Ferdinand Cesarano

Being from Massachusetts, I've been cheering for whichever team has my favorite uniforms. In XFL 2020, that was St. Louis. This year, probably Seattle in the XFL and New Orleans or Michigan in the USFL. Because the XFL continued the Guardians' identity, I hope that they do well. But the team that I will be rooting for most will be Vegas, on account of former Guardians (and former Generals) quarterback Luis Perez.

I realise that the second iteration of the Mustangs, after the Iron came over from the defunct af2, drew a fraction of the first version. And of course the Brewers' attendance skyrocketed when they moved into the new park, so no AFL team will be outdrawing the Brewers. Still, what the Mustangs achieved at their height is notable. The Bucks' current arena cannot be used for Arena Football?

The Milwaukee Mustangs drew extremely well by AFL standards, averaging about 14,000 at the Bradley Center for most of their existence from 1994 to 2001. This includes a winless first season in which the team ranked third in the league in average attendence. On five separate occasions, the Mustangs at the Bradley Center outdrew the Brewers at County Stadium on the same day. DATE MUSTANGS BREWERS 1995-05-26 12,474 11,054 1996-04-25 15,147 6,707 1996-06-14 15,710 14,404 1998-05-08 17,111 14,711 1999-04-28 13,101 11,441 So Milwaukee might be a pretty good city for a team in the revived AFL.

This has to be my next hat. I don't know why I have gone so long without one. Welp, so much for that. They're not selling hats. I don't know how you have an online apparel store yet do not sell the most stadard basic item, a cap with the organisation's logo.

This has to be my next hat. I don't know why I have gone so long without one.

Curious - how do you store these in some way where it's easy to find whichever one you're looking for? I'm gradually accumulating caps (not nearly 170) and already find it difficult. I use the space on top of two large dressers. I arrange the hats in eight columns sitting next to one another on top of the dressers, with at least 20 hats in each column. And I have a fleece blanket on top of the hats, in order to prevent the accumulation of dust. This is great for storage; alas, it is significantly less great for retrieval. I have to lift up the blanket to pull out the hat that I want to wear on any given day, which is convenient if the hat that I want is near the front of one of the columns. But whenever I want to pick out a hat that has made its way to the back portion of one of the columns, I have to roll the blanket completely off, then pick up and move the, let's say, 17 hats that are in front of the one that I want, pick that hat, and then slide the others back into place. So I will admit that it's a bit of a pain in the neck sometimes. But I put up with it because I really enjoy having these hats. Also, in my two-room apartment I have no other storage options.

NAL and IFL. 7 teams in the NAL and 14 currently active in the IFL.I know there are other leagues out there but they don't really have the exposure these two do. And FCF doesn't count because those teams have one coach for all of the teams calling plays that fans vote on. Ah, OK. I thought you were talking about the AFL and another league. Anyway, I don't know what the relationship is between the IFL and NAL; but I assume that it cannot be all that cordial, or else they would already have worked out an arrangement to reduce expenses for all. (Though both leagues agree that they want nothing to do with the Spokane Shock!) Still, that would be for the best. Maybe the appearance of a new AFL will spur some future talks.

Which two leagues are you referring to?

I think if they limit the amount of cross country trips, this can work. Seeing how far the Gunslingers and West Texas Warbirds have to travel to play teams in North Carolina, New York, and Florida. as long as they are able to get a deal from an airline and are near a major hub it's workable. But I could see the Texas teams bussing between themselves and the Arizona/Nevada teams doing the same. The IFL has one team in Massachusetts and the rest in the Midwest, Southwest, and West. It seems pretty awkward. The Massachusetts team would appear to fit a lot better into the NAL; and the NAL's two Texas teams would make more sense in the IFL, which itself has one team in Texas and others in Oklahoma and New Mexico. But these are the relationships that the individuals owning these businesses have worked out. Still, it would be nice to have all the arena/indoor teams (which, if the revived AFL really does come out with 16 teams, will number 37) under one umbrella, with multiple regional conferences and no inter-conference play, and then a national championship involving the winners of these regional conferences.

Or, for some of us, our adulthood. The Knights came and went too quickly to get attached to. But I was very heavily into the CityHawks and the Dragons. Also, coming into the league at the same time as the CityHawks were the Red Dogs. That was such an exciting team, led by QB Rickie Foggie, that I couldn't help but root for them, too, even though they were ostensibly the CityHawks' rivals.

In the article, the league's president of player personnel says "there's so many people that are still so interested in the game and a lot of the teams". Unfortunately, the best-known AFL teams are now in other leagues, as the Arizona Rattlers and the Iowa Barnstormers are in the IFL, and the Orlando Predators are in the NAL (along with two other former AFL champions, the Albany Empire, the last champions of the AFL, and the Jacksonville Sharks). The only fondly-remembered AFL teams that are worth bringing back would be the Tampa Bay Storm and the San Jose SaberCats. Right, especially considering that the IFL has 14 teams and the NAL has seven teams. What's more, the main thing that differentiated the AFL from the other leagues is that only the AFL had the patented nets. But the patent must have expired, because the NAL has announced that it will have the nets for its upcoming season. Finally, the IFL has a player-development deal with the XFL. So, between the oversaturation of teams, the unavailability of the best team names, the loss of exclusivity on the nets, and the advantage that IFL has, any attempt to revive the AFL seems pretty foolish.

Egad. A merger of big companies can really produce some awfully clunky names when both sides insist that their full names be included. The name Paramount Plus with Showtime is even worse than the names NBCUniversal, Sirius XM, Warner Bros. Discovery, and ExxonMobil. That name sinks to the level of the mess of a name that resulted from the merger of the accounting firms Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, the profoundly hideous PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Right. I am glad that on my Italy and China hats, the flags are a lot smaller.

I normally like to see letter-based logos. But this "ih" doesn't strike me. It's not aesthetically pleasing; and, if it's meant to have some kind of imagistic connection to healthcare, that is not at all apparent to me. With a name as evocative as Intermountain, the logo should harness some of the rich imagery that comes along with that name. The previous logo seems to vaguely suggest a human form. But what occurs to me is that, if you flip that jammy over (and remove the dot), you get something that goes well with the name Intermountain. One could even imagine that middle form on its own as a representation of the initial I.

Somebody tweeted a response crediting Elias with the claim that the Dodgers broadcast a 1950 spring training game against the A's. However, the Philadelphia Inquirer says that Scully's broadcasting debut came in a regular season game against the Phillies on April 18. That date can be found in many other accounts of Scully's career. Still, I hope that the Inquirer is wrong, because the story involving Connie Mack is better.

I really want this to be true. But I must ask: when did Vin Scully call a game managed by Connie Mack? It could only have been in 1950, Mack's last season managing the A's, and Scully's first in the Dodgers' broadcast booth. It could have been in spring training. But I doubt that spring training games would have been on the radio then. Also, I have read Scully's debut with the Dodgers dated to an April date in the regular season. So that would mean that, for Scully to have called a game managed by Mack, the Dodgers and A's would have to have met in an in-season exhibition during the 1950 season, and also that this exhibition game would have to have been broadcast by the Dodgers.

The 1976 Twins won 85 games and finished five games out of first place. Yet they had no starter with a winning record. Their top winner was reliever Bill Campbell, who went 17-5 with 20 saves in 78 appearances (all in relief).

I like the thought, because I dig throwback uniforms. But I think that having all teams wear them at once would make each uniform harder to appreciate. Throwbacks are best when they are worn for a specific occasion, like an anniversary, as the Nationals and Royals did in 2019, when the Nationals wore their Expos throwbacks and the Royals wore 1969 uniforms to celebrate the teams' 50th anniversaries. Another example comes from 2001, when the A's and Twins each wore 1901 uniforms (with the Twins wearing uniforms from their days as the Washington Senators) to mark the 100th anniversary of the American League. Throwback uniforms are wonderful. But the wearing should be decided by each team, for its specific purposes. Also, it's better that these events be spread out over the season, so that each event can get the attention it deserves.

The game wasn't far enough along for that. In Major League Baseball, if a rain-delayed game cannot be resumed, it goes into the books as a final only if the game has passed the fifth inning (or if it has passed the top of the fifth, with the home team ahead). So this analogy would hold only for an NFL game that is in the second half. A baseball game that is called off before that point must be replayed from the start, in the event that it has an effect on the final standings. If there had been enough time left in the NFL season for Hamlin to make significant progress towards recovery, that's very probably what would have happened with this game, though likely by means of a resumption rather than a restarting. Because this game cannot be replayed or resumed, and because it was halted so early in the contest with a very close score, entering the result into the record books as a draw would have been fair to all parties. Every team would then have 17 results, with the tie figuring in the winning percentages of Buffalo and Cincinnati as half a win and half a loss. Normal seedings based on winning percentage could have proceeded, with no need to make any adjustments to the playoffs.

In Major League Baseball, they make up the game if it impacts the standings. (Well, at least they did when finishing in first place meant something.) The only time that a league or a division was decided by a half a game was in 1972, when the Tigers finished a half a game ahead of the Red Sox in the AL East. This is on account of a decision that was made at the beginning of the season, by which it was decided that no games that had been lost to the strike that took place in the season's first week would be made up, no matter what. However, rainouts from later in the season would have been made up, if those games had an impact on a division title. To me it seems both fairest and most practical to call this Bills-Bengals game a draw — not a no contest, but a tie, which goes into the statistics as half a win and half a loss.

Assuming Buffalo and KC win next week, either a tie or a no contest would provide KC the #1 seed, as KC would have a slightly higher win percentage (82% to 81.25%). A tie or no contest would also give Cincinnati the division title, as even with a win next week, Baltimore wouldn't be able to catch Cincinnati on win percentage (68.75% to 64.7%). So depends on your definition of "easiest." For schedule purposes? Yes, absolutely. But to allow home field advantages and playoff seeding to be determined competitively? No, there's no easy answer there. I see. I was just thinking that, because the game was still very early and the score was still so close, a draw is a fair representation. Whereas, if it had been a 20-point difference in the second half, then that option would not suggest itself. As a side point, let's note that a tie is different to a no-contest, in that a tie is figured in the percentages as half of a win and half of a loss. The winning percentages that you gave are the ones that the teams would have if the postponed game were not replayed; still, the impacts on the four teams involved are unchanged even if the winning percentages are figured with a tie rather than with a no-contest.

It seems like Futurama should have touched on this, the way they did with blernsball.

Isn't counting the game as a draw the easiest solution?

The comparison that came to mind for me is Chuck Hughes, a Lions wide receiver who collapsed at the tail end of a 1971 game against the Bears at Tiger Stadium. Hughes, like Gathers, died of his heart problem. The radio call is here. The announcers immediately grasp that something serious is wrong. They initially believe that it is a neck injury, though the sight of doctors pumping Hughes's chest gives them a clue about the real nature of the problem. After Hughes is taken from the field on a stretcher, the game's final minute is played out before a stunned crowd of more than 50,000.