Yankees Win Opener Thanks to Juan Soto's Arm

The New York Yankees opened the 2024 season yesterday, against the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park. For a while, it was looking more like an October matchup with the Chicken Fried Cheats. Like all our worries about injuries, anti-clutch hitting, and new players not adjusting well to the team were coming true.

Didn't end up that way, though.

The Yankees took the field with their road uniforms having no white trim around the numbers on the back and the block letters NEW YORK on the front, as was the case until 1972, although they kept the font they've used since 1973.

And with Gerrit Cole out, for what looks like the 1st 2 months of the season, it was Nestor Cortés who was sent out to start by manager Aaron Boone. Nasty Nestor allowed 3 runs in the 1st inning and another in the 2nd, and it looked like we were doomed to 0-1 early.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Astros beating us: As they would say in English soccer, Four-nil, and they fucked it up! Well, they had help. Yankee help. The Yankees loaded the bases on Framber Valdez in the top of the 5th, and Juan came up with his 1st Yankee hit, scoring Jose Trevino for Soto's 1st Yankee RBI. The bases were still loaded, and Valdez hit Anthony Rizzo with a pitch. Clearly, that was not intentional, because it forced in Oswaldo Cabrera. The bases were still loaded, and Valdez walked Anthony Volpe. The Yankees were within 4-3.

Cabrera hit a home run in the 6th, and the game was tied. Aaron Judge led off the top of the 7th with a double. Giancarlo Stanton grounded to 3rd, and Judge was unable to advance. Rizzo singled, but Judge could only get to 3rd. Volpe drew another walk. And Alex Verdugo hit a sacrifice fly to left, bringing Judge home with Verdugo's 1st Yankee RBI. Back in the dugout, Judge congratulated Verdugo, and it seemed like he was as happy for his teammate's RBI sac fly as he would have been had he hit a home run. It was 5-4 Yankees.

Jonathan Loáisiga pitched a scoreless 6th and a scoreless 7th. Ian Hamilton pitched a scoreless 8th. Clay Holmes was called on to finish the game. The Astros weren't going to give up. Mauricio Dubón led off the inning with a single. Up next was that cheating little piece of trash José Altuve, but he hit a liner right at 2nd baseman Gleyber Torres. Yordan Álvarez hit one that 1st baseman Rizzo could only stop, unable to make a throw. Now, the tying run was on 2nd, the winning run on 1st, with only 1 out. Everyone expected the Astros to win it.

Kyle Tucker singled to right. But Soto is now in right field, with Judge having been moved to center. And Soto threw home, and catcher Trevino just got the tag on Dubón, with no time to spare. Home plate umpire James Hoye called him out. Naturally, the Astros called for a replay, which proved that the initial call was correct.

A weak grounder by Alex Bregman to Volpe, who threw to Torres covering 2nd, and it was, as radio announcer John Sterling said, for the 1st time in a game that counted since September 30, 2023...

"Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeeee Yankees win!"

Yankees 5, Astros 4. WP: Loáisiga (1-0). SV: Holmes (1, but give credit to Soto for a great throw). LP: Ryan Pressly (0-1). Attendance: 42,642. And the time of the game, as TV announcer Michael Kay would say, a very manageable 2 hours and 41 minutes.

How big was Soto's throw? It preserved a huge win. It's huge because, since 2015, the Astros have been in the Yankees' heads. The Yankees went down there, and messed with Texas, literally beating them on their own turf. (In this case, real grass.) You never hear a championship team say that their biggest regular-season win was on Opening Day. But if the Yankees make the Playoffs, especially if they end up with a higher seed than the Asterisks, this may well end up being the biggest result of the regular season.

"That was a Yankee classic right there," Judge said after the game. "Juan's debut, that was pretty special out of him. Come up, get his first hit, first at-bat, he takes a walk. Then come up there and, biggest moment of the game and just be cool, calm and collected and deliver a strike home."

The baseball season is underway, and the Yankees are undefeated, and in 1st place. That's just the way I like it.

I don't know how long that will last, but if the Yankees end the season in 1st place, I will be shocked. Pleased, but shocked.

The series continues tonight. Carlos Rodón starts against Cristian Javier.

March 29, 1984: The Baltimore Colts Are Moved

March 29, 1984, 40 years ago: Baltimore Colts owner Bob Irsay moves the team to Indianapolis, with Mayflower moving vans infamously getting loaded up with equipment, and driving out of their training camp in suburban Owings Mills, Maryland overnight and in the early morning. Thus ended an American sports institution.

The Baltimore Colts played at Municipal Stadium, in the All-America Football Conference in 1947, 1948 and 1949, and were admitted to the NFL in 1950. But they were terrible, and folded. But Municipal Stadium was converted from a 70,000-seat football stadium built in 1922 into a 54,000-seat stadium capable of hosting baseball as well, and in 1953, the Colts returned, with the baseball Orioles getting promoted from minor league to major league the following Spring.

The Colts won the NFL Championship in 1958 and 1959, beating the Giants in the NFL Championship Game both times. They were good through most of the 1960s, losing the 1964 NFL Championship Game to the Cleveland Browns, then tying the Green Bay Packers for the 1965 Western Division title before losing to them in a controversial Playoff game.

In 1967, they lost only 1 regular-season game, but lost to the Los Angeles Rams in the Playoffs. In 1968, they went 13-1, losing only to the Browns, then beat the Browns in the Championship Game -- and then lost Super Bowl III to the Jets.

They rebounded to win Super Bowl V for the 1970 NFL Championship. They got old and bad, but rebounded, winning the AFC Eastern Division in 1975, 1976 and 1977, but couldn't get past the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Oakland Raiders to get back to the Super Bowl.

In the strike-shortened 1982 season, they didn't win a game, going 0-8-1. On December 18, 1983, they beat the Houston Oilers 20-10, to finish 7-9. Attendance at Memorial Stadium: 20,418. Average attendance that season: 38,336.

The Baltimore Colts have become thought of as the Brooklyn Dodgers of the NFL, the "working man's team" that made the nation fall in love with them in the 1950s, but got pushed out of town by an evil owner, only in it for the money, with the complicity of the league's powers-that-be. Bob Irsay became the Walter O'Malley of the NFL.

And he looks like the kind of guy who played a secondary villain

on Dallas. You know, the kind of guy who made us say,

"J.R. Ewing sure is an asshole, but at least he's not that guy!"

But does he deserve that title? The truth is a bit more complicated. In 1980, Irsay asked Governor Harry Hughes of Maryland for $25 million in State funds to renovate Memorial Stadium, to extend the upper deck and replace the seats with wider ones, expanding football capacity from 60,020 to 64,124. It would also have improved the plumbing, and given both the Orioles and the Colts sufficient office space.

The plan's approval was contingent on both the Colts and the O's signing long-term leases. The Orioles challenged the requested football improvements, thinking it would've provided too much short-term inconvenience and not enough long-term benefit, and refused to sign anything more than a 1-year lease. Irsay also refused to sign long-term. As a result, the State legislature dropped the plan.

In hindsight, both the Orioles and the current football team are better off at Camden Yards, at the western edge of downtown, next to Camden Station and the light rail and a short walk from the subway, than the Orioles and the Colts would have been at even an expanded and improved Memorial Stadium, 4 miles north of downtown, unless there had been a subway or light rail extension to 33rd Street. But the Orioles did do as much to kill this project as Irsay and the Maryland legislature did.

Carroll Rosenbloom, a Baltimore native, had owned the team from its 1953 revival until July 13, 1972, when he did something shocking: He sold the Colts to Bob Irsay, the owner of the Los Angeles Rams, who then sold the Rams to Rosenbloom.

Why would they do that? Rosenbloom didn't like Memorial Stadium any more than Irsay later would, and the City of Baltimore raised his rent in 1969. Rosenbloom asked the City to build him a new stadium, and, proud of their municipal venue (with some reason), they wouldn't do it. The lease ran out after the 1972 season, and Rosenbloom threatened to build a stadium on land in Baltimore County -- from which Baltimore City is separate.

Rosenbloom was also feuding with the Baltimore media. And his new wife, Georgia, hated Baltimore, a declining city with often rotten weather, and wanted to move to Los Angeles. So, realizing how much it would cost to build a new stadium (probably around $20 million at the time), and rather than move the team to L.A., he moved himself and his wife Georgia there. (After he died, Georgia remarried, and, as Georgia Frontiere, moved the Rams first down the freeway to Anaheim, then to her hometown of St. Louis. They have since moved back to the L.A. area.)

Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis moved his team to Los Angeles in 1982, and the NFL tried to stop him, and he took the League to court, and won. He got away with it. (Yes, he moved them back in 1995, and his son Mark has now moved them to Las Vegas, but that's not relevant to this discussion.) Irsay figured, "If Al can do it, I can do it. They can't stop me." He did it, and, perhaps weary from the fight with the man nicknamed Darth Raider, they didn't even try to stop him.

If Davis had worked out his differences with the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority, and the Raiders had stayed put, maybe Irsay would have started to think he could get a good deal from Baltimore anyway. Or, suppose the NFL succeeded in stopping Davis. Maybe Irsay would have thought twice about taking the NFL on. (At the very least, he would have been more conciliatory, giving the other owners more velvet glove, less iron fist than Davis did.)

At the time, Indianapolis was the 3rd-largest city in the Midwest, and now that Detroit has fallen below them in population, they're 2nd only to Chicago. They had a new domed stadium. They had a fan base used to watching football: Notre Dame, Indiana University, Purdue University, smaller schools like Indiana State and Ball State, and the Chicago Bears. They were ready for their own NFL team.

And in less than 30 years, the Colts have become as ingrained in the minds and hearts of Indiana sports fans as the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, the Indiana Hoosiers and Purdue Boilermakers basketball teams, the Indiana Pacers, and the Indianapolis 500. If the Colts had to move, Indy was a good place in which to set up shop.

As with the legendary Brooklyn Dodger fans of the 1950s, the much-lauded Colt fans weren't selling out Memorial Stadium. Were they betrayed? Yes, but they weren't coming out in overwhelming numbers.

This was partly due to the success of the Washington Redskins. In the late 1950s and through the 1960s, the Colts were good and the Redskins were bad, and a lot of people in the suburbs between Baltimore and Washington, and a lot of people further away in Maryland, such as on the Eastern Shore and the western Panhandle, became Colt fans.

But in the early 1970s, the Redskins got good and the Colts got old and bad, and a lot more people became Redskin fans. The Colts' brief revival in the latter half of the 1970s didn't help, and when the Redskins won Super Bowl XVII in January 1983, after the Colts had finished the strike-shortened 1982 season without a win, the Redskin publicity machine went into overdrive, hyping running back John Riggins, the receivers known as the Fun Bunch, even making the least glamorous position on the field, the offensive line, famous: The Hogs.

With fans showing up in Indian headdresses and plastic pig masks (or at least rubber snouts), the 'Skins became more popular than ever, just as the Colts were bottoming out again, and taking suburban Maryland fans away. Never mind the Unitas-led NFL Championships of 1958 and '59: Super Bowl V, and even the AFC East titles of 1975, '76 and '77 now seemed a long way back.

The Colts were bad, and not the least bit interesting. The Redskins were great, and fun. It was the same combination that happened in New York baseball in the latter half of the 1960s, with the Colts in the Yankees' place and the Redskins in the Mets' place. It was probably the worst thing that could have happened to Baltimore football fans.

Memorial Stadium wasn't a bad stadium, but it was in a bad location. Not because of neighborhood crime, but because of access and parking. It also didn't have enough office space for either the Orioles or the Colts, much less both teams. It also didn't have enough luxury boxes, which is why a replacement for it was necessary for any team moving to Baltimore to take the Colts' place.

In 1973, the NBA's Baltimore Bullets moved to Washington, and O's owner Jerry Hoffberger wanted out, eventually selling the team to Redskins owner Edward Bennett Williams -- who, because of the NFL's rule at the time, prohibiting a majority owner from being a majority owner of a team in another sport, had to sell a majority stake in the 'Skins to Jack Kent Cooke. Now, the possibility of the Orioles moving to Washington, Williams' hometown, to take the place of the departed Senators, was real.

Irsay was willing to wait. But it's not like he didn't drop hints. The City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland didn't take Irsay's threat to move seriously. "It's not a matter of saying that there will be no stadium," he said. "It's a matter of getting the facts together, so everybody is happy when they build the stadium. I'm a patient man. I think the people of Baltimore are going to see those new stadiums in New Orleans and Seattle opening in a year or two around the country, and they are going to realize the need a stadium... for conventions, and other things besides football." This was in 1975, and he was referring to the Louisiana Superdome and the Kingdome, respectively.

He talked with city officials of Phoenix in 1976 -- and then, in 1977, Indianapolis, which, unlike Phoenix with Sun Devil Stadium in nearby Tempe, didn't yet have a suitable stadium, but was planning the Hoosier Dome.

By 1980, with Georgia Frontiere having taken the Rams out of the Los Angeles Coliseum, hard by the South Central ghetto, down the freeway to Anaheim, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission approached Irsay about moving the Colts to Los Angeles, which Carroll Rosenbloom had decided not to do with them in 1972. Memphis wanted the Colts for the Liberty Bowl. Jacksonville wanted the Colts for the Gator Bowl. It seemed like everybody without a team wanted the Colts, but the City of Baltimore -- at least, the City's government -- didn't.

In 1983, Mayor William Donald "Dud" Schaefer asked the State legislature for $15 million to renovate Memorial Stadium. But it took weeks to approve it. In January 1984, Schaefer said, "We're not going to build a new stadium... We don't have the voters or taxpayer who can support a $60 million stadium." The inflation of the 1970s was so bad (How bad was it?), the cost of a new stadium had gone up 3 times in just 11 years.

On February 23, Irsay visited the Hoosier Dome, which was scheduled to open in August, and was very impressed. On March 2, 8 days later, NFL owners gave Irsay permission to move the Colts. He talked to Indianapolis, Phoenix, Jacksonville and Memphis, all of which he'd talked to before, and also to Birmingham, Alabama, although their Legion Field was hardly a new stadium. He narrowed his choices down to Indianapolis and Phoenix.

(Indianapolis was also talking to John Mecom, then the owner of the New Orleans Saints, about a local buyer bringing the Saints there, even though the Superdome was still new. He ended up selling the Saints to Tom Benson, who kept them in N'Awlins.)

On March 27, the Maryland State Senate passed legislation giving the City of Baltimore the right to seize ownership of the Colts franchise by eminent domain. And that's why Irsay took the team and its stuff out of Owings Mills in the moving vans in the middle of the night on March 28-29: He was, as the old saying goes, one step ahead of the law. He also had all 15 moving trucks take different routes, in case the Maryland State Police stopped one of them, so they couldn't stop all of them.

As the team's lawyer, Michael Chernoff, put it, "They not only threw down the gauntlet, but they put a gun to his head and cocked it, and asked, 'Want to see if it's loaded?' They forced him to make a decision that day." The metaphor of "putting a gun to our head" has been used to describe what team owners have done to cities and their fans. This time, it was the other way around.

That day, March 29, 1984, the lower house of the legislature, the House of Delegates, passed the eminent domain legislation, and Governor Hughes signed it. But it was too late: The Colts, lock, stock and jockstraps, were out of Maryland, and, legally, there was no longer anything that either the City or the State could do about it.

The only thing the franchise owned that stayed put was the uniforms of the Baltimore Colts Marching Band. They were being drycleaned at the time. Irsay agreed to let the bandmembers keep them, and the band stayed together, finally changing their name to the Marching Ravens in 1998, upon the move into the new stadium, keeping the old name while the Ravens were at Memorial Stadium in 1996 and '97.

It took a while before the Indianapolis Colts got good. But in their 1st 40 seasons, they've made the Playoffs 19 times, reached the AFC Championship Game 5 times, and reached 2 Super Bowls, winning Super Bowl XLI and losing Super Bowl XLIV. Compare that to their 35 seasons in Baltimore: 10 Playoff berths, 7 times reaching the round of 4, 5 times reaching the World Championship game (under any name), and winning 3 titles.

No, they haven't been more successful in Indianapolis than in Baltimore -- yet. And the Ravens have done fairly well for themselves in their 1st 28 seasons: 15 Playoff berths, 5 AFC Championship Games, and 2 trips to the Super Bowl, winning both: XXXV and XLVII.

So, in spite of the 12-year interregnum, Baltimore hasn't done all that badly.

And, let's be honest: Bob Irsay tried to find a way to stay in Baltimore. He tried for over 11 years. He tried harder to keep his NFL team where it was than did Al Davis, Billy Bidwill, Art Modell or Georgia Frontiere with theirs. He certainly tried harder than did Walter O'Malley, Calvin Griffith, Bob Short and Jeffrey Loria in baseball; Short and Clay Bennett in basketball; and Norm Green and Peter Karmanos in hockey.

He was willing to make a deal. It was the politicians, Democratic and Republican alike, who didn't try hard enough. The people of Baltimore, the people of Maryland, got screwed out of their Colts, but it wasn't Irsay who did that.

The United States Football League tried to step into the breach: After the 1984 season, the Philadelphia Stars announced they were moving to Baltimore. But due to a legal technicality, the Indianapolis Colts still held veto power over another football team using Memorial Stadium, so the Baltimore Stars had to play their 1985 home games at the University of Maryland, closer to D.C. (which was possible because the Washington Federals had moved to Orlando), with the promise of playing at Memorial Stadium in 1986.

That didn't happen, because the idiot owner of the USFL's New Jersey Generals wanted the League go head-to-head with the NFL in the Autumn, and the League collapsed as a result. His name was Donald Trump.

A settlement was reached, and from 1986 onward, Irsay agreed to support a new team for Baltimore, either through a team's move or an expansion of the NFL. The Maryland Stadium Authority got serious, and, with Dud Schaefer having been elected Governor, got the Camden Yards projects approved. The Orioles moved in for 1992.

In 1985, Leonard Tose, bankrupt due to being a compulsive gambler, considered moving the Philadelphia Eagles -- not 100 miles down Interstate 95 to Baltimore, but to Phoenix. Instead, he sold them, and they stayed put. In 1987, Billy Bidwill moved the football Cardinals out of St. Louis -- not to Baltimore, but to Phoenix, where they became the Arizona Cardinals. In 1993, the NFL chose 2 new expansion cities, to begin play in 1995, but not Baltimore: Charlotte, with the Carolina Panthers; and Jacksonville, with the Jaguars.

During this period, the Sullivan family, bankrupted through their ownership of the New England Patriots, considered selling the team to people who might move them, and Baltimore was one of the cities being considered. Once Bob Kraft bought the team, it was going to be either going to Hartford, a stadium in downtown Boston, or (as actually happened) a new stadium next to the old one in Foxboro. But Kraft wasn't taking the Pats out of New England, and if he ever considered moving them to Baltimore, it was momentary at most.

In 1994, the Canadian Football League expanded into America, and put the Baltimore Stallions in Memorial Stadium. After 2 years, the experiment failed, through no fault of the Stallions, and they were moved to become the new Montreal Alouettes. In 1995, both the Rams and the Raiders moved out of Los Angeles -- but neither to Baltimore: Georgia Frontiere took the Rams to her hometown of St. Louis, and Al Davis took the Raiders back to Oakland.

Later that year, dissatisfied with how he was being treated by the City of Cleveland, and unable to fund improvements to Municipal Stadium himself, Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore, and they became the Ravens. They played in Memorial Stadium in 1996 and '97, moved to what's now named M&T Bank Stadium at Camden Yards in 1998, and surpassed the Orioles to become Baltimore's most popular sports team.

Johnny Unitas attended the 1st Ravens home game on September 1, 1996, handed the game ball to the officials, and watched as the Ravens beat Al Davis' Oakland Raiders 19-14 -- 19 being his number with the Colts, and 14 being the number he briefly had in the Pittsburgh Steelers' training camp before being cut in 1955, allowing him to become a Baltimore legend.

The Ravens erected a statue to Johnny U outside M&T Bank Stadium after his death in 2002, and hired his son, Chad Unitas, in their executive sales department.

Bob Irsay kept his word, and voted to permit the Browns to move to Baltimore. Baltimore fans still haven't forgiven him; and, now, Cleveland fans hated him, too. Shortly thereafter, he suffered a stroke, and his health never recovered. He lived long enough to see the NFL return to Baltimore, and died on January 14, 1997, at the age of 73. His son Jim Irsay now runs the team. He's not particularly popular in Maryland, either, or anywhere outside of Indiana.

The Colts' 1st game back in Baltimore was on November 29, 1998, at M&T Bank Stadium -- after the death of Bob Irsay. The Ravens won, 38-31. This was an outlier: Since the arrival of the Ravens, the Colts have a 11-7 record against them. This includes Playoff wins by Indianapolis in 2007 and 2010 (for the 2006 and 2009 seasons), and a Playoff win by Baltimore in 2013 (2012).

MLB Teams Ranked by My Preference

As a new Major League Baseball season dawns, here is my list of the teams in the order of how much I like them or not. I'll go 1 to 30, rather than 30 to 1, because, if you're a regular reader of this blog, you know who 1 is, and you can probably guess who 29 and 30 are -- but not necessarily in that order.

1. New York Yankees. You already knew that. But you deserve an explanation. People ask me: "How can you be a liberal Democrat, with an affinity for the underdog, and still support the Yankees, the overlords of baseball, the most capitalist sports team of them all?"

Part of it is that most of my family were Met fans, but my grandfather grew up in The Bronx, and he was the source of my baseball education. Part of it was that I had a difficult childhood, full of emotional defeats, and I turned to the Yankees as a place of refuge, something to ease my pain.

But as The Eagles -- the rock band, not the Philadelphia football team -- taught us, every form of refuge has its price. For me, that price was living in a place that seemed to have more Met fans than Yankee Fans. And the kids who were Met fans, rather than acting like plucky underdogs who stood with the downtrodden, acted like dicks.

It got worse in the mid-1980s, when the Mets were making Playoff runs, and the Yankees weren't quite good enough. Met fans developed all the arrogance of Yankee Fans, and had earned hardly any of it. They acted like their 2 titles, in 1969 and 1986, outweighed the Yankees' 22 titles (the most recent having come in 1978). This is why the 2000 World Series replaced 1978 as my favorite title. It should have shut them up forever. Of course, it didn't.

2. Philadelphia Phillies. Aside from the New York teams, this is the closest team to me. Great city. Great ballpark. Not a great history, but an interesting history. And when they do well, it ticks Met fans off. Anything that ticks Met fans off is okay by me.

3. Washington Nationals. Great city. Great ballpark. Met fans don't like them. You might expect me not to like them because they were the Montreal Expos. But that situation was complicated, and the current Nationals organization shouldn't be blamed for that. Also, during the 2019 World Series, Trump visited, and their fans booed the hell out of him. And, in that Series, they beat the cheating Astros. For both of those things, the Nats will always have my thanks.

4. Chicago Cubs. The city, the ballpark, the finally-successful end to the curse, the fans who endured it all. I'll admit, their run in 1984, when I was 14, had an effect.

5. San Francisco Giants. Their connection to New York is almost irrelevant now. But as a representative of a great city, playing in a great ballpark, with a fine history, and as the arch-enemy of the L.A. O'Malleys, they have my respect.

6. Chicago White Sox. I love the city. The ballpark gets a bad rap: No, it's not the old Comiskey Park. But, structurally, it reminds me of the 1976-2008 format of Yankee Stadium, plus it's got an update of the Comiskey "exploding scoreboard." And the team has guts. And their fans never got the credit they deserved for sticking by their team through a drought which, if not as long as the Cubs', was longer than the Red Sox'.

Author Jean Shepherd was a White Sox fan, and he put it this way: "If I was a colonel in some horrible war, and we had to take an enemy pillbox, and it was a suicide mission, I'd look out at the men and say, 'Are any of you White Sox fans? Follow me!' And those White Sox fans would follow me, and we'd take that pillbox! Because White Sox fans are special."

7. Pittsburgh Pirates. I have a soft spot for Pittsburgh, a city that was hammered by the loss of industry over the 1st 20 years of my life, and then rebuilt, going from a city of coal and steel to a city of health care and computers. Three Rivers Stadium was all wrong for baseball, but Forbes Field before it was a classic, and PNC Park after it is as well. Honus Wagner, Pie Traynor, the Waner Brothers, Ralph Kiner, Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Barry Bonds... uh, maybe scratch that last one.

Their fans have now suffered through 44 seasons without so much as a Pennant. They deserve to be rewarded, even if they have also seen their city win 6 Super Bowls and 3 Stanley Cups, to go with the Pirates' 9 Pennants and 5 World Series from 1901 to 1979.

8. Oakland Athletics. This ranking will drop considerably if they move to Las Vegas. I'm not even counting their Philadelphia heritage -- because they don't, not really. They display their Philly World Series wins, but they don't retire numbers for their Philly legends.

Still, the A's and their fans survived the San Francisco media's ignorance of them for usually-inferior Giant teams for a long time. They survived three cheap owners/ownership groups and at least six "fire sales," and the transformation of one of the most fun places to watch a game into the most unsuitable non-dome stadium in the majors. Instead of taking their team away, give them a break.

Yes, they were the original steroid-cheating team. But they were also the team that produced Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter, and the Yankees wouldn't have made it without them.

9. Detroit Tigers. Having had Hank Greenberg, alone, helps. Having had Ernie Harwell, alone, helps. Having played 88 seasons in Tiger Stadium, alone, helps. Their fans having to endure what was done to their city is worthy of anyone's respect. It is true that, in 2006, '11 and '12, they beat the Yankees in the Playoffs. But I blame Brian Cashman for that, rather than holding against the Tigers.

10. Baltimore Orioles. Baltimore is a tough city -- and this week's collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge makes it tougher. But Camden Yards, and Memorial Stadium before it, were classic ballyards, and the team has had some legendary characters -- and some men of legendary character.

11. Colorado Rockies. Denver wanted a team for so long, and, unlike Tampa Bay, their actions since suggest that they deserved it. I can tell you that they would be higher on this list if they had beaten the Boston Red Sox in the 2007 World Series. Alas...

12. Cleveland Guardians. A city I like, a ballpark I like, and fans that have suffered through the longest current World Championship drought, 76 years. The downside is that a lot of their fans still cling to the questionable name "Cleveland Indians" (which the team used for what is now 87 percent of their history), and some of them even cling to the unquestionably racist (and just plain ridiculous) mascot Chief Wahoo.

13. Minnesota Twins. Some of baseball's greatest legends in one of America's nicest cities -- two of them, if you count St. Paul -- gets offset by 28 years of playing in the freakin' Metrodome.

14. Milwaukee Brewers. I like Milwaukee as a city, and I liked Milwaukee County Stadium. But American Family Field (formerly Miller Park) is one of the few new 1992 to 2010 stadiums that is not an improvement over its predecessor. And they will forever be tainted by their connection to Bud Selig.

15. San Diego Padres. They produced Dave Winfield and Tony Gwynn, they have a nice city, they have a nice ballpark, their fans hate the Dodgers, and their fans have also suffered a lot. On the other hand, as their team has begun to spend big, their fans have begun to act like Mets West, talking trash to their more successful "neighbors," without the results to back it up, and that has dropped them a little.

16. Los Angeles Angels. They've changed their name 4 times in 64 years. They're the ultimate suburban team. They can be reached by public transportation, if you count Amtrak, so that helps. But they've had to endure constant comparison, usually unfavorable, to the Dodgers, and a few genuine tragedies, so they are worthy of some sympathy.

17. Seattle Mariners. Their fans still want to talk about the 1995 AL Division Series. They don't want to talk about how they filled up Internet chat rooms in June 2001 with "SEATTLE MARINERS 2001 WORLD CHAMPIONS" and then got embarrassed by the Yankees in 5 games in the AL Championship Series. At least they no longer play in the Kingdome, but T-Mobile Park looks weird with that roof hanging over right field. It's as if they've got half a great ballpark, and half an awful one.

18. Atlanta Braves. The Tomahawk Chop is bad enough. But they moved from the city of Atlanta to the mostly-white northwestern suburbs, when everyone else is moving as close to downtown as possible.

19. Cincinnati Reds. Some Reds fans have the same entitlement complex as Ohio State football fans. Others have the same entitlement complex as Kentucky basketball fans. (Ohio Stadium is 110 miles to the northeast, while Rupp Arena is 82 miles to the south.) It makes them believe things that are absolutely ridiculous.

Things like: Cincinnati is the best baseball city, the 1970s Reds were the greatest baseball team ever, Johnny Bench was the greatest catcher ever (better than Yogi Berra), Sparky Anderson was the greatest manager ever, Dave Concepcion deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and, of course, Pete Rose deserves to have his ban lifted and be elected to the Hall of Fame. These are things you believe when you're from "Cincitucky." 

20. St. Louis Cardinals. It can be argued that, aside from the Yankees, no team has a better history than the Cards. But I am sick of hearing about how St. Louis is "the best baseball city in America." Based on what? Attendance? The Yankees, Dodgers and San Diego had higher attendance last season, and Atlanta nearly did.

21. Texas Rangers. It's Texas. It's the suburbs of Dallas. George W. Bush owned them. Stupid stadium that you can't get to with public transportation. And they have no problem with cheaters: Ivan Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro, Jose Canseco.

22. Arizona Diamondbacks. The State is coming along, but it's still the State that allowed the election of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Stupid uniforms. Stupid stadium. Yes, I know, it's so hot that they need a dome. But they could have made it not look like an airplane hangar. And they had real grass, and switched to artificial turf.

Oh yeah: 2001. Matt Williams admitted to cheating. Luis Gonzalez hasn't, but who's kidding who? And Curt Schilling? I know it was 2004 in Boston instead of 2001 in Phoenix, but I want the blood on that sock tested. If he was guilty in 2004, he was probably guilty in 2001, too.

23. Toronto Blue Jays. The first game I ever saw live, the Jays, a 2nd-year expansion team, beat the defending World Champion Yankees. It seems like, no matter how good each team is, the Jays give the Yankees trouble. I came to call them "those pesky Blue Jays." Also, stupid stadium, and stupid uniforms.

24. Kansas City Royals. Mostly, this is lingering from their 1976-85 glory days. They were dirty. And, of course, in 1983, with George Brett's pine tar, the Royals set the standard. The Yankee Doodle Double Standard: If you cheat, and it hurts the Yankees, it's okay. They did beat the Mets in the 2015 World Series, though, so they could be lower on this list.

25. Tampa Bay Rays. Rotten city (St. Petersburg). Even more rotten State. Worst stadium in baseball. Lousy uniforms. Classless organization. Worst fans in terms of showing up, and probably worst in terms of knowledge, too.

The Twins, the Astros, the Padres and the Mariners all considered moving to Tampa Bay. The White Sox nearly did for the 1989 season. The Giants came even closer to doing so for 1993. It took until 1998 for them to get a team. Now, we know why: Those fans didn't deserve a team. They won't come out for a good one, let alone a bad one. Don't tell me the dome is in a bad location in St. Petersburg: Yankee Stadium is in the South Bronx, and Shea Stadium was literally across the street from a junkyard, and fans still came.

26. Miami Marlins. Rotten city. Even more rotten State. Stupid stadium. Stupid uniforms. And, with Ivan Rodriguez, they cheated their way to beat the Yankees in the World Series. And the fans don't come out to see them. If the Rays won't move to Montreal, maybe the Marlins should. After all, Jeffrey Loria sold the Expos (and sold them out) so he could buy the Marlins. Also, the owners of the Marlins sold to Loria so they could buy the Red Sox. That's reason enough to put them in the bottom quarter.

27. Los Angeles Dodgers. Or, as I prefer to call them these days, The Los Angeles Baseball Team. The Treason of '57 shall never, ever be forgot.

28. Houston Astros. Until 2013, they were in the National League, so the only things I had against them were the fact that they had introduced domes and artificial turf to baseball, and those awful uniforms, all of which they'd abandoned by that point. And the fact that they were in Texas.

Then they started cheating, and became the Red Sox South -- or, if you prefer, the Chicken Fried Sox.

29. New York Mets. Up until 2003, certainly no later than October 19, 2004, The Other Team could legitimately have been put at Number 30 -- or 28 from 1993 to 1997, or 26 up until 1992. But maybe that would have been wrong. After all, being in the other League meant that, up until 1997, we weren't playing them in the regular season. The rivalry was between the fans, not the players.

Still, because we have to live among Met fans, with the occasional Chowdahead scattered here and there in the New York Tri-State Area, losing the 2000 World Series would have been 10 times worse than losing the 2004 American League Championship Series was.

30. Boston Red Sox. It used to be that, as with the Mets, the rivalry was more between the fans than the players. The exception was in the 1970s, when the Red Sox had a bunch of dopes with chips on their shoulders. But things got really nasty in 1998, when Pedro Martinez arrived in Boston, and began throwing at Yankee batters' heads and hands. And in the 1999 ALCS, after some perceived bad calls, the fans at Fenway Park began throwing garbage onto the field. "Athens of America"? Yeah, surrre!

You will never find a more wretched hive

of scum and villainy.

Still, as Yogi Berra taught us, "We've been playing these guys for 80 years. They can't beat us!" They found a way. They found a way to inject some success. It almost worked in 2003. It did work in 2004. It's worked ever since, as they go from one method of chicanery to another. And, of course, because what they do hurts the Yankees, they never get punished.

The Mets don't need to get punished: They punish themselves, through incompetence. The Red Sox still manage to rebuild and win. As the Yankees were to them from 1920 to 2004, since 2004, the Red Sox have been in the Yankees' heads. An end must be put to this.

March 26, 1964: Martin Luther King & Malcolm X Meet

March 26, 1964, 60 years ago: Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, the opposing poles of the Civil Rights Movement, meet face-to-face for the first time. It will turn out to be the only time.

They both had the goal of making life better for black Americans. They disagreed as to the means. Martin preferred nonviolent resistance. Malcolm wanted a tougher stance. He called Martin "a 20th Century Uncle Tom." Martin said of Malcolm's ideas, "Fiery, demagogic oratory in the Black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief."

Nevertheless, in July 1963, Malcolm invited Martin to join a rally in Harlem. He called for a period of racial unity to fight white oppression, writing, "If capitalistic Kennedy and communistic Khrushchev can find something in common on which to form a United Front despite their tremendous ideological differences, it is a disgrace for Negro leaders not to be able to submerge our 'minor' differences in order to seek a common solution to a common problem posed by a Common Enemy." But Martin never responded to the invitation, and didn't show up.

On one occasion, Malcolm called Martin a "chump," and called other civil rights leaders "stooges of the white establishment." He called the August 28, 1963 March On Washington, ending at the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. King's finest moment, "the farce on Washington," and "a demonstration run by whites in front of a statue of a President who has been dead for a hundred years, and who didn't like us when he was alive."

On March 26, 1964, both men were on Capitol Hill in Washington, watching a U.S. Senate hearing regarding legislation aimed at ending segregation in public places and racial discrimination in employment. The bill had been proposed by President John F. Kennedy following intense lobbying by King and others, and, following JFK's assassination, was being shepherded through Congress by President Lyndon B. Johnson, despite harsh opposition by many Southern elected officials.

As Martin was wrapping up a press conference, he was approached by Malcolm, and the two shook hands and exchanged greetings. As cameras clicked away, Malcolm expressed his desire to become more active, saying, "I'm throwing myself into the heart of the civil rights struggle." Then, just as quickly as it began, the brief meeting between the two legends was over.

The Kennedy civil rights bill passed Congress, and Johnson signed it into law as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2. Johnson invited King to the signing ceremony, and gave him one of the signing pens. He did not invite Malcolm X, and it's unlikely that Malcolm would have accepted, anyway. There is no record of him ever having visited the White House.

By that point, Malcolm had returned from an extensive visit to North Africa and the Middle East, including a pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Having seen Muslims of every race and color, from all over the world, the trip fundamentally shifted his thinking on the issue of race in America. While not entirely denouncing his earlier positions, he adopted a more conciliatory approach, writing, "I was no less angry than I had been, but, at the same time, the true brotherhood I had seen had influenced me to recognize that anger can blind human vision."

Malcolm X was assassinated in New York on February 21, 1965. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Each man was 39 years old at the time of his death. In the years to come, their widows, and then their children, would build strong friendships that uplifted the cause of civil rights.

March 21, 1964: The UCLA Dynasty Begins

March 21, 1964, 60 years ago: The University of California at Los Angeles beat Duke University, 98-83, at the Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, in the Final of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. It is the 1st National Championship for UCLA. It will not be the last.

UCLA coach John Wooden had been good enough of a player at Purdue University in the early 1930s that he eventually became the 1st person elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame separately as a player and as a coach. He became UCLA's head coach in 1948, and took them to what would later be called the Final Four for the 1st time in 1962.

In 1963-64, with guards Walt Hazzard and Gail Goodrich, forwards Keith Erickson and Jack Hirsch, and center Fred Slaughter, he guided the Bruins to an undefeated season, 30-0. Goodrich and Erickson would star with the Los Angeles Lakers, and Goodrich would join Wooden in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

The closest they came to losing in the regular season was a 2-point win away to the main campus of the University of California in Berkeley in February, a 3-point win away to Kansas State early in the season, 4 over Illinois in the L.A. Classic (at the Memorial Sports Arena, not on their own campus), and 5 away to Washington State.

In the tournament, they won their regional games at Oregon state in Corvallis, beating Seattle University, 95-90; and the University of San Francisco, 76-72. In Kansas City, they faced Kansas State again, this time winning, 90-84, before beating a Duke team that featured future Golden State Warriors star Jeff Mullins.

UCLA made it back-to-back titles in 1965. These titles raised enough money that the Bruins could move out of their 2,400-seat Men's Gym, and also stop using the Sports Arena, which they were sharing with their arch-rivals, the University of Southern California (like the next-door Coliseum, it was on USC's campus), and into a large on-campus building, which became Pauley Pavilion. Wooden would eventually lead UCLA to 10 National Championships in 12 seasons. The school won an 11th in 1995, under Jim Harrick.

Duke had reached the Final Four in 1963, and would again in 1966. But they would not do so again until 1978, and then not again until 1986, the 1st of 14 times they would do so under Mike Krzyzewski. "Coach K" finally got them their 1st National Championship in 1991.

March 13, 1999: Lewis-Holyfield I, a Heavyweight Debacle

March 13, 1999, 25 years ago: Lennox Lewis, recognized as the Heavyweight Champion of the World by the World Boxing Commission (WBC), fights Evander Holyfield, recognized by the World Boxing Association (WBA) and the International Boxing Federation (IBF).

It turns out to be a disaster. As a result, it turns out to be, so far, the last major prizefight at Madison Square Garden, "The Mecca of Boxing."

Evander Holyfield had won the heavyweight title, as recognized by the World Boxing Association (WBA), the World Boxing Council (WBC), and the International Boxing Federation (IBF), by beating James "Buster" Douglas in 1990.

However, despite all 3 major organizations recognizing him as such, he was not the "undisputed" champion: People wanted to see him fight Mike Tyson, seeing Douglas' win over Tyson 8 months earlier as a fluke. They still thought of Tyson as "the real champion."

But Tyson had gone to prison for rape. In the meantime, Holyfield had lost the titles to Riddick Bowe, regained the WBA and IBF titles (but not the WBC title) from Bowe, then lost them to Michael Moorer -- who then lost them to 45-year-old former Champion George Foreman.

One thing led to another, and the titles were split again. Tyson got out of prison, and got the WBA title back. But Holyfield beat him twice, and was, again WBA Champion. Moorer regained the IBF title, and Holyfield beat him to regain it.

Lennox Lewis was born in London, and spent his teenage years in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. In 1993, he was awarded the WBC title because Bowe had refused to fight him. He lost the title to Oliver McCall. The title was vacated again, and in 1997, Lewis and McCall fought for it, and Lewis won it.

Both men were older than most Heavyweight Champions: Lewis was 33, Holyfield 36. Lewis went into the fight 34-1; Holyfield, 36-3.

The referee was Arthur Mercante Jr. His father, Arthur Mercante Sr., had officiated the 1st Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier fight at The Garden, also a unification bout, in 1971. He had also officiated in 1973, when George Foreman took the title from Frazier; and in 1960, when Floyd Patterson took the title back from Ingemar Johansson. Arthur Sr. was still alive, and in attendance.

It was generally agreed that Lewis dominated early, with Holyfield winning only Round 3 out of the 1st 5. Holyfield won Round 6, Lewis Round 7. Holyfield then took control, winning Rounds 8, 9, 10 and 11. But Lewis dominated the 12th and final round.

The television commentators expected Lewis to be named the winner by the judges. What followed stunned everybody. Stanley Christodoulou had Lewis a 116-113 winner on his card. But Eugenia Williams scored it 115-113 for Holyfield. And Larry O'Connell had it at 115-115, a flat-out draw.

By all rights, the points should have been totaled up, which would have made it 344-343, the slimmest of margins, for Lewis. But, under the rules, it was a "split draw," and each fighter kept his respective belts.

The Garden crowd booed. On HBO, Jim Lampley called it "a travesty," and Foreman called it "a shame." Boxing historian Steve Farhood, who had edited the magazines The Ring and KO, said, "I've been covering boxing 20 years. I would put this in the top 5 for the worst decisions I've seen." Roy Jones Jr., then the undisputed Light Heavyweight Champion, called it, "the type of thing that makes him not want to stay in boxing." Rudy Giuliani, then the Mayor of New York, was in attendance, and he agreed with Lampley's assessment, calling it "a shame."

A rematch was inevitable. On November 13, Lewis-Holyfield II was held at the Thomas & Mack Center outside Las Vegas. This time, there was no controversy: It went the full 12 rounds, but Lewis won a unanimous decision, becoming the undisputed Heavyweight Champion.

Lewis remained Champion until 2001, getting knocked out by Hasim Rahman. He took the title back by knocking Rahman out 7 months later, humiliated Tyson with an 8th-round knockout in Memphis in 2002, and knocked Vitali Klitschko out in the 6th round in Los Angeles on June 21, 2003. That was his final fight, and he retired as Champion, with a record of 41-2-1. He remains the last undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World

March 13, 1964: The Murder of Kitty Genovese

March 13, 1964, 60 years ago: A murder is committed, symbolizing the rising crime wave in New York City, and American cities in general. What's worse wasn't the number of people who cared, but the number of people who seemed not to care.

Catherine Susan Genovese was born on July 7, 1935 in Brooklyn, and grew up in the neighborhood of Prospect Heights. As far as has been determined, she was not related to New York's Genovese organized crime family. In 1954, her mother witnessed a murder, and her parents left, moving to New Canaan, Connecticut. But Catherine, known as Kitty, decided to stay in Brooklyn, as she was about to get married. But the marriage was quickly annulled.

She took clerical jobs, but found bartending more to her liking. In 1961, she was arrested for bookmaking, for taking horse racing bets from bar patrons. She pleaded guilty, paid a $50 fine, and was fired from her job.

She soon got another bartending job, at Ev's Eleventh Hour Bar, on Jamaica Avenue and 193rd Street in Hollis, Queens. Soon, she began managing the bar on behalf of its absentee owner. This enabled her to make enough money to get an apartment in the Kew Gardens section of Queens, at 82-70 Austin Street. She shared it with Mary Ann Zielonko. As comedian Bill Maher once said of this period, "Lesbians were called 'roommates.'"

She went to work on March 12, 1964, and left at 2:30 AM on March 13 -- a Friday the 13th. At 3:15, she parked her red Fiat in the Kew Gardens station of the Long Island Rail Road, about 100 feet from her apartment's door, in an alleyway at the back of the building.

She and her Fiat had been seen by Winston Moseley, who was driving a Chevrolet Corvair. He followed, parked his car in a bus stop on Austin Street, and got out, taking a hunting knife with him. He ran after her, caught her, and stabbed her twice in the back.

She yelled out, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!" Some neighbors heard the sound, but only a few of them recognized it as a cry for help. One, Robert Mozer, shouted out, "Let that girl alone!" but did nothing else. Moseley ran away, and Kitty got to the entrance of her apartment.

But she only got as far as a hallway at the back of the building before falling, barely conscious. Moseley went back, found her, stabbed her again, raped her, and stole $49 from her (about $448 in 2022 money), before finally leaving.

Sophia Farrar, a neighbor and friend, found her, called an ambulance, and held her until the ambulance arrived. One witness said his father had called the police after the initial stabbing, saying, a woman was "beat up, but got up and was staggering around." Another witness called friends for advice on what to do, before finally calling the cops. At 4:15 AM, the ambulance got to the scene, but it was no use: Kitty died on route to the hospital, just 28 years old.

The first suspect the police questioned was Zielonko, thinking the gay relationship might have soured and turned violent. She denied knowing anything about it. The neighbors also denied that Zielonko had anything to do with it.

Six days later, on March 19, Moseley was arrested in Ozone Park, Queens, after a stolen television set was found in the trunk of his Corvair. During questioning, Moseley admitted that he killed Kitty. He also confessed to killing Annie Mae Johnson, shot in her apartment in South Ozone Park a few weeks earlier; and Barbara Kralik, only 15, and killed in her family's house in Springfield Gardens in July 1963. He said he preyed on women because "they were easier, and didn't fight back." On June 11, he was convicted, and remained in prison until his death in 2016, at age 82.

The murder of Kitty Genovese would have been a footnote in the history of crime in New York City, if not for Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy meeting A.M. "Abe" Rosenthal, then the metropolitan editor of The New York Times, for lunch and telling him, "That Queens story is one for the books." Rosenthal launched an investigation, and on March 27, 2 weeks after the murder, the Times published a story titled "37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police."

The text of the article raised the number to 38, and subsequent editions printed the number 38 in the headline, but it entered the public consciousness as "37 people saw a murder and did nothing about it." The article quoted one witness as saying, "I didn't want to get involved."

Crime had been on the rise in New York since the end of World War II, and with the Baby Boomers, the largest generation America has ever produced, now beginning to reach adulthood, and illegal drugs becoming more available and more widespread than ever, it was starting to get out of control. The Genovese murder didn't start the crime wave that continued to plague New York until the mid-1990s, but it was a convenient symbol. And the reaction to it was a convenient symbol for the callousness of New Yorkers, making the City look very bad to the rest of the country.

In the years to come, the facts of the case began to emerge. In 2014, on the 50th Anniversary of the murder, a book was published suggesting that the number of 38 witnesses who "did nothing" was misinterpreted. Some witnesses thought they saw, or heard, a minor argument, and had no idea a that murder was taking place until the next morning. She was attacked 3 separate times, and in each of the 1st 2, only 1 witness saw her get stabbed. And the 1st stabbing punctured a lung, rendering her incapable of screaming.

What's more, there was no real way to get in touch with emergency services: The best that could be done at the time was to dial zero for a telephone operator, say, "Get me the police," and go through the NYPD's calling system of the time, and hope that it led to an ambulance getting there in time. This was considered unacceptable, and in 1968, 4 years later, the 911 emergency-call system was put into effect.

Episodes of the CBS legal drama Perry Mason, like the novels that inspired it, were usually titled "The Case of the... " followed by an alliteration. On November 21, 1965, the show aired "The Case of the Silent Six," with 6 residents of a small apartment building failing to help a murder victim. The 1975 ABC film Death Scream was also based on the murder. So were 2 episodes in the NBC Law & Order franchise, one of them titled "41 Witnesses."

In the 1986 comic book miniseries Watchmen, the character of Walter Kovacs recalled reading about the Genovese murder, saying that it inspired him to become the vigilante Rorschach. This was also mentioned in the 2009 film version. What the film version did not include, but the original graphic novel did, was that his mask was made from a dress that Kitty had worn.

MLB Ballpark Corporate Names, Ranked

This is a ranking of the teams in Major League Baseball based not on how much I like the team, but on how much I like the product that holds their ballpark's naming rights.

I'm not doing this for the other sports, simply because there are too many of them with companies that I know too little about.

30. Colorado Rockies, Coors Field: I don't like Coors beer. Worse still, the Coors family have long been heavy donors to right-wing extremist causes. To Hell with them and their barley-flavored water.

Note: The first time I tried to type that, it came out "Coors Light is barely-flavored water." I decided not to edit it, because it was still true.

29. Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park: The old yard is named for its section of Boston, The Fenway, or The Fens. Fens are a swampy area. The Meadowlands Sports Complex was built on a former swamp, too, but they didn't keep that in the name. The Red Sox did. And it's one of the less disgusting things about them.

28. Los Angeles Dodgers, Dodger Stadium: The Dodgers no longer represent Brooklyn, or Ebbets Field, or Jackie Robinson. At this point, they no longer even represent Sandy Koufax or Fernando Valenzuela. But the fact that this stadium still stands, on land taken from its residents by the City of Los Angeles, and given to Walter O'Malley, just so he could make more money than he was making in Brooklyn, makes it, and what its name represents, despicable.

27. Pittsburgh Pirates, PNC Park: The city and the ballpark are terrific. Not the name: I have had a lot of difficulty with PNC Bank, and its initials are said to stand for "People Never Count."

26. Oakland Athletics, Oakland Coliseum. After going through a few corporate names, the most-mocked stadium in baseball is once again identified by its city, which, within the last 5 years, has already lost the Warriors to nearby San Francisco, and the Raiders to not-even-close Las Vegas, and may be about to lose the A's to Vegas as well. Maybe that shows that the City of Oakland, and/or the County of Alameda, have better priorities. Or maybe it shows that they can't get their act together.

25. San Diego Padres, Petco Park: I don't have a problem with Petco as a company, but I can't stand the smell of pet stores. It's not the pets, it's the pet food. And the fishtanks smell terrible, too.

24. Milwaukee Brewers, American Family Field: American Family is an insurance company, and I have no familiarity with it. Had they kept their previous name, Miller Park, it would be higher, because Miller Lite is one of the few beers that I actually like.

23. Cincinnati Reds, Great American Ball Park: Great American is an insurance company, and I have no familiarity with it.

22. Cleveland Indians, Progressive Field: Progressive is an insurance company, and I have no familiarity with it, beyond enjoying their TV commercials.

21. Seattle Mariners, T-Mobile Park: I've heard that T-Mobile is rather unreliable. Catherine Zeta-Jones, whom regular readers of this blog know that I love, used to do commercials for them, but that was years ago.

20. Miami Marlins, LoanDepot Park: I've never had any reason to use a mortgage company, but having "loan" in the name makes me suspicious.

19. Chicago White Sox, Guaranteed Rate Field: I've never had any reason to use a mortgage company.

18. Toronto Blue Jays, Rogers Centre: Rogers Communications is a Canadian media corporation, which also has its name on the arenas of the NHL's Vancouver Canucks and Edmonton Oilers, and seems to find nothing confusing in that. None of their networks are available on my cable TV system.

17. Atlanta Braves, Truist Park: I have never had any dealings with Truist Bank, not even one of their ATMs.

16. Detroit Tigers, Comerica Park: See the previous answer. Detroit ranks ahead of Atlanta because I like it better as a city.

15. San Francisco Giants, Oracle Park: As far as I know, I have never had to use Oracle software.

14. Kansas City Royals, Kauffman Stadium: The ballpark is named for the founding owners of the team, pharmaceutical magnate Ewing Kauffman and his wife Muriel. They restored the city's baseball respectability after the Charlie Finley-led Kansas City Athletics years, and I have no reason not to like them, other than that I hated their team in the George Brett years of 1976 to 1985.

13. New York Mets, Citi Field: As banks go, Citi is not well-liked, due to their role in the 2008 economic crash. I've personally never had a problem with them, and have used their ATMs without trouble.

12. Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field: I haven't chewed any brand of Wrigley's gum in many years, but I have no ill will against the company.

11. Philadelphia Phillies, Citizens Bank Park: As banks go, Citizens is pretty good. My only dealing with them has been through their ATMs, which operate well.

10. Arizona Diamondbacks, Chase Field: As banks go, Chase is among the most trustworthy.

9. Houston Astros, Minute Maid Park: Minute Maid makes good orange juice, but they're owned by Coca-Cola, which I don't like.

Once, the Yankees were playing the Astros, and broadcast John Sterling turned to partner Charley Steiner, and said, "You know Charley, I hear, at Minute Maid Park, the balls are juiced." Steiner didn't miss a beat, or maybe they planned it out beforehand, because he immediately said, "Ah, that's just pulp fiction."

8. Los Angeles Angels, Angel Stadium of Anaheim: Although the Orioles as a team have given me trouble, I have no reason to actively dislike them now.

7. Baltimore Orioles, Oriole Park at Camden Yards: Although the Orioles as a team have given me trouble, the organization has usually been a class act.

6. St. Louis Cardinals, Busch Stadium: Anheuser-Busch is one of the best companies to work for in America. Their give their employees terrific benefits. I don't like Budweiser, or Bud Light, but I do like Michelob.

5. Texas Rangers, Globe Life Field: Globe Life insurance has proven to be trustworthy for my family.

4. Minnesota Twins, Target Field: Target is a good store, especially now that they have Starbucks stands.

3. Washington Nationals, Nationals Park: The Nationals have a class organization that restored baseball to the nation's capital, and they certainly can't be blamed for MLB removing the Expos from Montreal. I will always be grateful to them for 2 reasons, both connected with the 2019 World Series: Their fans booing Donald Trump in Game 5, and beating the cheating Astros in Game 7.

2. Tampa Bay Rays, Tropicana Field: The worst stadium in MLB, but good products. I practically grew up on Tropicana orange juice.

1. New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium: And, of course, Yankee Stadium is also a powerful brand.

No Domes for Baseball

Baseball is supposed to be played outdoors. No domes.

If I were the Commissioner of Baseball, I would order every team to play with the roof open. If that's not physically possible, given their current stadium, I would give them one year to get a deal done to build a stadium without a permanent roof, and then three years to get it done. Any team playing a game with a closed roof after April 1, 2028 would forfeit that game to the visiting team.

This would also apply to artificial turf, although that should be considerably easier to replace.

Don't tell me you can't afford it. Every MLB team is owned by a man, or a group, that can build a dozen or more new stadiums without one damned penny of the taxpayers' money.

"But what about rain?" And, "What if it's cold?" Postpone the game, and make it up later. If you need help with rescheduling, notify the MLB office, and we will accommodate you.

"But that would make the doubleheaders pile up!" So? Play them.

"But that would be a terrible inconvenience!" You're getting paid millions, team management. Suck it up.

"But it will exhaust our pitchers!" No, what exhausts your pitchers is not letting your starters pitch 7 or more innings. Trust your starters.

"But what about the fans?" Oh, so now, you care about the fans? The fans will be fine with the doubleheaders. Heck, they can plan day-long parties around them, like that other sport does with its Super Bowl.

MLB Domed Stadium History:

Houston: 1965-1999, Astrodome. Permanent Roof, with Artificial Turf from 1966 onward. 2000-present, Enron Field/Minute Maid Park. Retractable Roof with Real Grass.

Seattle: 1977-1999, Kingdome. Permanent Roof. 1999-present, Safeco Field/T-Mobile Park. Retractable Roof with Real Grass.

Minnesota: 1982-2009, Metrodome. Permanent Roof.

Montreal: 1988-1998, Olympic Stadium. Retractable Roof, with Artificial Turf. Roof had to be removed due to ineffectiveness.

Toronto: 1989-present, SkyDome/Rogers Center. Retractable Roof with Artificial Turf.

Tampa Bay: 1998-present, Tropiciana Field. Permanent Roof.

Arizona: 1998-present, Bank One Ballpark/Chase Field. Retractable Roof with Real Grass until 2019, then switched to Artificial Turf.

Milwaukee: 2001-present, Miller Park/American Family Field. Retractable Roof with Real Grass.

Texas: 2020-present Globe Life Field. Retractable Roof with Artificial Turf.