December 15, 1925: New York's 1st NHL Team & The Death of Battling Siki

"Bullet" Joe Simpson

December 15, 1925, 100 years ago: For the 1st time, a National Hockey League game is played in New York City. But the home team is not the New York Rangers. A few hours before the new, later "Old," Madison Square Garden held its 1st boxing card, it hosted a matinee of a brand-new hockey team, the New York Americans. In their 5th game, they lost to the Montreal Canadiens, 3-1.

The NHL began to expand into America the season before, with the Boston Bruins. This expansion continued in 1925-26, with the Americans and the Pittsburgh Pirates, who would also end up failing; then, in 1926-27, with the New York Rangers, the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Black Hawks.

The Americans' 1st game was on December 2, against the Pirates, at the Duquesne Gardens in Pittsburgh, and they won, 2-1, with Charlie Langlois scoring the winner, 3:10 into overtime.

The Americans were owned by Bill Dwyer, a bootlegger who was making money during Prohibition, and the hockey team became the toy he spent his money on. If that seems odd, let the record show that another major league sports team debuted in New York City that season: The football version of the New York Giants, and they were founded and owned by Tim Mara, who was a bookmaker at a time when that was legal in New York City.

Bill Dwyer

George "Tex" Rickard, builder and owner of the new version of Madison Square Garden -- eventually to be known as "The Old Garden" -- made so much money on the Americans' rent and concessions that he wanted his own team. The media called them "Tex's Rangers," and they immediately became more successful than the Americans. The Rangers became known as the "classy" team, while the Amerks were the "blue-collar" or "working man's" team.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, Dwyer's hockey ownership was doomed. The League took over ownership of the franchise in 1936, and let its head coach, one of their former players, run it: Norman "Red" Dutton. It didn't change the image of either team: The Rangers were seen as the team of classy people, the Americans the team of the working class, struggling through the Great Depression.

The Americans made the Playoffs for the 1st time in 1929, but lost -- to the Rangers. They didn't make it again until 1936, beating Chicago before losing to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Semifinals, coming within 5 wins of the Stanley Cup. In 1938, the Americans beat the Rangers in the Quarterfinals, with Lorne Carr scoring in overtime to win the deciding Game 3, before losing to Chicago in the Semifinals, again coming within 5 games of the Cup. They made the Playoffs again in 1939, losing to Toronto; and in 1940, losing to Detroit.

As New York teams would later tend to do, the Americans became a haven for great players looking for one last payday, including Boston Bruins legend Eddie Shore. But they had some Hockey Hall-of-Famers that they could call their own: Center Billy Burch; left wing David "Sweeney" Schriner; defensemen Bullet Joe Simpson and the aforementioned Red Dutton;, and, at 5-foot-3 the shortest player in NHL history, and thus nicknamed "Shrimp," but the winner of the Hart Memorial Trophy as league Most Valuable Player in 1929, and the Vezina Trophy as best goaltender in 1931, Roy Worters.

Roy "Shrimp" Worters

By the 1939-40 season, Canadian players were going off to fight for the British Empire in World War II. The Americans missed the Playoffs in 1941. In 1941-42, still bogged down by lingering debt from the Dwyer era, Dutton had to sell off his best players for cash.

Red Dutton

At his wit's end, Dutton changed the team's name to the Brooklyn Americans. He intended to move the team to Brooklyn, but there was no arena in that borough suitable enough even for temporary use. As result, they continued to play their home games at The Garden, while practicing in Brooklyn. They barely survived the season, finishing dead last for the second year in a row with a record of 16–29–3.

St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1942, was no lucky day for the New York Americans. New York City's original National Hockey League team loses to the Boston Bruins, 8-3 at the Boston Garden. Since the Amerks did not qualify for the Playoffs, this was their last game of the season. Two days earlier, they had played their last home game, at the old Madison Square Garden, and won, beating the Maple Leafs, 6-3. Murph Chamberlain scored a hat trick.

The Amerks suspended operations for The War's duration. In 1945, a group emerged willing to build a new arena in Brooklyn, and Dutton was ready to resume operations. But in 1946, the year Bill Dwyer died, the NHL reneged on previous promises to reinstate the Amerks, and canceled the franchise.

Legend has it that Dutton blamed the Rangers for canceling the Americans' franchise, and placed a curse on them, saying they would never win the Stanley Cup again for as long as he lived. They had won it in 1928, 1933 and 1940. Dutton died in 1987, and the Rangers had not won the Cup again. But the New York Islanders, founded as an expansion team in 1972, had won 4 straight Cups, from 1980 to 1983.

The Rangers finally won the Cup again in 1994. The New Jersey Devils, founded when the Colorado Rockies moved to the Meadowlands in 1982, won the Cup in 1995, 2000 and 2003. Since the Americans were cut off in 1942, the won-loss records of the New York Tri-State Area's teams in the Stanley Cup Finals -- keeping in mind that it was only the Rangers from 1942 to 1972 -- are 1-4 for the Rangers, 4-1 for the Islanders, and 3-2 for the Devils.

The Americans' records and trademarks are still owned by the NHL. The Islanders have never worn "throwback uniforms" in their style. I don't know if they've ever even asked for permission to wear them.

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As I said, December 15, 1925 was the night that the 1st fight card was held at "The Old Garden," which became known as "The Mecca of Basketball," and "The Mecca of Boxing." Paul Berlenbach, the Light Heavyweight Champion of the World, won a decision over Jack Delaney. This Garden would be replaced in 1968.

Battling Siki would never get to fight at this Garden. The same night, he was found shot and killed on 42nd Street, where the Port Authority Bus Terminal would later be built. He was 28, and may have been shot by a policeman for drunk and disorderly conduct.

He was born as Louis Mbarick Fall on September 16, 1897 in Saint-Louis, in Senegal, the West African land that had been a French colony since 1677, during the reign of King Louis XIV. He began boxing at the age of 14. When World War I broke out in 1914, he joined the French Army, serving in the 8th Colonial Infantry Regiment. He was decorated for bravery in battle with the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille Militaire.

After the war, he moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and resumed his boxing career, under the name Battling Siki. He was romantically involved with a Dutch woman, Lijntje van Appelteer, who became his common-law wife, and, in 1921, the mother of his son, Louis Fall Jr.

From 1919 to 1922, he was 43 out of 46 fights, with 1 loss and 2 draws. He earned a fight against the Light Heavyweight Champion of the World, a white Frenchman named Georges Carpentier, a war hero who had famously lost a bout for the Heavyweight Championship to Jack Dempsey in 1921.

The fight was set for September 24, 1922, at the Stade Buffalo in Paris. The venue, normally a cycling track or "velodrome," was named for Buffalo Bill Cody, who had brought his Wild West Show to the site many years before. Ernest Hemingway, not yet world-famous but already known to the Paris literati, was in attendance.

Siki claimed that he had agreed to take a dive, but when Carpentier knocked him down, he was outraged: Although he had agreed to throw the fight, he did not intend to get beat up doing so. In the 6th round, Siki hit Carpentier with a powerful right uppercut that appeared to put him down and out for the count.

The referee, however, claimed Siki had tripped Carpentier, and awarded the bout to the unconscious champion on a foul. Fearing a riot from the aroused crowd, the three ringside judges overruled the referee, and Siki was declared the champion.

Like many boxers before and after, Siki let his newfound fame go to his head. He would walk down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, wearing a tuxedo and top hat, and walking a pet lion. His carousing in postwar Paris knew no bounds, and his appetites for champagne and white women seemed endless. Had he acted like that in America, as had the 1st black Heavyweight Champion, Jack Johnson, his end might have come sooner.

He refused offers to come to America and fight boxers such as Dempsey and Harry Greb. He stayed in Europe, and lost his 1st title defense, to Mike McTigue, in Dublin, Ireland on March 17, 1923. He had been the champ for less than 6 months.

Later that year, he came to America, fighting at the soon-to-be-replaced Madison Square Garden at 26th Street and Madison Avenue, and also in Philadelphia, Buffalo, Memphis, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Rochester, Columbus, Syracuse and Baltimore. His partying had badly caught up with him: In 25 fights in America, he went 9-15-1.

He also married Lillian Werner, a white artist from Memphis who was 7 years older. His friends were under the impression that he was still married to Lijntje. With America under Prohibition, he would go into speakeasies, refuse to pay his tab, and fight his way out.

On December 15, 1925, a policeman saw him drunkenly staggering down 42nd Street. He told the cop he was on his way home, and walked off. That was the cop's story. Later that night, Siki was found dead, shot twice in the back at close range. No one was ever arrested for the crime.

He was buried in Flushing Cemetery in Queens. In 1993, his remains were repatriated to Senegal, which gained its independence from France in 1960.

November 28, 1925: The "Old" Garden & the Grand Ole Opry

November 28, 1925, 100 years ago: Madison Square Garden, the 3rd building with the name, opens between 49th and 50th Streets, between 8th and 9th Avenues, in Midtown Manhattan, at the northern end of the Theater District. The front entrance is on 8th Avenue, topped by a marquee that will soon be world-famous.

The 1st Garden was built at the northeast corner of 26th Street and Madison Avenue, catty-corner from Madison Square Park, in 1879. It had no roof. It was replaced in 1890 with a Moorish-style building, designed by the renowned architect Stanford White, that not only had a roof, but a tower with a roof garden where shows were hosted, and an apartment for White atop that.

Atop that was a statue of Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt. This statue, sculpted of gilt copper by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was nude, and the hoity-toity critics of the day hated it. One of the nastiest reviews came from a Philadelphia newspaper. Ironically, when the 2nd Garden was demolished, the Diana statue was taken to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (you know, the one whose steps Rocky Balboa ran up), and is still there. A copy now stands in New York's equivalent, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

For both versions, the bowstring has been lost.

Otherwise, they are intact.

White would take showgirls up to his rooftop apartment, for a pre-movies version of a "casting couch." One was Evelyn Nesbit, whom he then made a star. She left him for a man named Harry Thaw. On June 25, 1906, jealous over Evelyn still having feelings for "Stanny," Thaw went to the roof garden during a show, and shot White. Evelyn's star faded: Late in life, she said, "Stanny White died. My fate was worse: I lived."

The New York Life insurance company owned the mortgage on the 2nd Garden, and decided to tear it down to build their new headquarters. George "Tex" Rickard, the top boxing promoter of the era, decided to build his own arena, where he wouldn't have to worry about anybody else's whims. He was lucky that New York Life was willing to sell him the rights to the name "Madison Square Garden": It was already a valuable brand name, which is a big reason why the "new Garden" has never sold naming rights.

When his Garden proved successful, he decided to build 6 copies, all over America. It didn't work out that way: He built the Boston Madison Square Garden in 1928 -- soon, it became simply "The Boston Garden" -- but died early the next year. He had gone to Miami to escape the cold New York weather, and to make a deal on a prizefight featuring up-and-coming heavyweight Jack Sharkey (who would hold the title from mid-1932 to mid-1933), but came down with appendicitis. This was before antibiotics, and he was dead at age 59.

The 1st event at The Garden was a six-day bicycle race. It sounds ridiculous today, but this kind of competition was huge in the "Roaring Twenties," especially in Europe, where it's still popular 100 years later. Teams of 2 men take turns riding for 6 days straight, from 6:00 PM to 2:00 AM, and the winner is the team that completes the most laps.

The 1st prizefight was held on December 8, for the Light Heavyweight Championship of the World. Paul Berlenbach defended the title by winning a unanimous decision over Jack Delaney. The following July, Delaney took the title from Berlenbach in a rematch at Ebbets Field.

The Garden became known as "The Mecca of Boxing." Heavyweight Joe Louis, light heavyweight Archie Moore, middleweight Sugar Ray Robinson, lightweight Henry Armstrong, and more became internationally-known superstars from their fights at The Garden.

It would also be known as "The Mecca of Basketball," with collegiate doubleheaders starting in 1934. It became a secondary home court for the City's college teams: New York University (NYU), City College of New York (CCNY), Long Island University (LIU), Columbia, Fordham and St. John's.

It also hosted the annual National Invitational Tournament (NIT), starting in 1938. And it hosted what would now be called the NCAA Final Four in 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948 and 1950, the last of these won by CCNY, which also won the NIT that year, the only time this "double" was ever achieved. 

The point-shaving scandal the next year crippled college basketball in New York City, and not only led to St. John's, not accused in the scandal, being the only major program that has survived on that level, but the NCAA ruling that teams could no longer compete in both their tournament and the NIT. The Final Four did not return to the New York Tri-State Area until 1996, when it was held at the Meadowlands.

That scandal coincided with the 1st trip to the NBA Finals for the New York Knicks, who debuted at The Garden in 1946. The scandal may have saved the Knicks, and thus may also have saved the NBA: Hoop fans needed something to turn to.

Rickard, who didn't always do things on the up-and-up, offered use of The Garden to Big Bill Dwyer, a bootlegger, who founded a hockey team, the New York Americans. The 1st NHL team in New York debuted on December 15, 1925, losing to the Montreal Canadiens 3-1.

The "Amerks" did so well at the box office that Rickard, noting that New York had 3 Major League Baseball teams, decided that it could support 2 hockey teams. So he founded his own team, and when the media found out, they nicknamed the new team "Tex's Rangers." He decided to go with it, and the New York Rangers debuted at The Garden on November 16, 1926, beating the Montreal Maroons 1-0.

With Rickard's promotional skills, the Rangers proved even more successful than the Americans. World War II knocked the Amerks out, as the manpower drain caused by the American and Canadian military drafts forced them to suspend operations after the 1941-42 season, and they never returned.

But the Rangers, the Knicks, college basketball games, prizefights, circuses, musical performances, ice skating shows, rodeos, and an event that predated even the 1st Garden, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, continued at The Garden through the 1930s, the '40s, and the '50s. Madison Square Garden was right up there with the Empire State Building and Grand Central Terminal as the most famous building in the City.

But poor sight lines, and the need for more space and more dates, proved the arena's undoing. In 1960, the Pennsylvania Railroad, desperate for money, sold the air rights above Pennsylvania Station, between 31st and 33rd Streets and 7th and 8th Avenues, to the Madison Square Garden Corporation. The plan was to build a new station on the site, and a new arena on top of that.

On the afternoon of February 11, 1968, the Rangers played their last game at "the Old Garden," a 3-3 tie with the Detroit Red Wings, which was followed by a final skate with several NHL legends, including the Wings' still-active Gordie Howe. That night, "the New Garden" opened with "The Night of the Century," a salute to the USO, the United Service Organizations, which since 1941 has worked with the armed forces to provide supplies and entertainment. The co-hosts were old film partners and golfing buddies Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

The last event at the Old Garden was 2 days later, February 13, the Westminster Dog Show. Demolition soon began. The site became a parking lot while various parties haggled over what to build on the site. Finally, in 1989, the 778-foot office and residential tower Worldwide Plaza opened there. The Subway station at 50th Street includes a mural dedicated to the Old Garden.

Worldwide Plaza

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On the same day, The Grand Ole Opry is first broadcast, on radio station WSM, 650 on the AM dial, in Nashville, Tennessee. The station itself was brand-new, having gone on the air the preceding October 5, its call letters standing for the slogan of its original owner, the National Life & Accident Insurance Company: "We Shield Millions."

The Opry stage at the Ryman

George Hay, an Indiana native, had been a reporter for what was then the largest-circulating newspaper in Tennessee, the Memphis-based The Commercial Appeal. When that paper founded a radio station in 1923 (many early radio stations were founded by newspapers), WMC, he was its first evening announcer. In 1924, he left for Chicago station WLS, and hosted a program titled National Barn Dance.

In 1925, he took the concept to Nashville and WSM. The original Opry, officially titled WSM Barn Dance, was a one-hour program, simulating a barn dance but broadcasting from a radio studio. The show's 1st performer was Uncle Jimmy Thompson, a fiddler, already 77 years old. In other words, he had been born in 1848, only 52 years after Tennessee had become a State. (He lived until 1931.)

Most of the early performers on the show wouldn't be recognizable names today, but among them was Bill Monroe, the fiddler considered the inventor of bluegrass music, who was still performing up until his death in 1996, and whose song "Blue Moon of Kentucky" would be on the B-side of "That's All Right," the 1st single release of Elvis Presley.

(Elvis only appeared on the Opry once, on October 2, 1954. The audience reacted politely, but Jim Denny, by then the show's manager, told him that his style did not suit the program. Also before becoming nationally known, Elvis made several appearances, and was received considerably better, on a well-known radio show out of Shreveport: The Louisiana Hayride.)

An early regular act was the Fruit Jar Drinkers, whom Hay wanted to close every show, because he liked their "red hot fiddle playing." They were led by a banjo player, Uncle Dave Macon, a.k.a. the Dixie Dewdrop. Music historian Charles Wolfe wrote, "If people call yodelling Jimmie Rodgers 'the father of country music,' then Uncle Dave must certainly be 'the grandfather of country music.'"

If you've ever wondered why, in his song "Blue Suede Shoes" (covered by Elvis), among the things he would forgive before he would accept you stepping on said footwear, Carl Perkins listed, "drink my liquor from an ole fruit jar," this was clearly a tribute to the Fruit Jar Drinkers.

In 1926, WSM joined the 1st American radio network, the National Broadcasting Company, or NBC. On December 10, 1927, after playing Music Appreciation Hour, a classical music show which, that night, had been playing selections from grand opera, WSM Barn Dance came on. And Hay introduced DeFord Bailey by saying, "For the past hour, we have been listening to music largely from grand opera. But, from now on, we will present 'The Grand Ole Opry.'" The name stuck, and has been used ever since.

The show became more popular, and made the City of Nashville synonymous with country music, and vice versa. People wanted to watch as they broadcast. The larger studio they built turned out not to be big enough. In 1934, they moved to the Hillsboro Theatre, so they could have a paying audience. They outgrew that, too. They moved to the Dixie Tabernacle in East Nashville in 1936. Then came the War Memorial Auditorium.

Finally, in 1943, they moved back downtown, to the 2,362-seat Ryman Auditorium, and it became known as "The Mother Church of Country Music."

It remained home to the show until 1974, when, due to cramped quarters, it was moved out to the new Grand Ole Opry House at the Opryland USA theme park. In 1997, the park closed, and the Opry Mills Mall was built on the site. All the while, the Opry House remained open.

The Ryman remained open, and was renovated with modern amenities in 1994. In 2010, the flooding of the Cumberland River damaged the Opry House, and the show temporarily moved back to the Ryman while repairs were made.

George Hay died in 1968, at the age of 72. The Opry lives on, sometimes alternating between the Ryman and the Opry House.

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November 28, 1925 was a Saturday. The Army-Navy Game was played that day, at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan. Army won, 10-3.

Top 10 New York Tri-State Area Hockey Teams

Honorable Mention to the 1975-79 New York Islanders. Before the adjustments that made the 4 straight Stanley Cup wins, they got to the Cup Semifinals in 1975, '76, '77 and '79, and the Quarterfinals in '78.

Honorable Mention to the 1984-90 New York Islanders. The Denis Potvin and Mike Bossy era gave way to the Pat LaFontaine era. 6 seasons, 5 Playoff berths, but only 2 Playoff series won.

Honorable Mention to the 1987-88 New Jersey Devils. The 1st Playoff run for the team, not counting 1978 as the Colorado Rockies. They clinched a berth on the final day of the regular season, then beat the Islanders in the 1st Round (the only time these 2 teams have ever met in the Playoffs), then beat the Washington Capitals to reach the Finals of what was then called the Prince of Wales Conference, before falling to the Boston Bruins in a controversial 7-game series. It would take them 6 years to win another Playoff series.

Honorable Mention to the 1992-94 New York Islanders. After 2 straight Playoff misses, they had an inspiring run to the 1993 Conference Finals, then lost to the Rangers in the 1st round the next year. Then came Mike Milbury, and 7 straight Playoff misses.

10. 2011-12 New Jersey Devils. They beat the Rangers in a great Eastern Conference Finals, but lost the Stanley Cup Finals to the Los Angeles Kings. This remains the Devils' only season with a Playoff series win since 2007.

9. 2011-15 New York Rangers. 4 seasons, 3 trips to the Eastern Conference Finals, 1 trip to the Stanley Cup Finals. But let's be honest: This was a lucky team. It didn't have anywhere near the talent of the Rangers Cup Finals teams of 1928-29, 1932-33, 1937, 1940, 1950, 1972, 1979 or 1994.

8. 1947-50 New York Rangers. Made the Playoffs in '48, missed in '49, got all the way to overtime of Game 7 of the Finals in 1950, but lost, then missed the Playoffs for the next 5 seasons.

7. 1977-84 New York Rangers. 7 straight Playoff berths, and a trip to the 1979 Stanley Cup Finals, including a Semifinal thriller over the Islanders. But the Montreal Canadiens were too strong for them that time, and the Islanders were too strong for them in '81, '82, '83 and '84.

6. 1966-75 New York Rangers. 10 straight Playoff seasons. Got to the Stanley Cup Semifinals in 1971, the Finals in 1972, and the Semifinals in 1973 and 1974. Then got upset by the upstart Islanders in 1975, and it all fell apart.

This team may have had more talent than any Ranger team except the 1994 Cup winners: Goalie Eddie Giacomin, defenseman Brad Park, and the "Goal-a-Game Line" (the GAG Line) of Rod Gilbert, Jean Ratelle and Vic Hadfield. But they ran smack into the Henri Richard and Yvan Cournoyer Montreal Canadiens, and the Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito Boston Bruins.

5. 1940-42 New York Rangers. The Broadway Blueshirts won the Stanley Cup in 1940, and finished 1st overall in 1942. At the time, there was no Presidents Trophy for doing that, but having the best overall record in the regular season was considered nearly as important as winning the Cup. Then World War II's manpower drain caught up with the Rangers, and in the 76 years, they've been to just 5 Stanley Cup Finals, winning exactly 1 of them.

4. 1926-33 New York Rangers. 8 seasons (the 1st 8 in franchise history), 2 American Division titles, 4 trips to the Stanley Cup Finals, 2 Stanley Cups. The 1st great hockey team in New York history, advertised as "the Classiest Team in Hockey." Yes, the Rangers. This was a long time ago.

3. 1992-97 New York Rangers. 6 seasons, 2 regular-season Division titles (1992 Patrick, 1994 Atlantic), 2 Presidents Trophies for best regular-season record, 2 trips to the Eastern Conference Finals, 1 Stanley Cup (1994). Talent-wise, this team was  better than the Cup-winners of 1928, 1933 and 1940. And yet, so many stars, so little results.

If the Vancouver Canucks had won that Game 7 at Madison Square Garden, think about how Ranger fans would have reacted. Mark Messier would have gone from "The Messiah" to the greatest failure in the history of New York sports. They could have taken him downstairs to Penn Station and literally run him out of town on a rail. And then, instead of "78 Years, 1 Cup," it would be 78 years, no Cups!

2. 1995-2003 New Jersey Devils. 9 seasons, 5 Atlantic Division titles, 4 Eastern Conference Championships, 3 Stanley Cups. They weren't as star-laden as the '94 Rangers that delayed their rise by a year, but they were more accomplished.

1. 1978-84 New York Islanders. 7 seasons, 5 Patrick Division regular-season titles, 3 Presidents Trophies for best overall regular-season record, 5 straight trips to the Stanley Cup Finals, 4 straight Stanley Cups.

Love 'em or hate 'em, but, for sustained excellence, this was the best hockey team ever based in America, better than any the Boston Bruins, the Chicago Blackhawks, the Detroit Red Wings or the Pittsburgh Penguins -- and certainly the Rangers -- has ever produced.

Top 10 North American Sports Rivalries That No Longer Exist (Or Mostly Don't)

Tonight, a team will be reborn: The Rams will play their 1st regular-season game as the Los Angeles Rams since Christmas Eve 1994.

And a rivalry will be reborn, as the Rams take on their historic (1946 to 1994) geographical arch-rivals, the San Francisco 49ers.

If you are a Seattle Seahawks fan, you may now think of the 49ers as your big rivals, but don't kid yourselves: They don't see you as theirs. They hate L.A. Ask any Bay Area baseball fan: Giants vs. Dodgers. Ask any Bay Area basketball fan: Warriors vs. Lakers. Ask any Bay Area hockey fan: Sharks vs. Kings.

Another old rivalry, done in by changing college football conferences, that got restarted this past weekend was the University of Pittsburgh vs. Pennsylvania State University. Despite a furious late Penn State comeback, Pitt held on to win, 42-39.

A lot of great old sports rivalries no longer exist. These are the best of them.

Honorable Mention: Rutgers vs. Princeton, College Football, 1869 to 1980. On November 6, 1869, in what was actually a 25-a-side soccer game, Rutgers and Princeton played what is officially recognized as "the first American football game." Rutgers won. They played again the next week, and Princeton won, and Rutgers has been underachieving and letting their fans down ever since.

Indeed, After "The First Game," Rutgers didn't beat Princeton again until the dedication game of Rutgers Stadium in 1938. From 1869 to 1937, RU was 0-33 vs. Princeton. From the standardization of the current scoring system in 1883, RU didn't even come within 9 points until 1937. From 1939 to 1967, Princeton led 17-6. It was only when Rutgers made its commitment to "big-time football" (which remained laughable long afterward) that they gained the edge: From 1968 to 1980, it was 9-3-1 Rutgers, including the last 5.

Princeton refused to leave the Ivy League and go "big-time," and refused to play Rutgers again. Despite the later success, Princeton still won the all-time series, 53-17-1. In other words, had they continued playing, Rutgers would still have had to win every game until this year, 2016, to catch up.

10. New York Rangers vs. New York Americans, Hockey, 1926 to 1942. The Amerks were actually New York City's 1st National Hockey League team, beginning play in the 1925-26 season. They were so successful at the gate (less so on the ice), that Madison Square Garden owner George "Tex" Rickard wanted to establish his own team, which, before he could officially name them, got nicknamed "Tex's Rangers."

The Rangers became the glamour team, with men showing up to games in tuxedos and women in gowns, as if it was a Broadway opening. The Amerks became the blue-collar team, the team of working men, the Dodgers to the Rangers' baseball Giants. They only met in the Playoffs twice, with the Rangers winning in 1929 and the Amerks winning on an overtime goal by Lorne Carr in 1938.

Program from a 1935 game

But that 1938 win put the Amerks in what was then called the Stanley Cup Semifinals, and, due to their finances, that was as close as they ever got. The Rangers, meanwhile, reached 6 Stanley Cup Finals, winning 3 of them, between 1928 and 1940. The draft of World War II decimated the Rangers, who wouldn't get back to the Finals until 1972, but it ruined the Americans, who folded after the 1941-42 season.

New York wouldn't get a 2nd NHL team until the Islanders arrived in 1972. And that rivalry would become even nastier than Rangers vs. Americans.

9. Maryland vs. Virginia, College Football, 1919 to 2013. Still a big rivalry in basketball, Maryland's move from the Atlantic Coast Conference to the Big Ten ended it for football. The implications of this one included the hearts and minds of fans of Washington, D.C. (in 1944 and '45, they met on neutral ground at D.C.'s Griffith Stadium), but also reflected the Civil War: Maryland was a Union State, Virginia a Confederate State.

Maryland leads, 44-32-2, and it wouldn't surprise me to see this one started again.

8. The University of Cincinnati vs. the University of Louisville, College Football, 1929 to 2013. Although still a rivalry in basketball, the football rivalry, for a trophy known as the Keg of Nails, is no longer played. Cincinnati, the bigger school in football, leads 30-22-1.

7. Boston Celtics vs. Philadelphia Warriors, Pro Basketball, 1946 to 1962. Boston vs. Philadelphia has been an NBA rivalry since Day One, and reflects the rivalry of the 2 great colonial cities of America. In the last 3 years of the rivalry, it was led by Bill Russell of the Celtics (Number 6 in the photo below) and Wilt Chamberlain of the Warriors (Number 13). The Warriors won the 1947 and 1956 NBA titles, but the Celtics won in 1957, '59, '60, '61 and '62.

The Warriors were moved to San Francisco for the 1962-63 season. For 1963-64, the Syracuse Nationals became the Philadelphia 76ers, and the rivalry was rekindled. The Celtics kept on winning: 1963, '64, '65, '66, '68 and '69, while the Sixers won in 1967. Since then, the 76ers have only won in 1983, while the Celtics have added 1974, '76, '81, '84, '86 and 2008.

6. New York Yankees vs. Philadelphia Athletics, Baseball, 1901 to 1954. This one really didn't get going until 1927, because, until then, it was rare for both teams to be good at the same time. An exception came in 1906, when a September incident led to a game being forfeited to the Highlanders, as the Yankees were then known. But neither team won the Pennant: The Chicago White Sox finished 1st, the Highlanders 2nd, and the defending Champion A's 3rd.

From 1927 to 1932, one of these teams won the American League Pennant every year, and so many of the greatest players in the game's history were involved.

Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Babe Ruth.

3 men, 1,841 career home runs.

Once the Great Depression forced A's manager/part-owner Connie Mack to sell off his stars, the A's weren't good again until the early 1970s, and that was 2 cities later (Kansas City, 1955-67, and then Oakland). Some have attributed the A's move to Kansas City to Yankee ownership. I'm not exonerating anybody, but the real fault for the failure of the A's in Philadelphia lies with the Mack family: Old man Connie refusing to give up control, and his sons waiting too long to force it, and then running the team incompetently.

5. Michigan vs. Notre Dame, College Football, 1887 to 2014. We're talking about 2 schools that both think they're the defining program of college football. Despite the long range of time, it's only been played 42 times, with Michigan leading 24-17-1. Indeed, except for 1942 and '43, it wasn't played at all between 1909 and 1978.

That's John Kryk as the book's author, not John Kruk.

Oddly, the most famous game between these 2 powers never happened: In 2000, an episode of The West Wing, "The Portland Trip," featured the President of the United States, Jed Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen), a Notre Dame grad, and his White House Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry (John Spencer), a Michigan man, having fun arguing over the game to be played the next day. The entire episode took place that night, so we never got to hear the result. And, in real life, the teams did not play each other that year.

In 2012, Notre Dame said it was exercising its option to stop the rivalry after the 2014 season. Brady Hoke, then the head coach at Michigan, said Notre Dame was "chickening out." Michigan beat Notre Dame in Ann Arbor in 2013, and the Michigan Stadium sound-effects guy played "The Chicken Dance." But the next year, the last meeting thus far, Notre Dame won 31-0 in South Bend.

UPDATE: The game was played again in 2018, with Notre Dame winning in South Bend. It will be played in Ann Arbor in 2019. It is not currently scheduled after that.

4. Kansas vs. Missouri, College Football, 1891 to 2011. This was the 1st college football rivalry west of the Mississippi River, and there is real history behind it, not just sports history. Real history. Really bloody history. They didn't call the Jayhawk State "Bleeding Kansas" for nothing.

In the years immediately before, during, and even for a little while after the American Civil War, there was some deadly serious fighting. Kansas was a free State, Missouri a slave State, although it never joined the Confederacy. Confederate sympathizers from Missouri would cross over and wreak havoc in Kansas, including in Lawrence. On May 21, 1856, "the Sacking of Lawrence" occurred. On August 21, 1863, William Quantrill led Quantrill's Raiders (including a young pair of brothers named Frank and Jesse James) in a massacre, killing 164 people, all civilians. The University of Kansas was founded in Lawrence on March 21, 1865.

The football rivalry between Kansas and Missouri (their University was founded in 1839) became known as the Border War, and, perhaps appropriately, was first played on October 31, 1891 -- Halloween.

The winner receives the Indian War Drum, also known as the Osage War Drum. The rivalry was so nasty that it sometimes had to be played on neutral ground in Kansas City -- in Missouri's State, but considerably closer to Kansas' campus, with the ticket allotment evenly divided. It was played in Kansas City from 1891 to 1906, again from 1908 to 1910 (in St. Joseph, Missouri in 1907), in 1944 and '45 (probably due to wartime travel restrictions), and at Arrowhead Stadium from 2007 to 2011.

Missouri's move to from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference put an end to it, at least for football. There is a dispute as to the record, as the 1960 game was forfeited to Kansas by the league then known as the Big Eight, because Missouri used an ineligible player. According to Missouri, they lead 57-54-9. According to everybody else (including the Big 12 and the NCAA), Missouri leads 56-55-9 -- meaning a restart and a Kansas win in the next game would tie the series at 56-all.

3. Montreal Canadiens vs. Quebec Nordiques, Hockey, 1979 to 1995. This rivalry didn't last long, but it started largely because, when the World Hockey Association was founded in 1972, the Nords took on as many former Habs players as they could, in the hopes of attracting fans and using those players' experience to benefit their younger players. (This never works, as the early New York Mets and the early New Jersey Devils can tell you.)

They even made the Habs' all-time legend, Maurice "Rocket" Richard, their 1st head coach. He discovered that he hated coaching, and quit after only 2 games, losing the 1st and winning the 2nd, and never coached another game at any level.

When the NHL absorbed the Nords and 3 other WHA teams in 1979, the Provincial government, led by Premier Rene Levesque, was setting up the 1st sovereignty referendum, which failed. But the battle between the all-Francophone Quebec City, the Provincial capital, and the mixed-language Montreal, the far bigger and (governing aside) more influential city, got intense.

Ironically, in the 1920s and '30s, it was the Montreal Maroons who were seen as Montreal's Anglophone and white-collar team, and the Canadiens who were the Francophone and blue-collar team. Despite having won 2 Stanley Cups, in 1926 and 1935, the Depression knocked the Maroons out in 1938.

The Playoff matchups between the Habs and the Nords were rough, both on the ice and in the stands, and it began to resemble hooligan rucks in European soccer. On April 20, 1984, a Playoff game at the Montreal Forum had a long fight that became known as the Good Friday Massacre (or La Bataille du Vendredi Saint).

The Nords never reached the Stanley Cup Finals, and for the 1995-96 season, they were moved to Denver to become the Colorado Avalanche -- and only then did they trade for Quebec City native Patrick Roy, the great goaltender who had backstopped 2 Canadiens Cup wins, and then win the Cup.

The Habs haven't won the Cup since 1993 (it's called the Curse of Saint Patrick, although Roy is no saint), and Quebec City has a new arena and is actively trying to get an expansion team or a moved team. This rivalry may be reborn in the next few years.

2. Texas vs. Texas A&M, College Football, 1894 to 2011. This game was usually played on Thanksgiving weekend, occasionally on Thanksgiving Day, and was always televised nationally. If, as has been suggested, football is a religion in Texas, then this game was a holy war.

(Both the annual game between in-State rivals the University of Utah and Brigham Young University and the not-annual game between Catholic schools Notre Dame and Boston College are nicknamed "The Holy War.")

Or maybe not so holy: The Longhorns-Aggies rivalry was worked into the 1978 Broadway musical The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas (and into the 1982 film version): The winning team gets a party at the titular establishment. There's even a song about it, sung by the Aggie players, who've won. (Apparently, it's 22 miles from Kyle Field to the Chicken Ranch.)

There is also a political angle. Located in the State capital of Austin, UT is seen as a liberal bastion in an otherwise very conservative State. Located in College Station -- if Texas has a "heart," like the song says, that may well be it -- the very conservative school, whose "A&M" stands for "Agricultural and Military," unlike most A&Ms that are "Agricultural and Mechanical," views UT as a bunch of "tea-sippin' liberals," or "tea-sips" for short. Longhorn fans simply view the Aggies as backward rednecks.

Like Missouri, A&M moved from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference, ending the football extension of this rivalry. The Longhorns have an overwhelming lead, 76-37-5.

1. Brooklyn Dodgers vs. New York Giants, Baseball, 1889 to 1957. The fact that this rivalry was moved to California and kept going, and is still going, and is occasionally nasty, doesn't change the fact that it was bigger in New York than it has ever been on the West Coast.

If you doubt this, note that the most-talked-about game in the history of baseball -- not New York baseball, but in the entire history of the sport, going back to the 1840s -- is the final game of the 1951 best-2-out-of-3 Playoff for the National League Pennant, the Bobby Thomson Game, in which the Giants completed their comeback from 13 1/2 games behind the Dodgers on August 11 to win the Pennant in the last inning on October 3. That was 65 years ago, and both teams have been gone for 59 years, but people still talk about it.

The Giants won 17 Pennants and 5 World Series before moving to California; the Dodgers, 13 Pennants and the 1955 World Series. Each had some legendary close calls.

And their fans divided the Tri-State Area, divided the City, divided neighborhoods, divided workplaces, sometimes even divided families. It's the only rivalry in the history of Major League Baseball where there were 2 teams from the same League in the same city. Yankees vs. Mets since 1962? Dodgers vs. Angels since 1961? Giants vs. A's since 1968? Cubs vs. White Sox since 1901? Only possible with Interleague Play since 1997, unless they played each other in the World Series. (Cubs-White Sox in 1906, Giants-A's in 1989, Yanks-Mets in 2000, Dodgers-Angels has still never happened in October.)

But the Giants and Dodgers faced each other 22 times a year for over half a century. Twenty-two chances to cheer your boys and boo the enemy. And every day was a chance to talk about it with people who knew the rivalry as well as you did.

The rivalry now lives in California, but a separation of 379 miles simply isn't the same as one of only 13 miles.

When Did the Rangers Begin to "Suck"?

Islander fans said it first, and we Devils fans picked it up: "RANGERS SUCK!"

Of course, we added something they didn't: "FLYERS SWALLOW!" (UPDATE: There's another addition, referencing Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins: "CROSBY WATCHES!")

But with the Rangers about to play first the Devils, and then the Islanders, at Yankee Stadium this coming week, the question should be asked: When, exactly, did the Rangers begin to "suck"?

*

First, let's to define "to suck." It's not the same thing as "to stink," meaning to be horribly bad at the sport that the team or individual is playing. Yes, there have been times -- individual games, parts of a season, entire seasons, and even a few entire eras -- when the Rangers have stunk. But that's not the same thing as "sucking."

When I was a kid, "suck" was considered a dirty word. I didn't understand why. At one point, I thought it was short for "suck eggs." And I had no idea why sucking an egg was a bad idea. It took until I was a bit older to realize it actually meant "suck dick." (Hence, "Rangers suck, Flyers swallow.")

Today, with basketball player Jason Collins and soccer player Robbie Rogers, and several female athletes of note, competing as openly gay athletes, homophobia isn't just evil, it's ridiculous. It makes no sense.

But we've become so used to the term "sucks" that it has ceased to have the same meaning. It no longer means, "I hate you so much, that I imagine you giving oral sex to another man." It means, "I hate you so much, I don't need to qualify it with thoughts about your personal life."

So when Devils and Islanders fans say, "Rangers suck," it means nothing more than, "The Rangers are bad, because I hate them."

In that light, it sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it?

But if you actually do hate the Rangers, then, damn it, it feels so good to say it! So we do -- even when the Devils (or the Islanders) aren't playing the Rangers. At least once every period at the Prudential Center, a fan high up in the upper deck starts to whistle, and the whole building yells, "RANGERS SUCK!" And a few, forgetting that there are women and children in the building, add, "Flyers swallow!"

A few years ago, the sound-effects guy at the Nassau Coliseum began playing "The Chicken Dance" during breaks in the action, and Isle fans worked "THE RANGERS SUCK!" into it.

And both sets of fans, hearing the arena organist play, "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands," adapted it for the Rangers: "If you know the Rangers suck, and they'll never win the Cup, if you know the Rangers suck, then clap your hands!"

Sound ridiculous? Well, Ranger fans have their own version. I'll get to that a little later.

*

Who first said that the Rangers suck? Well, back in the "Original Six" days, 1942 to 1967, there were only, yes, 6 teams in the National Hockey League: The New York Rangers, the Boston Bruins, the Detroit Red Wings, the Chicago Blackhawks, the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Bruins, being the closest team (212 miles between the Gardens from 1928 to 1968), would have been the Rangers' natural rivals. Except that Bruins fans don't seem to chant, "Rangers suck!" Being also Red Sox fans, they're much more likely to chant, "Yankees suck!"

When the New England Patriots won their first Super Bowl in February 2002, they had a parade through downtown Boston, ending at City Hall. Once there, Larry Izzo, a backup linebacker who would be totally forgotten now if it wasn't for this, held up the Vince Lombardi Trophy, pumped it, and yelled, "Yankees suck!" And however many people could fit into City Hall Plaza (I've been there, and I'm making a slightly educated guess of around 250,000) picked it up and chanted it.

Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe said, shortly thereafter, "I guarantee you, if the New York Giants win the Super Bowl, nobody's going to start a 'Boston sucks' chant."

When the Jets won their Super Bowl, it saved Joe Namath from having to find out the actual meaning of "guarantee": "(such-and-such occurrence) will happen, and if it doesn't, I will (make a specific type of amend for my wrong prediction)." Same with Mark Messier when he predicted the Rangers would win the 1994 Stanley Cup. But for all the times that Patrick Ewing guaranteed that the Knicks would win the NBA title, he was never held to it.

When the Giants beat, of all teams, the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII in February 2008, there was a parade up Broadway, ending at New York's City Hall, and, while it is the Jets, not the Giants, who are the Patriots' AFC East rivals, all those Giant fans, most of them Yankee Fans (Met fans, by and large, tend to root for the Jets because of the shared Queens/Long Island heritage), chanted, "Boston sucks!" As far as I know, Shaughnessy had no comment on that.

*

The first hockey team in New York was the New York Americans, who debuted in 1925, to fill the gap in the NHL left by the folding of the Ontario-based Hamilton Tigers. They were awful on the ice, but drew a lot of fans to the newly-built third Madison Square Garden, on 8th Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets. (The first 2 Gardens were built off the northeastern corner of Madison Square, on Madison Avenue between 26th and 27th Streets -- the first in 1879, the second in 1891. The New York Life Building stands on the site now.)

The Garden, and the corporation that ran its business and events, was owned by George "Tex" Rickard, the nation's foremost boxing promoter. (One of his limited partners was wrestling promoter Jess McMahon, grandfather of WWE boss Vince McMahon.) Tex was so pleased by the profits from "the Amerks" that he applied to the NHL to have a second team at The Garden. Why not? New York had enough baseball fans for 3 teams, so, surely it had enough hockey fans for 2 teams. He turned out to be wrong about that -- but in a way that benefited him.

The new team was quickly nicknamed "Tex's Rangers" by the media, and Tex went with it, outfitting them in the same colors as the Amerks: Red, white and blue. With Lester Patrick, one of the greatest defensemen of the previous era, as head coach and general manager, the Rangers were successful, every which way, from the start, making the Playoffs in their first season, 1926-27, and then winning the Stanley Cup in 1928, 1933 and 1940, and also reaching the Finals in 1929, 1932 and 1937.

Rickard lived to see the first Cup, but fell victim to appendicitis, and, in the days before antibiotics, died in 1929, just 58 years old. He had lived just long enough to see the first of what he planned on being 6 copies of The Garden built around the country. He called it the Boston Madison Square Garden -- which, of course, was soon shortened to just "the Boston Garden." (Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, aside from being one of the Original Six teams' arenas, had no connection to Rickard.)

The Rangers weren't just talented, having future Hockey Hall-of-Famers like Frank Boucher, brothers Bill and Bun Cook, Babe Pratt and Ivan "Ching" Johnson (supposedly, he looked Chinese, but I don't see it) -- they were classy. Lady Byng, wife of Viscount Byng, the Governor-General of Canada (as Cup namesake Lord Stanley had been 30 years earlier) and that country's foremost military hero of World War I, donated a trophy to be awarded annually to "the most gentlemanly player" in the NHL, and Boucher won it 7 of the first 8 times it was awarded. She finally told him he could keep it, and donated a new trophy.

Okay, Johnson and Pratt -- a.k.a. "Pratt the Rat" -- could be among the roughest customers in the game, in a rough era. But, by and large, as would be said today, the Rangers played the right way. And they were rewarded, not just with wins, but with the adoration of local fans, who sometimes showed up at The Garden for 8:45 starts -- at the time, the same time that curtains went up at Broadway shows -- wearing formal dress. Yes, Ranger fans showed up wearing tuxedos and evening gowns. This was a long time ago.

As a result, Ranger fans were considered classy, and Amerks fans were considered to be blue-collar, even rough -- hockey's equivalent of the Brooklyn Dodgers. This was not helped by the fact that their owner, Bill Dwyer, was one of New York's biggest bootleggers in the Prohibition era (1920-33). This fact did not seem to bother NHL President Frank Calder. (The office wasn't called "Commissioner" until 1991.) The end of Prohibition ruined Dwyer, and he ended up losing control of the team to the league, who sold it to their coach and former star player, Mervyn "Red" Dutton.

The teams played each other in the Playoffs twice. The Rangers won 2 games to none in 1929, and in 1938, having acquired Ching Johnson, the Amerks stunned the Rangers 2 games to 1, winning the finale in overtime on a goal by Lorne Carr.

But that was it for them. They had reached the Semifinals, as far as they had ever gotten, and lost to the Chicago Black Hawks (it wouldn't be officially one word, "Blackhawks," until 1986), who went on to win the Cup. In 1942, hit by financial difficulty and the manpower shortage created by World War II, Dutton had to suspend operations, reducing the number of teams in the league from 7 to 6 -- hence, "Original" is incorrect, but "Six" is.

When the war ended, the franchise remained wrapped up, and Dutton supposedly placed a curse on the Rangers: They would never again win the Stanley Cup. Dutton died in 1987, at which point the Rangers hadn't won the Cup in 47 years, so, as far as he was concerned, mission accomplished.

The other source of the "Curse of 1940" theory is that The Garden's mortgage was paid off in early 1941, and, still having the Cup, Ranger management celebrated by burning the mortgage papers in the bowl of the Cup, thus "angering the hockey gods." There aren't actually any hockey gods, and there probably wasn't an actual curse, but the mortgage-burning story is absolutely true: I can't find the photograph on the Internet, but I have seen it.

The Rangers won the Cup in 1940 and finished 1st in the regular season in 1942, but The War (always Capital T, Capital W to anyone alive at the time) ruined them. From 1942-43 to 1965-66, 24 seasons, the Rangers made the Playoffs only 6 times, and the Finals only once, 1950, when they lost to the Detroit Red Wings in overtime of Game 7, on a goal by Pete Babando.

How bad were the Rangers in the Fifties and early Sixties? Goalie Lorne "Gump" Worsley was asked what team gave him the most trouble. Rather than said the Montreal Canadiens of Maurice Richard and Jean Beliveau, or the Detroit Red Wings of Gordie Howe, he said, "The Rangers." They traded him to Montreal in 1963, and he proved his point, winning 4 Cups with them -- and being so good that the Habs could afford to trade away 2 of his backups, Tony Esposito (Phil's brother) and Rogie Vachon, both of whom became Hall-of-Famers with other teams. So it wasn't Gump who was bad, it was the Rangers.

The Rangers stunk. But they didn't "suck." There was nothing inherently evil about them, or about their fans.

*

The tide began to turn in the late Sixties, just as "the New Madison Square Garden Center" opened in 1968, on top of Penn Station, between 31st and 33rd Streets, and 7th and 8th Avenues. What became known as "the old Garden" was demolished right afterward, and a parking lot was put on the site until construction began on Worldwide Plaza, a skyscraper which opened in 1989.

The Rangers rose back to contention largely thanks to goalie Eddie Giacomin, defenseman Brad Park, and the "GAG Line," which stood for "Goal A Game": Jean Ratelle centering Vic Hadfield and Rod Gilbert. All are still alive; all but Hadfield are in the Hall of Fame, and Hadfield probably should be.

This was a bit of a golden age for New York sports: Between 1968 and 1973, although the Yankees and Giants were mediocre at best, World Championships were won by the Mets, the Jets, and the Knicks twice, with the Mets winning an additional Pennant and the Knicks reaching an additional NBA Finals.

The Rangers were a part of this, having a memorable series with the Black Hawks in 1971 (highlighted by Pete Stemkowski scoring a winner in triple overtime in Game 6, before losing in Chicago in Game 7) and reaching the Finals in 1972, before losing in 6 games to the Bruins of Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito.

Still, Bruin fans didn't chant "Rangers suck," not even in the Boston Garden games of the series.

This was in the NHL's big era of expansion, and the next season, the New York Islanders debuted, at the Nassau Coliseum in Hempstead. (The mailing address is Uniondale, but it's within the town of Hempstead.) For 2 years, they were terrible, but in 1975, just their 3rd season, they beat the Rangers in the Playoffs.

This was a stunning blow, and it was a transition period in New York sports: The Yankees were playing in Shea Stadium while the original Yankee Stadium was being renovated, the Mets began to decline, the Giants played first at the Yale Bowl in Connecticut and then at Shea while waiting for Giants Stadium to be finished, the Jets fell apart as did Namath's knees, and the Knicks got old and fell apart while watching the Nets win 2 ABA titles.

The hockey shift was the most noticeable of all. The Islanders began a dominant stretch that would eventually see them reach 5 straight Finals, winning 4 straight Cups. But calendar year 1975 was the Rangers' annus horribilis. Ranger management, having already traded Hadfield, fired Emile Francis as head coach after the Playoff loss to the Isles, ending his tenure in that role after 11 years. He remained general manager a little longer, being relieved of duty the following January.

But before that, he made a few deals, including one in June with the St. Louis Blues that brought in young goalie John Davidson. That left the veteran Gilles Villemure as the odd man out in the net, and he asked to be traded, and was, to Chicago on October 28.

Then came a pair of earthquakes. On Halloween, October 31, 1975 -- the day after the Daily News reacted to President Gerald Ford's refusal to bail out the financially-troubled city with its most famous headline, "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD" -- just 4 games into the new season, the Rangers waived the still-popular Giacomin, and he was picked up by the Red Wings.

As fate would have it, the Wings were the opponents in the Rangers' next home game, and on November 2, as the players lined up for the National Anthem, including Giacomin in a red Number 31 jersey instead of his familiar white Number 1, the Ranger fans, showing that they knew more about hockey than their team's management, chanted, "Ed-die! Ed-die! Ed-die!"

His former New York teammates rapped their sticks on the boards in the traditional hockey players' salute. The chant resurfaced a few times during the game, with every Ranger goal on Eddie booed, and the Rangers lost, 6-4. It was probably the only time Ranger fans ever left The Garden happy about a defeat.

Five days later, on November 7, the Broadway Blueshirts made what became known in hockey as The Trade: Sending Park, by then the team Captain, Ratelle, and defenseman Joe Zanussi for Esposito and defenseman Carol Vadnais. None of those players had wanted to be traded. Asked in 2008 how long it took him to get over his anger at the Rangers, Park said, "I'm still ticked!"

To make matters worse, Espo demanded the Number 7 he'd worn in Boston, but Gilbert, who'd worn it for the Rangers since 1962 (like Bobby Hull, he started his career wearing 16), didn't want to give it up. Gilbert was already (and, to this day, remains) the Rangers' all-time leading scorer, and it didn't matter if you were a 2-time Stanley Cup winner, holder (at the time) of the single-season records for goals, assists and points, and a national hero in your homeland: You do not ask a club icon to give up his uniform number.

Gilbert held firm, and the team backed him up, so Espo took Number 77. In the next few years, as age caught up with Gilbert and he retired, Espo would win the fans over, big-time. But he got off to a very rocky start, and, yes, part of it was his fault.

The Rangers missed the Playoffs in that 1975-76 season. They missed again in 1976-77, the year that the longtime shield logo was placed on the jerseys, instead of the diagonal "RANGERS" that had been so familiar since the team's founding.

Fans got restless. The top level, the 400 sections, of The Garden had blue seats, and in those cheapest of seats, the passion began to boil over. The seats were blue, the jerseys were blue (although, at this point, home teams wore white in the NHL), the air was blue (smoking was still allowed in sports arenas at the time), and the language was getting bluer than ever.

The Rangers made the Playoffs in 1978, and then in 1979, they regained their local icon status, including a thrilling Stanley Cup Semifinal win over the Islanders, delaying the Nassau County club's rise to the top for one more year.

*

Now, here is where Ranger fans' memories and the facts diverge. The Rangers had gotten a pair of Swedish forwards from the World Hockey Association's Winnipeg Jets: Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson. The way Ranger fans remember it, during that epic '79 series, Islander defenseman and Captain Denis Potvin crashed Nilsson into the boards with a vicious illegal hit, and Nilsson never played again, causing the Rangers to lose the Stanley Cup Finals to the Montreal Canadiens.

The story isn't true, and they damn well know it. The incident happened in a regular-season game on February 25, 1979, a game the Rangers won 3-2. Nilsson chased the puck, and got his skate caught in the boards. Potvin did hit him, and the hit did break Nilsson's ankle. But no penalty was called on the play, because the hit was legal.

And Nilsson did return in time to play in the Finals against the Canadiens. The Canadiens won anyway, which should have surprised no one, as it was their 4th straight Cup, their 10th in a span of 15 years. The only surprising thing was that the Rangers won Game 1 at the Montreal Forum, before the Habs took the next 4 straight.

Nilsson could have been fine all season long, and it wouldn't have meant a damn, because the late Seventies Habs may have been the greatest hockey team ever assembled, with 10 future Hall-of-Famers, including Guy Lafleur and future Devils head coaches Jacques Lemaire and Larry Robinson. (Denis Brodeur, Marty's father, was the team photographer.)

The hit didn't end Nilsson's season, let alone his career: He played 2 more seasons, and part of a 3rd, before he hung up his skates. He is still alive, living in the Swedish capital of Stockholm, and bears no ill will toward Potvin, who would Captain the Isles to 4 Cups.

It doesn't matter: For 35 years -- meaning a big chunk of current Ranger fandom wasn't even born when this happened, though the color videotape of the incident survives to prove to them that the story they've been told is a bald-faced lie -- Ranger fans have chanted, "POTVIN SUCKS!"

Denis Potvin didn't suck. He didn't even stink. He is on the short list for the title of greatest hockey player in Tri-State Area history, right up there with Frank Boucher, Brian Leetch and Martin Brodeur. And... let's tell the truth here... according to the rules of the game, he did nothing wrong in the incident in question.

But the Rangers did make the Finals in 1979, rewarding their long-suffering fans, now 39 years without a Cup. And the Rangers, every bit as much as the Yankees were, as the Mets, Knicks and Jets (well, Namath) were a few years earlier, were the toast of the town. The ad agencies came out with endorsement ideas, making players like Esposito, Davidson, Ron Greschner and others TV stars beyond the tape-delayed games shown late at night on WOR-Channel 9, and the occasional weekend game shown on WNBC-Channel 4 as part of NBC Sportsworld.

Most of these endorsements were forgettable. One was not. It was for Sasson jeans. This was the era when "designer jeans" -- including Sasson, Jordache, Cacharel, and Calvin Klein with its ads featuring a still-minor Brooke Shields -- were popular, and were worn in the infamous discos such as New York's Studio 54.

Esposito, Hedberg, new Captain Dave Maloney, and Ron Duguay were shown skating around in Sasson jeans, with their jerseys tucked into the jeans. Their silly little dances didn't help. Nor did their hairstyles. Nor did their pronunciation of the brand name: You'd think Canadians, especially the French-Canadian Duguay, would have been able to pronounce "Sah-SAHN," not "Sah-SOON" like Vidal Sassoon hair products (which they may also have been using).

It may have been the most ridiculous commercial in the history of sports. Duguay was a pretty good player, but the fact that his name was pronounced "DOO-gay" didn't help, and soon fans of every other team were pronouncing it "Doo-GAY."

When the Rangers got off to a bad start in the 1979-80 season, a new tradition was started. When the opposition would score, Ranger fans, to the tune of the ad's jingle, would point at the Rangers and sing, "Ooh, la la, you suck!" So, it seems, they understood the difference between poor performance (their own team) and hateability (Potvin).

But once the Islanders won the Cup on May 24, 1980, on Bobby Nystrom's overtime goal in Game 6 against the Philadelphia Flyers, the brief Ranger resurgence was effectively over: There was only one team in the Tri-State Area, and it was the Uniondale club. So when the teams got together, either in Hempstead or in Manhattan, Ranger fans would chant, "Potvin sucks!" and Islander fans, invoking the Rangers' last title, would chant, "NINE-teen-FOR-ty!" (Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!) They would also, instead of insulting a single player, insult the entire team: "Rangers suck!"

So perhaps we can settle on a date: November 22, 1980. It was the first time the Rangers and Islanders had played each other since the Isles won the Cup. It was at the Nassau Coliseum, and the Isles won 6-4. The "Rangers suck!" and "1940!" chants rang out, and there was nothing Ranger fans could say that could cancel that out -- try as they might with "Potvin sucks!"

Ranger fans got even more frustrated after that, turning into, along with Raider fans, the closest thing that North American sports had to the hooligans then doing their damnedest to ruin soccer in England. Today, the strip of asphalt between Penn Station and The Garden is reserved for delivery vehicles. But in the 1980s, it was a taxi stand. And it, more than Harlem, the Lower East Side, the South Bronx, or anywhere in Brooklyn, was probably the most dangerous place in New York City.

It wasn't just because New York cabdrivers tend to be maniacs. It was because Ranger fans tend to be maniacs. It was especially dangerous after a Ranger-Islander game, as Isles fans tried to get back downstairs into Penn Station, to take the Long Island Rail Road home. Having had enough pregame and in-game time to get liquored up, the kind of police presence the Yankees need when the Red Sox come to town was needed pretty much anytime the Isles came to The Garden.

When the Devils arrived in the fall of 1982, a few Ranger fans living in the Garden State, sick of not being able to get tickets to the continuously-sold-out Garden, or sick of schlepping their way through the Lincoln Tunnel (or both), switched over.

And they decided that the Rangers -- who had never done enough for most of them anyway, unless said fans were well over 40 years old and could remember 1940 or earlier -- rather than the stronger Islanders, or the other "nearby" team, the Flyers, would be the big arch-rival, and adopted the "Rangers suck" and "1940" chants. The latter was helped by the fact that the seating capacity for hockey games at the Meadowlands' Brendan Byrne Arena was 19,040.

The Islanders beat the Rangers in the Playoffs in 1981, '82, '83, and, most memorably, in a best-3-out-of-5 overtime Game 5 classic in '84. Not until 1990 -- by which point Islander legends such as Potvin, Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy and Billy Smith had retired or left -- would the City club win another Playoff series against the suburban one. But they still hadn't won the Cup, and the drought was now 50 years. Half a century.

When Devils fans chanted, "1940!" Ranger fans could chant "Nineteen-never!" This was especially true after beating the Devils in the Playoffs in 1992. But they still couldn't say anything to Islander fans.

Until 1994. They had to beat both suburban teams to reach the Stanley Cup Finals, and did. Game 7 of the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals, which the Rangers won on Stephane Matteau's double-overtime goal, remains the most crushing defeat in Devils history -- one that losing to the Rangers in the Playoffs again in 1997 and 2008 didn't help; winning the Cup in 1995, 2000 and 2003 didn't quite wipe out; and the Devils sweeping the Rangers in 2006 did little to alleviate.

It wasn't until Adam Henrique's overtime winner in Game 6 of the 2012 Conference Finals, giving the Devils 5 trips to the Stanley Cup Finals since the Rangers last made it, that "Matteau! Matteau! Matteau!" was finally put to bed, and "Rangers suck!" had any real potency from the Jersey side of the Hudson River.

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But even finally winning the Cup after 54 years (beating the Vancouver Canucks in the Finals) did little to reduce Ranger fans' bastardry. Like Red Sox fans, when their 86-year drought finally ended in 2004, they actually got sorer as winners than they ever did as losers. The difference is, while the Sox have added 2 more titles, the Rangers have now gone nearly another 20 years without even reaching the Finals, while the Devils have been to 5, winning 3 -- as many Cups in 20 years as the Rangers have won in 85 years.

The fact that the Rangers still have more Cups in their 88-year history than the Devils have in their 32-year history -- 4 to 3 -- doesn't change the fact that all but a few of their fans have seen only one. When Howie Rose yelled, "The waiting is over! The New York Rangers have won the Stanley Cup! And this one will last a lifetime!" on June 14, 1994, no one realized it at the time, but -- thus far -- it has had to last a lifetime.

Or, to put it another way: Since the Rangers won the Cup on April 13, 1940, there have been 13 Presidents and 7 Popes. Network television, color TV, cable TV and high-definition TV all began. Nazi Germany, the Japanese Empire, the Soviet Union, fascist Spain, the segregated South and apartheid South Africa have all fallen. The Berlin Wall and the World Trade Center both went up, and both came down. Rock and roll and hip-hop have been invented. All 4 Beatles were born, came together, took the world by storm, rewrote the rules of popular music, and broke up, and 2 of them have died.

Since the Rangers won the Cup on April 13, 1940, man has gone from watching Flash Gordon serials to walking on the Moon to hardly traveling in space at all. Women have gone from a defense-plant necessity to back in the kitchen to liberation to seeing the consequences of that liberation -- many of them good, some of them not so good. Computers have, for all intents and purposes, been invented, and shrank from the size of a city block, to the length of a wall, to the size of a filing cabinet, to a desktop, to a laptop, to a device small enough to fit in your hand -- the one I wrote this post on is 15 by 10 by 2 inches, and my "computer with a phone app" is 5 by 2 1/2 by 1/2 inch.

Since the Rangers won the Cup on April 13, 1940, baseball has seen the introduction of African-American, Hispanic and Asian players, artificial turf, domed stadiums, the designated hitter, divisional play and interleague play. The Dodgers and Giants left for California, and the Mets arrived and played 52 seasons. The NFL has gone from a minor concern to our most popular sport. The NBA was founded. The AAFC, 2 AFLs, the ABA, the WHA, the WFL, the USFL and the XFL all came and went. All 4 major league sports have seen expansion from North to South and from East to West, with the NHL growing from 7 to 30 teams.

Since the Rangers won the Cup on April 13, 1940, Shea Stadium, Giants Stadium, the Spectrum and Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, Mile High Stadium and McNichols Arena in Denver, County Stadium in Milwaukee, Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, Metropolitan Stadium and the Metropolitan Sports Center outside Minneapolis, Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio, Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Tampa Stadium, Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, Arlington Stadium and Texas Stadium outside Dallas, the Reunion Arena in Dallas, Foxboro Stadium outside Boston, the Capital Centre outside Washington, the Richfield Coliseum outside Cleveland, the Market Square Arena and the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, the Kingdome in Seattle, the predecessor to the current Salt Palace in Salt Lake City (where the Jazz played their 1st 12 years in Utah), the Charlotte Coliseum, the Miami Arena and the Orlando Arena were all built, used, abandoned and demolished. Candlestick Park in San Francisco and the Silverdome outside Detroit will soon join them in the built-used-and-demolished category.

And in all that time, just under 74 years, nearly three-quarters of a century, the Rangers have won 1 Stanley Cup. One. The Montreal Canadiens have won 20 in that span, the Toronto Maple Leafs 10, the Detroit Red Wings 9, the Edmonton Oilers 5, the Islanders 4, the Boston Bruins 4, the New Jersey Devils 3, the Chicago Blackhawks 3, the Pittsburgh Penguins 3, the Philadelphia Flyers and Colorado Avalanche 2 each, and 1 each -- as many as the Rangers have in the last 74 years -- for the Calgary Flames, Dallas Stars, Tampa Bay Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes, Anaheim Ducks and Los Angeles Kings.

And, keep in mind, some of those teams didn't even exist in their present forms until: Philly, Pitt and L.A. until 1967; the Isles and Oilers until 1972 (and the WHA-originating Oilers didn't join the NHL until 1979); the Flames until 1980; the Devils until 1982; Tampa Bay until 1992; Dallas and Anaheim until 1993; Colorado until 1995; and Carolina until 1997.

And yet, some Ranger fans still brag to me about their "history." They brag about being an Original Six team.

Which would be fine for Detroit, Boston and Chicago, who've won Cups in the last few years. But the Rangers haven't won in 20 years, Montreal in 21, Toronto a whopping 47 -- and they haven't even been to the Finals since they won their last Cups. At least Montreal have 24 total, Toronto 13 -- the Rangers have 4.

Ranger fans say we Devils fans are "jealous" of them. Jealous of what? Their history? It stinks, especially compared to ours. Their reputation? Along with Detroit, the Devils have been one of the NHL's model franchises these last 20 years, while everybody rooting for the other 29 teams knows the Rangers are a joke club. Their arena? Aside from history (the vast majority of which doesn't involve the Rangers) and access (being on top of subway and commuter rail lines helps), The Garden falls short of the Prudential Center in every way. Their fan base?

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Here's what you need to know about the Ranger fan base: The last time I was inside The Garden for a hockey game, I had a great seat, back of the 200 Level, on an aisle. (The Rangers won -- but the story I'm telling is worth more to me than a Devils win would have been.) In front of me were these four drunks in Ranger jerseys. They gave me a hard time, but, knowing I was in enemy territory, I played it cool. I knew I couldn't beat 4 guys that big, who needed Ex-Lax because they just didn't give a shit. So there was no rough stuff between us.

Across the aisle from them was a couple, both wearing Ranger jerseys. The 4 drunks were getting really obnoxious, until finally, after 2 periods, she told them to knock it off. The leader (in groups like that, there's always a leader, leading them in obnoxiousness) got up, and pushed her.

Pushed a woman.

Who was obviously rooting for the same team that he was.

Showing rare intelligence for a Ranger fan, the husband called an usher. They told him what happened. The 4 drunks were kicked out of The World's Most Famous Arena.

Ranger fans: They "eat their own."

Bastards.

Is it any wonder that I have adopted the language of English soccer, and started calling the team "The Scum," and their fans "Scummers"?

On Sunday afternoon, the Devils and Rangers will play at Yankee Stadium.

I want this one. Real bad.