers, "This is the place" is now the This Is The Place Heritage Park, a "living history" park, a "Mormon Williamsburg" if you prefer. 2601 Sunnyside Avenue South. It is part of the University of Utah campus, as is the Natural History Museum at 301 Wakara Way. Both can be reached by Bus 3 from Temple Square.

As I mentioned, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art is part of the new Salt Palace complex. The Museum for Speed includes exhibits about the speed records set at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats. 165 East 600 South. Bus 200 from Temple Square.

Golden Spike National Historic Site commemorates the meeting of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads to form the first transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. 6200 North 22300th Street West, in Brigham City, 86 miles northwest of Salt Lake City and around the Great Salt Lake itself, up I-15 and Utah Route 83. Ironically, it's not reachable by train. Nor by bus: You'd have to rent a car to see it. It's about 32 miles southeast of the actual location, usually referred to as Promontory Point, but actually named Promontory Summit. ("Promontory Point" is a different place.)

The tallest building in the State of Utah is the Wells Fargo Center in Salt Lake City, 422 feet high. (It should not be confused with the building of the same name that is the new Philadelphia sports arena.) Main Street and 300 South. But the most famous building in the State remains the Salt Lake Temple at Temple Square, the Mormons'"Vatican."

As the home of National Monument Valley, many of the films made in Utah have been Westerns, including Stagecoach, The Searchers, How the West Was Won, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- which gave its name to Kid portrayer Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival -- and the Wild West scenes from Back to the Future III. The beginning sequence of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with 18-year-old River Phoenix playing a 13-year-old Indy, was said by the credits to take place in "Utah, 1912," and was indeed filmed in the State. The spot in Forrest Gump where Forrest stops running is on U.S. Route 163 in Monument Valley.

As for Salt Lake City itself, a scene from Legally Blonde 2 was filmed at the Jazz' arena. The High School Musical movies were filmed at East High School, 3 miles east of downtown. 840 1300 East. Bus 220.

But the most famous movie shot in Salt Lake was set in California's San Fernando Valley in 1962: The Sandlot. The houses of Scotty Smalls and Benny "the Jet" Rodriguez are at the corner of Bryan Avenue and 2000 East, 5 miles southeast of downtown. Also Bus 220. The actual sandlot, renovated for the film's 20th Anniversary in 2013, is behind 1386 Glenrose Drive South at Navajo Street, 4 miles southwest of Temple Square. Bus 516. Patrick Renna, who played catcher Hamilton "The Great Hambino" Porter, filmed another movie in SLC, The Great Unknown, in 1997.

TV shows set and/or filmed in Utah include the late 1950s Western Union Pacific, Touched By an Angel (the angels' car had Utah license plates), its spinoff Promised Land, Everwood, and the Mormon-themed drama Big Love and reality series Sister Wives.

*

Like a lot of cities, Salt Lake City can be a bit of an acquired taste. But it's a good soccer town, and it could be a good roadtrip for a Red Bulls or NYCFC fan.

If I told you that the Yankees scored 13 runs in 2 games, you'd guess that they won at least 1 of them, right?

Yeah, about that...

On Tuesday night, the Yankees began a brief 2-game series at Coors Field in Denver, against the Colorado Rockies. They scored 10 runs. And lost.

Nathan Eovaldi didn't have it, giving up 6 runs in 4 innings in the thin mountain air. Kirby Yates and Richard Bleier each allowed an additional 3, and Andrew Miller 1 more. That's 13 runs, on 15 hits and 5 walks (1 of them intentional), plus an error and 2 wild pitches. What a mess.

A good pitching performance, or even a half-decent one, and the Yankees would have won it, but they didn't get it. They closed to within 6-3 in the 6th, and hung 7 on the Rox in the 8th to make it 12-10. Didi Gregorious had 2 hits, including a home run, and 3 RBIs. Jacoby Ellsbury, Starlin Castro, Chase Headley and Aaron Hicks also had 2 hits each, and Rob Refsnyder had 3. But the run that Miller allowed in the bottom of the 8th let the air out of the balloon.

Rockies 13, Yankees 10. WP: Jorge De La Rosa (3-4). SV: Carlos Estevez (2). LP: Eovaldi (6-3).

*

So yesterday afternoon, it was a day game after a night game, and that's never a good sign for the Yankees: They nearly always lose those, or so it seems.

Ivan Nova started, and he wasn't much better than Eovaldi, allowing 5 runs on 10 hits and 2 walks in just 5 innings.

The Yankees actually led 2-1 as late as the bottom of the 5th, but Nova fell apart. They got to within 5-3 in the 6th. Again, Gregorius and Hicks had 2 hits apiece. But, once again, one of the Yankees' supposedly solid relievers allowed an 8th inning run that killed the momentum. This time, it was Aroldis Chapman.

Rockies 6, Yankees 3. WP: Chad Bettis (5-5). SV: Estevez (3). LP: Nova (5-4).

*

The Yankees are now 31-34, 6 1/2 games behind the Baltimore Orioles and the Boston Red Sox (who are tied with each other) in the American League Eastern Division -- 7 in the loss column. On the other hand, nobody seems to be running away with the Division, either: The Sox and O's are going .578, a 94-win pace. Neither has a "team of destiny" aura about them.

Theoretically, the Yankees are about to catch a break: They're now in Minneapolis to start a 4-game series against the Minnesota Twins, who are only 20-45. In all of MLB, only the Atlanta Braves have a worse record (20-46).

Here are the projected starting pitchers:

* Tonight, 8:10 PM (7:10 local time): CC Sabathia vs. Kyle Gibson.

* Tomorrow, 8:10 PM: Masahiro Tanaka vs. Pat Dean.

* Saturday, 2:10 PM: Michael Pineda vs. Ricky Nolasco.

* Sunday,  2:10 PM: Eovaldi vs. Ervin Santana.

Come on you Bombers!

The Minnesota Twins are not having a good season. They're making the 2016 Yankees, who aren't looking particularly impressive, look like the 1998 Yankees.

Masahiro Tanaka took the mound in the bottom of the 1st with a tasty 4-run lead. That's because, in the top of the 1st, Jacoby Ellsbury led off the game with a single, Rob Refsnyder doubled him home, Carlos Beltran hit a home run (his 17th of the season), Alex Rodriguez grounded out, Starlin Castro walked, Chase Headley doubled, and Didi Gregorius singled in Castro -- but not Headley.

(So 1 out of 2 doubles with a man on 1st immediately scored a run. Sad to say, that's an improvement. And Headley should have scored on Gregorius' single.)

Tanaka allowed a run in the 2nd, but the Yankees picked up 3 more in the 3rd, and another in the 4th, and it was 8-1 most of the way.

Joe Girardi let Tanaka go 8 innings, because he threw only 110 pitches. Could Nick Goody be trusted with a 7-run lead in the bottom of the 9th? Sort of: He did allow a home run to Eduardo Escobar. But he didn't let the Twins get any closer.

Yankees 8, Twins, 2. WP: Tanaka (4-2). No save. LP: Pat Dean (1-3).

The series continues this afternoon. Michael Pineda starts for the Bronx Bombers, Ricky Nolasco for the hosts.

*

Elsewhere in baseball last night, the Boston Red Sox lost 8-4 to the Seattle Mariners, and the Baltimore Orioles lost 13-3 to the Toronto Blue Jays. Both good news for the Yankees. The Mets lost 5-1 to the Atlanta Braves, which doesn't help the Yankees, but it does make our fans chuckle.

And the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Milwaukee Brewers 3-2 in 10 innings last night. Vin Scully saw a player from Venezuela in the game, went on a rant about socialism.

Right, just what the world needs: Another rich old white man who got rich through something other than his own hard workcomplaining about a system that might make him pay a little bit more in taxes.

Scully, I thought you were a better man than that. I guess I was wrong.

Next Saturday, the New York Red Bulls will go to Ohio to play the Columbus Crew.

Before You Go. Columbus can get really hot in the summer. The Columbus Dispatch website is predicting low 90s for Saturday afternoon, and mid-70s for the evening. It could be very uncomfortable. Dress lightly, leave the scarf at home, and stay hydrated.

Columbus is in the Eastern Time Zone, so you won't have to set your clocks back.

Tickets. The Crew averaged 16,513 fans per home game last season. That's the 5th-lowest in MLS, ahead of only D.C., Chicago, Dallas and Colorado. Florida, Arizona, the Islanders and Carolina. It's also about 82 percent of capacity, and only D.C., Chicago, Dallas and... the Red Bulls did worse.

Which does beg the question: Why did Columbus get an MLS team? Why not Cleveland or Cincinnati, the more proven major league cities? In the case of Cincinnati, it's probably because somebody thought that Cincinnati couldn't support a team by itself. As for Cleveland, native Drew Carey, a part-owner of MLS' Seattle Sounders, explained to me on Twitter (He is as nice as he seems to be on TV) that they didn't have a suitable stadium, and that they didn't want to have 50,000 empty seats in the Browns' new stadium.

At any rate, you should be able to walk up to the box office 5 minutes before puck-drop, and buy any seat you can afford. However, fans of visiting teams are placed in Sections 115, 116 and 117, behind the south goal. Tickets are $27.

Getting There. It’s 536 miles from Times Square in New York to Capitol Square in Columbus, and 547 miles from Red Bull Arena to MAPFRE Stadium.

Flying may seem like a good option, although with a destination city as close as Columbus, you shouldn't have to change planes. But you do, in either Philadelphia or Charlotte. It's $518 round-trip from Newark Liberty to Port Columbus International Airport.

Amtrak does not go to Columbus. Its main train station was demolished in 1979 to make way for the Columbus Convention Center (which is too bad, because it was just 2 blocks from where the Blue Jackets' Nationwide Arena ended up being built), and it is now the largest metropolitan area in America that doesn't have Amtrak access.

Greyhound’s run between New York and Columbus is about 14 hours, with no change of buses necessary, costing $306, and dropping to as little as $120 with advanced-purchase. The station is at 111 E. Town Street, at 3rd Street, downtown, 2 blocks south of the State House.

If you decide to drive, it’s far enough that it will help to get someone to go with you and split the duties, and to trade off driving and sleeping. You’ll need to get on the New Jersey Turnpike. Take it to Exit 14, to Interstate 78. Follow I-78 west all the way through New Jersey, to Phillipsburg, and across the Delaware River into Easton, Pennsylvania. Continue west on I-78 until reaching Harrisburg. There, you will merge onto I-81. Take Exit 52 to U.S. Route 11, which will soon take you onto I-76. This is the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the nation’s first superhighway, opening in 1940.

The Turnpike will eventually be a joint run between I-76 and Interstate 70. Once that happens, you’ll stay on I-70, all the way past Pittsburgh, across the little northern pandhandle of West Virginia, and into Ohio all the way to Columbus.

If you do it right, you should spend about an hour and 15 minutes in New Jersey, 5 hours and 30 minutes in Pennsylvania, 15 minutes in West Virginia, and about 2 hours and 15 minutes in Ohio. That’s about 9 hours and 15 minutes. Counting rest stops, preferably halfway through Pennsylvania and just after you enter Ohio, and accounting for traffic in both New York and Columbus, it should be no more than 11 hours, which would save you time on Greyhound, if not flying.

Once In the City. Founded 200 years ago, in 1816, Columbus, named for Christopher Columbus, celebrates its 200th Anniversary this year. It is easily the largest city in Ohio by population, with about 823,000 people, to a mere 397,000 for Cleveland and 298,000 for Cincinnati. But its metropolitan area has just 2.4 million people, still larger than Cincy's 2.2 million but considerably smaller than Cleveland's 3.5 million, because Cleveland has a much larger suburban area.

High Street is the street address divider between East and West, and Broad Street serving as the divider between North and South. The southeaster corner of High & Broad includes Capitol Square, with the State House. The sales tax in the State of Ohio is 5.75 percent, rising to 7.5 percent in Franklin County, including the City of Columbus.

The Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) runs buses, but no rapid transit rail system: No subway, no elevated, no light rail, no commuter rail. The fare is $2.00.

Going In. Columbus Crew SC (Soccer Club) moved into Columbus Crew Stadium when it opened in 1999. It was known until 2014 as Columbus Crew Stadium before naming rights were sold to a Spain-based insurance company (Mapfre the company doesn't spell its name in ALL CAPS, but the stadium's name usually is), the Crew moved into the 22,555-seat MAPFRE Stadium after playing their 1st 3 seasons (1996-98) before 90,000 empty seats at Ohio Stadium.
The official address is One Black and Gold Blvd., at 20th Avenue, about 3 1/2 miles north of downtown, near the Indianola Shopping Center. Number 4 bus, then a 15-minute walk: 2 blocks north on 4th Street, 2 blocks east on Hudson Street, then south on Silver Drive. If you drive in, parking is $10.
America's 1st soccer-specific stadium, it was built at a cost of just $39.3 million -- and looks it. Ohio Stadium may have been vast, but it is an architectural marvel; MAPFRE Stadium is not: From the outside, and even a bit from the inside, it looks like an oversize high school football (gridiron) stadium.

They won the MLS Cup in 2008, and reached the Final again last year, losing to the Portland Timbers despite playing at home. The Stadium also hosted the MLS Cup Final in 2001 (San Jose beating Los Angeles), 10 games of the U.S. National Team (including 4 games against Mexico, all 2-0 or "Dos A Cero" wins), and 6 games of the 2003 Women's World Cup (including a 3-0 U.S. win over North Korea). It's hosted the 2001 and 2003 NCAA men's soccer championships, high school football, and concerts.
Food. Being in Big Ten Country, where tailgate parties are practically a sacrament, you would expect the Columbus soccer stadium to have lots of good options. Unfortunately, the club website does not include a concessions map, so I can't tell you where these items are sold.

Levy Retail runs their concessions, as they do for all athletic facilities at nearby Ohio State University. According to the Crew fan blog Massive Report, "MAPFRE Stadium will now include Columbus staples, Schmidt's Sausage Haus, Jeni's Ice Cream, and Hot Chicken Takeover." They also cite a "200-square-foot 'Drink Local' are conversion of the southwest concession stands near Gate 6, which will feature Columbus and Ohio beers."

Team History Displays. The Crew won the MLS Cup in 2008, and reached the Final last year. They won the Supporters' Shield in 2004, 2008 and 2009. They won the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup in 2002, and reached the Final in 1998 and 2010. However, there appears to be no commemoration for any of these achievements in the areas viewable by fans.

The Crew have no retired numbers, and no team hall of fame. Although they are a charter MLS franchise, they have neither a 10th nor a 20th Anniversary All-Time Team. However, Hunt, one of the league's founders, and the Crew's founding owner (and, of course, better known as the founder of the American Football League and the Kansas City Chiefs), has a statue in his memory outside the stadium.
Stuff. The Crew SC Shop is in the southwest corner of the stadium, inside Gate 5. They sell the usual stuff you would find in an MLS team's gift shop, including jersey customization. Whether they sell yellow hard hats like the ones on their club badge, I don't know.

Unique among MLS teams -- unless you buy the San Jose Earthquakes' attempt to link themselves to previous teams that had that name -- the Crew are the oldest team in their metropolitan area. After 20 years, they do have some history. Steve Sirk of The Columbus Dispatch has chronicled this in 2 books about the team: A Massive Season: Sirk's Notebook Chronicles the 2008 Columbus Crew; and Kirk Urso: Forever Massive: Memories from the 2012 Columbus Crew. A DVD of the 2008 MLS Cup Final is also available -- but you don't want that, because the team they beat was the Red Bulls. (November 23, 2008, at what's now named the StubHub Center in Carson, California. It remains the furthest the Red Bulls have ever gone.)

During the Game. Since Columbus is not Cleveland or Cincinnati, and neither of those cities has an MLS team, with the Crew standing in for both, the Cleveland-Cincinnati rivalry does not come into play. Since Columbus is not Cleveland, and Pittsburgh doesn't have an MLS team, the Cleveland-Pittsburgh rivalry is also absent. And since Detroit doesn't have an MLS team, the Ohio-Michigan rivalry doesn't happen here, either.

(In other words, a person living in Cleveland can have legitimate rivalries with Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, and Detroit/Ann Arbor, with no real inconsistency. But that's not that strange: A Yanke Fan can have Boston as a rival in baseball, Philadelphia in football -- and a Met fan can have it the other way around -- and another Tri-State Area team in hockey.)

The Crew do have rivalries with the Chicago Fire and Toronto FC (the trillium is the official flower of Ontario and the official wildflower of Ohio, so the Crew and TFC play for an annual trophy called the Trillium Cup). But the Red Bulls aren't particularly rivals with the Crew. You should be safe in your club gear.

With their logo showing 3 men wearing hard hats, the Crew bill themselves as "America's Hardest Working Team." Since they did get to their league's final last year, there is some justification for that. They are one of the few MLS teams to explain their badge on their club website: It's round, as are most German clubs' badges, due to Columbus' German heritage; an inner ring, making it look like an O for Ohio; diagonal stripes, to suggest upward movement; the number 96, to note their status as a charter MLS club in 1996; and a checkerboard pattern, as "a symbol of our passionate fans and their unwavering support." (How a checkerboard pattern reflects that is a mystery to me. The University of Tennessee does that, but Columbus is pretty far from anywhere in Tennessee.)

The Crew hold auditions for singing the National Anthem, as opposed to having a regular singer. For their 1st 19 seasons, their mascot was Crew Cat, but in 2015 he was replaced by S.C., who is billed as Crew Cat's son.

The north end of the stadium is home to the supporters' organizations, now collectively called the Nordecke -- German for "north corner." The groups include the Hudson Street Hooligans (HSH, in Section 141), Crew Supporters Union (CSU), and La Turbina Amarilla (Spanish for "the Yellow Engine"). These groups tend to wave black and gold checkerboard flags, and also Ohio State Flags (not to be confused with Ohio State University flags) with the red, white and blue color scheme replaced with the Crew's black and gold.
HSH are not actually hooligans, but they are, to borrow the word that first gained usage in Italy, "ultras." Their motto, "Ne Cum Pedicabo," is Latin for "Don't fuck with us." They spell it out on their website: "It is definitely an adult section, for the most diehard -- be warned." Message received: Visiting fans trying to "take" the section, as in the style of English hooligans of old, are in for an unpleasant surprise.

In 2003, at a time when Columbus was the smallest market in MLS, someone noted that Kevin Keegan, legendary as a Liverpool and Newcastle player but not so successful as a manager anywhere, had taken the Manchester City job and, in response to the hated Manchester United, called City "a massive club." So Crew fans picked it up, and ran with the ironic word, until they won the 2008 MLS Cup and actually became, at least by North American standards, a massive club. Now, the word "Massive" goes on just about anything Crew-centric, and usually refers to the players' heart and the fans' passion.
Instead of the "O! H! I! O!" chant started at Ohio State, and picked up by funk band the Ohio Players and later by the Blue Jackets, the main chant is that of the city: "Co! lum! bus!" They do "When the Crew Go Marching In,""We love ya, we love ya, we love ya, and where you go we'll follow,""I Just Can't Get Enough," and a variation on a traditional English soccer chant: "I know I am, I swear I am, Columbus 'til I die!" And they roast their rivals, as many other teams do, to the tune of "My Darling Clementine":

Build a bonfire
build a bonfire
put Chicago on the top
put Toronto in the middle
and we'll burn the fucking lot!

They borrow from Elvis Presley with, "I can't help falling in love with Crew!" and the Beatles with, "We all cheer for the yellow soccer team!" and "Hey, Crew, don't make it bad... "
After the Game. The area is called Old North Columbus, but the stadium is in the middle of a triangle formed by Interstate 71, a railroad and the State Fair complex. So it's not really in any neighborhood, much less a bad one. As long as you didn't instigate anything you (and, if you drove in, your car) should be safe.

As for where to go for a postgame meal or drink, there's a Frisch's Big Boy (Frisch's Restaurants owns the trademark for the former Bob's Big Boy in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky) at 2375 Silver Drive, a 5-minute walk from the north end of the stadium. If fast food isn't what you're looking for, you may have to get back to downtown Columbus.

The most famous bar, perhaps in the entire State of Ohio, is the Varsity Club, across from the OSU Ice Arena and 3 blocks north of Ohio Stadium. 278 W. Lane Avenue, at Tuttle Park Place. High Street, the eastern boundary of the OSU campus, has been described as "a zoo" on home football Saturdays, although that won't affect you as a visiting soccer fan.

I can find no references to places where New Yorkers gather in or around Columbus: The sites that usually list bars for football fans in exile don't seem to have references to where Yankees, Mets, Giants or Jets fans go when they live nearby.

If your Red Bulls visit to Columbus coincides with the European soccer season (this one doesn't), and you want to watch your favorite club while you're in town, you can try one of these:

* Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea: Fado, 4022 Townsfair Way. Number 16 bus. If you don't see your club listed (especially if it's not an English one), this is probably going to be your best shot.

* Arsenal: Hendoc's Pub, 2375 N. High Street at Maynard Avenue, about 3 1/2 miles north of downtown and 2 miles west of MAPFRE Stadium. Number 2 bus from downtown. Warning: This is the home bar for the Hudson Street Hooligans, and some of them might be in attendance. If you are discreet, or at least polite, about your Metro fandom, you should be fine. But don't try anything stupid: You know what happened when NYCFC fans tried to get into Bello's last year.

* Everton: 4th Street Bar & Grill, 1810 N. 4th Street at 16th Avenue. Number 4 bus.

* Tottenham: Zauber Brewing, 909 W. 5th Avenue at Delashmut Avenue. Number 5 bus.

Sidelights. Columbus may have only 1 major league team if you don't count MLS (and, by now, you should), but it's a decent sports town, and here’s some of the highlights:

* Nationwide Arena. The Columbus Blue Jackets and their original home were inaugurated in 2000, about a mile northwest of the State House, in the Arena District, near the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers, in an area that includes their minor-league ballpark and their Convention Center.
The Arena has hosted NCAA Tournament basketball, "professional wrestling" and concerts. Knowing of Ohio's pivotal role in national elections, President Barack Obama held one of his final 2012 campaign rallies, with Bruce Springsteen and Jay-Z performing.

Despite its youth, the Arena already has a tragic history. On March 16, 2002, 13-year-old Brittanie Cecil was struck in the head by a deflected puck during the Blue Jackets' game against the Calgary Flames, and died from her injuries 2 days later. As far as can be determined, she is the only fan in the NHL's nearly 100-year history to be killed in a game-related accident. As a result of her death, the NHL mandated safety netting around the goals in all its arenas.

The official address is 200 W. Nationwide Blvd. Several bus lines will get you there.
* Huntington Park. Just 2 blocks west of Nationwide Arena, at 330 Huntington Park Lane, this 10,100-seat stadium has been home to the International League's Columbus Clippers since 2009. Since moving in, they've won Pennants in 2010, 2011 and 2015, giving them a total of 10 Pennants.

* Cooper Stadium. Opened in 1932 as Red Bird Stadium, and renamed for Harold Cooper, the Franklin County Commissioner and team owner who kept professional baseball in the city in the 1950s, this stadium was one of the most successful ballparks in the minor leagues. It was also one of the largest, seating 17,500 people at its peak, and 15,000 in its last years.

Initially, it was home to the Columbus Red Birds, a farm team of the St. Louis Cardinals (also nicknamed the Redbirds), and to a Negro League team, the Columbus Blue Birds. The Red Birds won Pennants in 1933, 1934, 1937, 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1950.

The Cardinals moved them to Omaha in 1955, and a new team was brought in, the Columbus Jets, a farm club first of the Kansas City Athletics, then of the Pittsburgh Pirates. This led to the stadium being renamed Jets Stadium. They won the Pennant in 1961 and 1965, before being moved to Charleston, West Virginia after the 1970 season. The Pirates restored Columbus as their Triple-A team in 1977, the Yankees took over in 1979, the Washington Nationals in 2007, and the Cleveland Indians in 2009.

The Clippers were a Yankee farm team from 1979 to 2006, infamous as the bad end of "The Columbus Shuttle," George Steinbrenner's pipeline from Triple-A ball to the Yankees and back. As a Yankee farm team, they won IL Pennants in 1979, 1980, 1981, 1987, 1991, 1992 and 1996. All told, Columbus baseball teams have won 19 Pennants.

Cooper Stadium was closed after the 2008 season, but instead of being demolished, it has been converted into an auto racing facility. 1155 W. Mound Street, 3 miles west of downtown. Number 6 bus.

An April 24, 2014 article in The New York Times, showing baseball fandom by ZIP Code, shows that, despite being considerably closer to Cincinnati (107 miles) than to Cleveland (143 miles), the Indians still have a slight edge on baseball fandom in Columbus, on the average having 28 percent to the Reds' 22 percent. The September 2014 issue of The Atlantic Monthly had a similar map, showing that the Browns are more popular in Columbus than the Bengals.

Cincinnati is the nearest MLB and NFL city, while Cleveland is the nearest NBA city. If it had teams in those sports, Columbus would rank 29th in population in MLB, 26th in the NFL, and 25th in the NBA. So don't hold your breath.

* Ohio State. The most famous building in the State of Ohio is Ohio Stadium, or, as ABC Sports' legendary college football announcer Keith Jackson called it, The Big Horseshoe On the Olentangy -- home field of the school usually referred to as "THE... Ohio State University." How big is it? The official seating capacity is currently listed as 104,944, making it the 4th-largest non-racing stadium in the world. 411 Woody Hayes Drive (formerly Woodruff Avenue), 3 1/2 miles north of downtown. Number 18 bus.
Value City Arena opened in 1998, at 555 Borror Drive, across the Olentangy River from the Stadium. The Bill Davis Stadium (baseball) and the Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium (track & field) are part of this complex as well.

From 1956 to 1998, Ohio State played basketball at St. John Arena, across from the Stadium at 410 Woody Hayes Drive. It was at this arena that the Buckeyes played the 1959-60 season in which they won the National Championship. Coach Fred Taylor is in the Basketball Hall of Fame, along with 3 players on this team, although 1 is in as a coach: Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, and "sixth man" Bob Knight.

It was also at St. John that Elvis Presley sang on June 25, 1974. Early in his carer, Elvis played 2 shows at the Franklin County Veterans Memorial Auditorium on May 26, 1956. Built in 1955, it was demolished in 2015, and an Ohio Veterans Museum is being built on the site. 300 W. Broad Street, on the Scioto River, just across from downtown. (The Beatles played in Cleveland and Cincinnati, but not in Columbus.)

Columbus has never hosted an NCAA Final Four. Nor has any other Ohio city. The 13,435-seat University of Dayton Arena, built in 1969, 74 miles west of Columbus, has hosted more NCAA Tournament games than any other facility: 107.

* Indianola Park. Home ground of the Columbus Pandhandles, one of the 1st professional football teams, from 1901 to 1926, before the glut of early pro football doomed them. Along with the Canton Bulldogs, in the 1910s they dominated the Ohio League, one of the NFL's predecessors.

They are best remembered for the 7 Nesser brothers (sons of German immigrants, there were 8, but Pete, 1877-1954, the largest of them, didn't like football and didn't play; there were also 4 sisters): John (1875-1931), Phil (1880-1959), Ted (1883-1941), Fred (1887-1967), Frank (1889-1953), Al (1893-1967) and Ray (1898-1969). Knute Rockne, who did play a little pro football before going back to Notre Dame to coach, said, "Getting hit by a Nesser is like falling off a moving train." In 1921, Ted's son Charlie (1903-1970) played with the Panhandles, marking the only time a father and son have played in the NFL at the same time, let alone for the same team.

The Indianola Shopping Center is now on the site, 3 miles north of downtown. 1900 N. 4th Street at 19th Avenue. Number 4 bus.

Currently without an NBA team, a May 12, 2014 article in The New York Times shows basketball allegiances in the Columbus area are mixed between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Miami Heat. Gee, you think LeBron James having played for both teams might have something to do with that?

The forementioned Ohio Veterans Museum will probably be completed in early 2017.

Ohio Village is a recreated 19th Century community, sort of an updated, Midwestern version of Colonial Williamsburg. 800 E. 17th Avenue, at Velma Avenue. Number 4 bus. The Columbus Museum of Art is at 480 E. Broad Street, at Washington Avenue. Number 10 bus. The Center of Science & Industry (COSI) is across from the Veterans Memorial Auditorium site, at 333 W. Broad Street, at Washington Blvd. Number 10 bus. The James Thurber House, home to the legendary author and humorist, is at 77 Jefferson Avenue,at N. 11th Street. Number 6 bus.

Farther afield -- with no public transportation available -- the Armstrong Air & Space Museum is in the hometown of Neil Armstrong, the late 1st man to walk on the Moon. 500 Apollo Drive in Wapakoneta, just off Interstate 75, 87 miles northwest of downtown Columbus.

No Presidents have come from Columbus, but Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley lived there while they were Governor of Ohio. Alas, there was no official Governor's Mansion during their times in that office. The Ohio Governor's Residence and Heritage Garden has only been the Governor's Mansion since 1957. 358 N. Parkview, in Bexley, about 4 miles northeast of downtown. Number 10 bus.

McKinley's historical sites are all in or near his hometown of Canton, and I'll discuss them in my Cleveland trip guides. Hayes' home, Spiegel Grove, and his grave and Presidential Library are in Fremont, 106 miles north of Columbus. Warren G. Harding's hometown of Marion is 51 miles north. Dying in office in 1923, he remains the last President to have lived in Ohio. As with both locations, there is no public transportation to there from any of Ohio's major cities.

The tallest building in Columbus is the Rhodes State Office Tower, named for the longtime Governor who ordered the Ohio National Guard to fire on the protestors at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. Completed in 1974, it is 629 feet high, and every bit as ugly as the Administration it memorializes. 30 E. Broad Street, downtown, across from the State House.

While lots of movies have been shot and/or set in Ohio, Columbus hasn't been a popular location for them. There have been 2 TV shows set in Columbus: Family Ties, the 1982-89 NBC sitcom that introduced us to Michael J. Fox; and Man Up!, an ABC sitcom set in nearby Gahanna that tanked and was canceled after 13 episodes in 2011.

*

Columbus may be Ohio's largest city, but aside from being the State capital, it's known for 2 things: Ohio State football, and Ohio State anything else. But a Columbus Crew game could be fun, and it's close enough for a fairly easy New York Red Bulls roadtrip.

Okay, everybody who wasn't born yet the last time a Cleveland sports team won a World Championship, raise your hand.

Not so fast, person who was born in 1965! Nor you, 4-week-old Mackenzie!

Last night, the Cleveland Cavaliers won Game 7, away to the defending World Champions, and won their 1st World Championship in 46 seasons of trying.

Even LeBron James was thought incapable of bringing Cleveland a title -- although he had tried, a few times.

Cleveland has suffered many close calls since their last title. To wit:

* January 2, 1966: The defending NFL Champion Cleveland Browns lose the NFL Championship Game to the Green Bay Packers.

* December 29, 1968: The Browns lose the NFL Championship Game to the Baltimore Colts.

* January 4, 1970: The Browns lose the NFL Championship Game to the Minnesota Vikings.

* May 18, 1976: After beating the defending Eastern Conference Champion Washington Bullets in a Game 7 thriller at the Richfield Coliseum ("The Miracle of Richfield"), the Cavaliers lose Game 6 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals at home to the Boston Celtics. No shame in that, and they did well to get to the NBA's Final Four in only their 6th season. But they would win only 2 Playoff games over the next 11 years, and didn't reach the Conference Finals again for 16 years.

* January 4, 1981: The Browns lose an AFC Divisional Playoff to the Oakland Raiders on a late interception.

* January 11, 1987: The Browns lose the AFC Championship Game to the Denver Broncos despite John Elway needing 98 yards in 5:39 just to send it to overtime. ("The Drive")

* January 17, 1988: The Browns lose another AFC Championship Game to the Broncos when Earnest Byner, who'd run wild most of the game, fumbled at the goal line instead of scoring a tying touchdown.

* May 7, 1989: The Cavs lose the deciding Game 5 of a 1st Round series at home to the Chicago Bulls when Michael Jordan hits a last-second jumper. ("The Shot.")

* January 14, 1990: The Browns lose another AFC Championship Game to the Broncos, although this time there was no shocking moment.

* May 17, 1992: The Cavs have probably their best team yet, and reach the Conference Finals. But Jordan and the Bulls, now defending NBA Champions, stand in the way again, and win in 6 games, including winning Games 3 and 6 in Richfield. (To their credit, the Cavs did win Game 2 in Chicago.)

* October 28, 1995: After winning their 1st American League Pennant since 1954, the Cleveland Indians lose Game 6 of the World Series to the Atlanta Braves, 1-0. They only got 1 hit in the game. No shame in losing, but they went out rather meekly.

* November 6, 1995: Browns owner Art Modell announces that he's moving the Browns to Baltimore, where they become the Ravens. Northern Ohio had 20 days to be happy about finally winning their 1st Pennant in 41 years, then this shit happens.

* October 26, 1997: The Indians lead the Florida Marlins 2-1 in Game 7 of the World Series, needing only 2 more outs to win their 1st World Series since 1948. But closer Jose Mesa can't hold the lead, and the Indians lose in 11 innings. They haven't won another Pennant since: That's 2 Pennants in 62 years, and they haven't won the World Series in 68 years.

* October 13, 1998: After beating the Yankees in the previous year's AL Division Series, the Indians lead them 2 games to 1, with Games 4 and 5 at home, and lose 3 straight.

* September 12, 1999: The Browns do come back, as NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue ordered Modell to give up all rights to the Browns' name, records and trademarks, and an expansion franchise created; but their 1st game is a disaster, a 43-0 loss to the arch-rival Pittsburgh Steelers; their 1st season is a disaster, 2-14; and only once in their 1st 17 seasons have they made the Playoffs.

* January 5, 2003: In their only Playoff game so far, the new Browns blow a 24-7 lead and lose to the Steelers, of all teams, 36-33.

* June 14, 2007: The Cavs reach the NBA Finals for the 1st time in their 37-year history, but get swept by the San Antonio Spurs.

* October 21, 2007: After leading the ALCS 3 games to 1 over the Boston Red Sox, with Game 5 at home, the Indians drop 3 straight, getting blown out by an aggregate 30-5. They haven't been back to the Playoffs in the 8 full seasons since. 2016 isn't looking good for them, either.

* July 8, 2010: LeBron James, the Akron native who'd been the Cavs' superstar, announces in an ESPN special titled The Decision that, with his contract having run out, he's going to sign with the Miami Heat, and team with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. He plays 4 seasons with them, and reaches the Finals all 4 years, winning the title in 2012 and 2013. Meanwhile, the Cavs stink.

* June 16, 2015: With LeBron having come back -- local fans were caught on video burning his jerseys, but now all was forgiven -- the Cavs lose the NBA Finals to the Golden State Warriors in 6 games, with the Dubs winning at Quicken Loans Arena in Games 4 and 6.

* June 19, 2016: The Finals was Warriors vs. Cavaliers again. And the Warriors had set an NBA record, going 73-9 in the regular season. And led the Cavs 3 games to 1. In the NBA's 70-year history, no team had ever overcome such a deficit in the Finals. But the Cavs did, and LeBron ended their Cavs' 46-year quest for their 1st title.

Indeed, it was the 1st World Championship won by any Cleveland/Northern Ohio team since...

December 27, 1964. The NFL Championship Game. "Super Bowl -II," if you prefer. The Browns beat the Baltimore Colts 27-0. Gary Collins (not to be confused with the TV game show host of the same name) caught 3 touchdown passes from Frank Ryan (Number 13 in the photo above, the only man with a Ph.D. in mathematics ever to play in the NFL), Lou Groza kicked 3 field goals, and Jim Brown (Number 32 in the photo above) rushed for 114 yards, for the only championship of his career.

That's 51 years and nearly 6 months. How long has that been?

*

There are 33 players from the '64 Browns still alive, including Ryan, Collins, and Pro Footall Hall-of-Famers Brown, Leroy Kelly and Paul Warfield (better known as a winner of Super Bowls VII and VIII with the Miami Dolphins).

The Browns played at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, which has been demolished, and replaced on the same site by what's now named FirstEnergy Stadium. The Indians also played at Municipal Stadium, and have since moved to what's now named Progressive Field.

The Cavaliers didn't exist yet. They wouldn't until the NBA expansion of 1970, and they moved into the Cleveland Arena, which they shared with the Cleveland Barons, a minor-league hockey team. Together, they moved into the Coliseum, out in Richfield, about halfway between Cleveland and Akron, designed solely for fans with cars. It was awful. The Barons were replaced by an NHL team of the same name in 1976 (the former California Golden Seals), but after just 2 years were merged with another bankrupt team, the Minnesota North Stars.

In 1994, the Cavs moved downtown to what's now the Quicken Loans Arena, and have shared it with a succession of minor-league teams. The Cleveland Arena and the Coliseum have joined Municipal Stadium in the rubble of history.

The only NFL stadiums in use in 1964 that will be in use in 2016 were Lambeau Field in Green Bay and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The only Major League Baseball parks still in use are Fenway Park in Boston, Wrigley Field in Chicago, and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. There are no current NBA or NHL arenas that were in use in 1964.

MLB, the NFL and the NBA had gone coast-to-coast, and MLB and the NFL had gone into the South. But the NHL still had only 6 teams: Montreal, Toronto, Boston, New York, Detroit and Chicago. The NFL was competing with the AFL. There was a pro football team in Baltimore and one in Houston; and an MLB team in Washington and one in Milwaukee; but none of those teams were the teams that are in those cities now. And both the Browns and the team they beat in that '64 title game, the Baltimore Colts, have been moved, and replaced with new teams in those cities -- indeed, the old Cleveland team is the new Baltimore team.

The Astrodome, the 1st domed stadium, was under construction. There was no artificial turf.

Since 1964, between them, the Chicago Bulls, the San Antonio Spurs, the New York Islanders, the Edmonton Oilers and the Pittsburgh Penguins have won 24 World Championships. None of those teams even existed back then.

This will be the 1st time I'm doing this while including MLS, the WNBA and the CFL.

Chronologically by end of their regular season: NFL in December, CFL in November, MLS in November, MLB in September, WNBA in September, NBA in June, NHL in June.

Last qualified for their league's Playoffs in calendar year 2016: Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics, Charlotte Hornets, Cleveland Cavaliers, Dallas Mavericks, Detroit Pistons, Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies, Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, Portland Trail Blaers, San Antonio Spurs, Toronto Raptors; Anaheim Ducks, Chicago Blackhawks, Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings, Florida Panthers, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota Wild, Nashville Preadtors, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, San Jose Sharks, St. Louis Blues, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals.

2015: Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans, Kansas City Chiefs, Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots, Pittsburgh Steelers, Seattle Seahawks, Washington Redskins; Edmonton Eskimos, Ottawa Redblacks, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Calgary Stampeders, Toronto Argonauts, British Columbia Lions; Columbus Crew, D.C. United, FC Dallas, Los Angeles Galaxy, Montreal Impact, New England Revolution, New York Red Bulls, Portland Timbers, Seattle Sounders, Sporting Kansas City, Toronto FC, Vancouver Whitecaps; Chicago Cubs, Houston Astros, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, New York Yankees, Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals, Texas Rangers, Toronto Blue Jays; Chicago Sky, Dallas Wings (as Tulsa Shock), Indiana Fever, Los Angeles Sparks, Minnesota Lynx, New York Liberty, Phoenix Mercury, Washington Mystics; Brooklyn Nets, Chicago Bulls, Milwaukee Bucks, New Orleans Pelicans, Washington Wizards; Calgary Flames, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Vancouver Canucks, Winnipeg Jets.

Began play in 2015 but have never made the Playoffs: New York City FC, Orlando City.

2014: Arizona Cardinals, Baltimore Ravens, Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions, Indianapolis Colts; Montreal Alouettes, Saskatchewan Roughriders; Real Salt Lake; Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers, San Francisco Giants, Washington Nationals; Atlanta Dream, San Antonio Stars; Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche, Columbus Blue Jackets.

2013: New Orleans Saints, Philadelphia Eagles, San Diego Chargers, San Francisco 49ers; Colorado Rapids, Houston Dynamo; Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Indians, Oakland Athletics, Tampa Bay Rays; Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks; Toronto Maple Leafs.

2012: Atlanta Falcons; Chicago Fire, San Jose Earthquakes; Connecticut Sun; Orlando Magic, Philadelphia 76ers, Utah Jazz; Arizona Coyotes, New Jersey Devils.

2011: New York Giants; Philadelphia Union; Arizona Diamondbacks, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins, Philadelphia Phillies; Winnipeg Blue Bombers; Buffalo Sabres.

2010: Chicago Bears, New York Jets; Minnesota Twins; Seattle Storm; Phoenix Suns.

2009: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Colorado Rockies; Carolina Hurricanes.

2008: Miami Dolphins, Tennessee Titans; Chicago White Sox.

2007: Jacksonville Jaguars, Tampa Bay Buccaneers; San Diego Padres.

2006: Sacramento Kings; Edmonton Oilers.

2004: Los Angeles Rams (as St. Louis Rams, last did so in Los Angeles in 1989), Minnesota Timberwolves.

Last won their Division in calendar year 2016: Cleveland Cavaliers, Golden State Warriors, Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, San Antonio Spurs, Toronto Raptors; Anaheim Ducks, Dallas Stars, Florida Panthers, Washington Capitals.

2015: Arizona Cardinals, Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Denver Broncos, Houston Texans, Minnesota Vikings New England Patriots, Washington Redskins; Edmonton Eskimos, Ottawa Redblacks; FC Dallas, New York Red Bulls; Kansas City Royals, Los Angels Dodgers, New York Mets, St. Louis Cardinals, Texas Rangers, Toronto Blue Jays; New York Liberty; Atlanta Hawks, Houston Rockets, Portland Trail Blazers; Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues.

2014: Baltimore Ravens, Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts, Seattle Seahawks; Calgary Stampeders, Hamilton Tiger-Cats; D.C. United, Seattle Sounders; Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Washington Nationals; Atlanta Dream, Phoenix Mercury; Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Clippers, Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche, Pittsburgh Penguins.

2013: Philadelphia Eagles; Toronto Argonauts; Portland Timbers; Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, Oakland Athletics; Chicago Sky; New York Knicks; Chicago Blackhawks, Vancouver Canucks.

2012: Atlanta Falcons, San Francisco 49ers; British Columbia Lions, Montreal Alouettes; San Jose Earthquakes, Sporting Kansas City; Cincinnati Reds, New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants; Connecticut Sun; Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers; Arizona Coyotes.

2011: New Orleans Saints, New York Giants; Winnipeg Blue Bombers; Los Angeles Galaxy; Arizonda Diamondacks, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Phillies; Indiana Fever; Detroit Red Wings, Philadelphia Flyers, San Jose Sharks.

2010: Chicago Bears, Kansas City Chiefs, Pittsburgh Steelers; Minnesota Twins, Tampa Bay Rays; Seattle Storm, Washington Mystics; Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets, Orlando Maigc; Buffalo Sabres, New Jersey Devils.

2009: Saskatchewan Roughriders; Columbus Crew; Colorado Rockies;

2008: Miami Dolphins, San Diego Chargers, Tennessee Titans; Houston Dynamo; Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox; Dallas Wings (as Detroit Shock), San Antonio Stars (as San Antonio Silver Stars); Detroit Pistons, New Orleans Pelicans (as New Orleans Hornets), Utah Jazz; Minnesota Wild.

2007: Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Cleveland Indians; Phoenix Suns.

2006: San Diego Padres; Los Angeles Sparks; Brooklyn Nets (as New Jersey Nets); Calgary Flames, Carolina Hurricanes, Ottawa Senators.

2005: New England Revolution.

2004: Minnesota Timberwolves; Tampa Bay Lightning.

2003: Chicago Fire; Sacramento Kings.

2002: New York Jets, Oakland Raiders.

2001: Los Angeles Rams (as St. Louis Rams); Houston Astros, Seattle Mariners; Milwaukee Bucks, Philadelphia 76ers.

2000: Toronto Maple Leafs.

1999: Jacksonville Jaguars;

1995: Buffalo Bills;

1993: Detroit Lions;

1992 Pittsburgh Pirates;

1991: Los Angeles Kings.

1989: Cleveland Browns;

1988: New York Islanders.

1987: Edmonton Oilers.

1979: Washington Wizards (as Washington Bullets), Winnipeg Jets.

Never finished 1st in their Division: Colorado Rapids, Montreal Impact, New York City FC, Orlando City, Philadelphia Union, Real Salt Lake, Toronto FC, Vancouver Whitecaps; Miami Marlins; Charlotte Hornets, Memphis Grizzlies; Columbus Blue Jackets, Nashville Predators.

*

2015 Red Bulls
2015 Mets
2015 Liberty
2015 Rangers
2013 Knicks
2012 Yankees
2011 Giants
2010 Devils
2006 Nets
2002 Jets
1988 Islanders
Never NYCFC

Last won a postseason round (series or, in the case of the NFL, CFL and MLS, an individual game -- or, in the case of MLS, a 2-game home-and-home total-goals series) in calendar year 2016: Atlanta Hawks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Golden State Warriors, Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs, Toronto Raptors; Dallas Stars, Nashville Predators, New York Islanders; Pittsburgh Penguins, St. Louis Blues, San Jose Sharks, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals; Arizona Cardinals, Carolina Panthers, Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers, Kansas City Chiefs, New England Patriots, Pittsburgh Steelers, Seattle Seahawks.

2015: Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Eskimos, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Ottawa Redblacks, Winnipeg Blue Bombers; Columbus Crew, D.C. United, FC Dallas, Montreal Impact, New York Red Bulls, Portland Timbers, Seattle Sounders; Chicago Cubs, Houston Astros, Kansas City Royals, New York Mets, Toronto Blue Jays; Indiana Fever, Minnesota Lynx, New York Liberty, Phoenix Mercury; Chicago Buls, Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies, Washington Wizards; Anaheim Ducks, Calgary Flames, Chicago Blackhawks, Minnesota Wild, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers; Dallas Cowboys, Indianapolis Colts.

2014: Montreal Alouettes; Los Angeles Galaxy, New England Revolution; Chicago Sky; Brooklyn Nets; Indiana Pacers; Baltimore Orioles, St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants; Boston Bruins, Los Angeles Kings; New Orleans Saints, San Diego Chargers, San Francisco 49ers.

2013: Saskatchewan Roughriders; Houston Dynamo, Real Salt Lake, Sporting Kansas City; Atlanta Dream; New York Knicks; Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Tampa Bay Rays; Detroit Red Wings, Ottawa Senators; Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, Houston Texans.

2012: Toronto Argonauts; New York Yankees; Connecticut Sun, Los Angeles Sparks; Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers, Philadelphia 76ers; Arizona Coyotes, New Jersey Devils, Philadelphia Flyers; New York Giants.

2011: British Columbia Lions; Colorado Rapids; Dallas Mavericks; Milwaukee Brewers, Texas Rangers; Vancouver Canucks; Chicago Bears, New York Jets.

2010: San Jose Earthquakes; Philadelphia Phillies; Seattle Storm; Orlando Magic, Phoenix Suns, Utah Jazz; Minnesota Vikings.

2009: Chicago Fire; Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim; Dallas Wings (as Detroit Shock); Denver Nuggets; Carolina Hurricanes; Philadelphia Eagles.

2008: San Antonio Stars (as San Antonio Silver Stars); Detroit Pistons, New Orleans Pelicans (as New Orleans Hornets); Colorado Avalanche; Jacksonville Jaguars.

2007: Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies; Buffalo Sabres.

2006: Oakland Athletics; Edmonton Oilers; Washington Redskins.

2005: Los Angeles Rams (as St. Louis Rams).

2004: Minnesota Timberwolves, Sacramento Kings; Tennessee Titans.

2003: Miami Marlins (as Florida Marlins); Oakland Raiders, Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

2002: Minnesota Twins; Washington Mystics; Charlotte Hornets; Toronto Maple Leafs.

2001: Atlanta Braves, Seattle Mariners; Milwaukee Bucks; Miami Dolphins.

1998: San Diego Padres.

1996: Florida Panthers, Buffalo Bills.

1995: Cincinnati Reds; Cleveland Browns.

1992: Detroit Lions.

1990: Cincinnati Bengals.

1987: Winnipeg Jets.

1981: Vancouver Whitecaps (original version); Washington Nationals (as Montreal Expos).

Never won a postseason round: New York City FC, Orlando City, Philadelphia Union, Toronto FC; Columbus Blue Jackets.

*

2016 Islanders
2015 Red Bulls
2015 Mets
2015 Liberty
2015 Rangers
2014 Nets
2013 Knicks
2012 Yankees
2012 Devils
2012 Giants
2011 Jets
Never NYCFC