Ferdinand Cesarano

The only good road look that the team has ever had. (Though even then, the cap stinks. Put the current cap logo on that green cap.) The team has never had a good home look. What a consistent disaster asethetically this team has been. The only time it has ever looked good was the game it played in throwback uniforms of the Senior League's St. Petersburg Pelicans.

The use of a smaller stadium costs less in rent for a game that is certain to draw a smaller crowd.

One thing that I'd like to see borrowed from soccer is that draws should be allowed during the regular season. In the Japanese leagues a game that is tied after 12 innings ends in a draw. I say make it 9 innings. There's no need to play extra innings at all during the regular season. Have extra innings only in the postseason, just as in soccer a league game ends after 90 minutes (plus stoppage time), and the only games that go to extra time and penalties are tournament games. (I will note that the Japanese leagues have draws in the postseason after 15 innings. I definitely don't go for that. Every postseason game must have a winner; not so every regular-season game.) Limiting regular-season games to 9 innings would reduce the occasions of position players having to come in to pitch. (This could still happen in a blowout; but it wouldn't happen on account of a team running out of available pitchers in a marathon game.) The 9-inning limit would also allow a manager to use his best relievers in the 8th and 9th, without worring about saving them for later. And it would make for some exciting and daring play in the bottom of the 9th by a team that knew that the worst it could do is draw.

The 1982 Angels had Reggie Jackson, Fred Lynn, Rod Carew, and Don Baylor. This is not remotely true. The use of the shift against Ted Williams has already been mentioned. The shift was also used routinely against Willie McCovey, and often against Mickey Mantle when he batted lefty. A ban on the shift is lamentable. A manager should be able to deploy his players wherever he likes. Every defensive alignment has its risks as well as its benefits. When you play the infield in so as to cut off a run, then, as the saying goes, you turn a .200 hitter into a .300 hitter, and a .300 hitter into a .400 hitter. When you guard the lines to take away the extra-base hit, you leave a hole on each side of the infield. When you play the outfield deep, you concede the sacrifice fly. If the opposition cannot exploit the flaws in any given defensive alignment, that's on them. (I'm glad I retired after the 1996 season.) Finally, when I was following current baseball, I liked the DH a lot. The allegation that the DH removes strategy from the game is an empty canard. What it actually does is to encourage managers to pinch-hit for players other than the pitcher (the Yankees used to pinch-hit for Bucky Dent just about every game, which is what made his division-winning 1978 home run so surprising), to pinch-run, and to make extensive use of platoons at various positions (as Earl Weaver did). Still, I do not like to see the DH coming to the National League. I liked the DH; but what I liked just as much was having both varieties of the game. It was interesting that the very fact that most pitchers were incompetent hitters created a perverse form of pressure for the pitcher on the mound. A pitcher was expected to retire his opposite number every time; so, if the pitcher should somehow manage to walk the opposing pitcher, this was considered a major mistake that sometimes resulted in the pitcher on the mound completely losing his composure (and in the announcers saying that this is what gives managers grey hair). So, even as a fan of the DH, I always said "vive la différence". Malheureusement, la différence est maintenant morte.

That's Brian Downing, who had a rather hip/mod look for the day. Downing is best known for being thrown out at the plate by Dave Parker in the 1979 All-Star Game. (Parker made a brilliant throw; but I love Garagiola's priorities in describing the play!)

And also the wrong number. He looks wrong in anything other than number 25. Baylor would go on to wear another non-25 number the following year when he joined the A's, as that was Mark McGwire's number. The odd thing is that one of the few other times that Baylor did not wear number 25 was during his previous stint with the A's in 1976. At that time, the number was the property of pitcher Paul Lindblad.

As mentioned earlier, Paul Molitor with the Blue Jays. The most extreme case of this is Mike Torrez. The Yankee uniform is the right one for him, on account of his indispensable contribution to that historic championship, which culminated with his being on the mound for the end of the World Series and actually catching the final out. It is Torrez's right uniform despite the fact that the Yankees are the team with which he played the fewest games.

This is why it's so great to see Ryan's latter-day appearances in a Met uniform. Here he is with other members of the 1969 Mets (coach Yogi Berra, Jerry Grote, Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Duffy Dyer) in 2009. And here he is in a lovely posed shot with Seaver, from probably around the same time. Anyway, back to the topic. There is a subset of players who appear in a uniform that is wrong for them when they later work as coaches or managers. The jarring effect is especially acute for a player who played for only one team during his playing career.

I much prefer that sort of naming as the norm.

Should *OF* ?! Twice?!?!

The Guardians didn't have side panels. Because the Gamblers are the only USFL team with a logo that is unchanged, I was hoping that this meant that they'd bring back the standard block number font. Anyway, too bad about the side panels. There is evidently still no cure for Denver Broncos' Disease.

Selling players is both good and bad for MLS. The fees are great; and the presence of ex-MLS players (particularly American players) in European leagues enhances MLS's standing. At the same time, the promotion of the perception that MLS is a league that a quality player surely must want to leave is destructive to the prestige of the league. I think we want MLS to be good enough that American players don't necessarily believe that they have to go to non-big-four European leagues for the challenge; and we also want it to be a destination that some players from around the world look to go to for the challenge, in a way that's not true of, let's say, the Scottish league. So the selling of players is always going to be a balancing act for MLS.

Hey, it worked for the Houston ThunderBears! And the Pennsylvania Road Warriors.

I'm a salmon guy, myself. Big Tuna.

I'll agree with 75% of this. Florida and Arizona are for spring training. But Denver is a legit city for Major League Baseball, one which had been part of Bill Shea's and Branch Rickey's Continental League in 1959. That is an affront to history, from someone who should know better. The A's are an original American League team, dating to 1901. If contraction were to happen, then the idea of dumping any of the original eight A.L. teams or any of the eight N.L. teams that remained after that league's 1899 contraction is strictly out of order. Limit contraction to expansion teams. Oh, the Marlins won two World Series, did they? That's cute. The A's have won nine World Series! Even if you consider only the Series that they won in Oakland (which, in the name of Connie Mack's straw hat, you definitely should not do), that would make four — as in double the amount won by the Marlins. Do not even dare to compare the venerable A's, who are in the company of the Yankees and the Cardinals, with a cheesy expansion team that didn't play its first game until the A's were nearly a century old. Yow. This is the second seriously bad take from you. You are really not having a good thread here. I know I don't have to remind you about Ernie Banks. Surely you wouldn't call him irrelevant to baseball history just because he never played in the postseason. Nor would you say that about Rocky Colavito. Trout has played in one postseason series. And he has stayed with one team for his whole career. This puts him in the company of bums such as Don Mattingly and Ted Williams. Right. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a player staying with one team. If that team doesn't wind up winning pennants, then the blame belongs with the ownership and with the front office, not with the best player. I certainly don't begrudge any player changing teams to chase rings. More power to such players, such as Rickey Henderson and David Cone, not to mention Reggie Jackson and Dave Winfield. But no player has the obligation to do that; and a one-team career deserves great respect. Likewise deserving of respect is the choice not to do promos or endorsements. Simply playing the game at a high level is enough.

The pre-Super Bowl NFL and AFL championships are the equivalent of conference championships. So, I will continue to devalue this thread by offering what is not only the prettiest conference championship, but also a solid contender for the most beautiful uniform matchup in any football game ever: the 1979 NFC Championship Game. I take absolutely nothing away from a classic mud-covered Packers-Browns matchup. Still, the colours and designs on display in this Rams-Bucs game are just so powerfully gorgeous. Each of those uniforms is a gem on its own; putting the two of them together only magnifies each one's splendour.

Especially since the phrase is "shoo-in".

I'd say that the first Super Bowl beats Super Bowl III by a long way.

Two minutes? More like a half an hour. I mean, it's a doable walk; I've done it. But walking from the N train in Astoria to Randalls Island is far from convenient. It cannot be the way that thousands of fans get to a stadium for an NYCFC match. I have no idea what you're on about here. There is no subway line that goes through Randalls Island. Even if NYCFC had not taken the approach that driving to a game is secondary to the ability to arrive by subway, you cannot have 20,000 fans driving onto Randalls Island. Planning is a little bit harder than looking at a map and saying "This would be a nice place", especially considering the absolute necessity of subway access to a stadium. Still, ruling out Randalls Island (which, again, has no subways) is easy. The best place for a new stadium that currently exists is Willets Point, where the chop shops formerly ruled. But in the realm of fantasy, the best place would be over a covered Sunnyside Yards. This is an area with superb subway access, as well as a plethora of pubs and restaurants to serve as pre-match and post-match destinations. This cosmopolitan area would be a great place for our own version of Seattle's "March to the Match". While Fordham's location near a subway is acceptable, my understanding is that the university has no interest in patnering with the team. And Hofstra is located well outside of the City, so it fails on that basis alone. (We don't even need to touch upon the fact that the atmosphere is terrible, as the latter-day Cosmos found by playing there, and having to suffer with a field that has unremovable logos of the college (even in the centre circle, which is probably not allowed by MLS) and also unremovable lacrosse lines.) If Fordham or Columbia were open to totally rebuilding their small stadiums to MLS standards, that would be a fine starting point for a conversation. But they are not open to that. NYCFC is on its own on this one.

Not anymore. Icahn Stadium is a 5000-seat track-and-field stadium that is built on the site of the former Downing Stadium, where the Cosmos used to play before they blew up with Pele and moved to Giants Stadium. And the taking of park land in Randalls Island for a soccer stadium would be out of the question. Anyway, the issue with Randalls Island is not the space but the access. That island is served by no subways, and by only one bus line. Access by subway is an absolute must for any NYCFC stadium.

Josh Johnson — Los Angeles Wildcats, XFL Garrett Gilbert — Orlando Apollos, AAF Come on, man.

Very nice. It fits perfectly within the team's aesthetic What is startling to realise is that the Mets have now existed for longer than the Yankees had existed when the Mets started. This is nuts because, when I was a kid in the early 1970s, we fans of the venerable Yankees would put down fans of the recently-created Mets by saying "You have no history." Of course, then the Met fans would retort: "Which team has won more World Series in the past five years?"