Ferdinand Cesarano

The Yankees fired announcer Red Barber in 1966 for commenting on a late-season Yankee Stadium crowd that numbered in the hundreds. (But don't feel too bad. Barber, while a legendary talent, was an ornery coot, and one who gave Phil Rizzuto agita. The Scooter spoke ill of only two people in his life: Eddie Stanky and Red Barber. So it's all for the best, as Rizzuto was able to shine in the booth only after the removal of Barber.)

Tables! So the Orlando Predators have already announced their departure from the NAL for this supposed AFL revival. Are they now going to have to pull a George Costanza and go back to the NAL, pretending that nothing happened?

What a remarkably perceptive and insightful comment. Tell me, where do you get your ideas?

The AFL had always been referred to as "the Arena league". But now there is another league separate from the AFL that is going by the name "the Arena League". I'm no I.P. lawyer, but it seems to me that that new league is intentionally fostering — no pun intended on the name of AFL founder Jim Foster — confusion, and is trying to benefit from the AFL's name recognition (such as it is).

It doesn't bode well when there's a misspelling in the first announcement.

I don't see how this league expects to return when the names that are most closely associated with it (Arizona Rattlers, Iowa Barnstormers, Orlando Predators) are now playing in other leagues. Unless the AFL intends to revive the Tampa Bay Storm, the Albany Firebirds, and the San Jose SaberCats, it cannot have name recognition of even a fraction of what it formerly had, or near what the other leagues currently have. We can be pretty sure that the latter two teams are not happening, as Albany until a few weeks ago had a team in the NAL (until that team was kicked out on account of Antonio Brown's knuckleheadedness), and San Jose currently has a team in the IFL (led by former SaberCat head coach Darren Arbet). I have heard nothing about plans regarding Tampa Bay.

Maybe I'm taking the bait, but I'll say that, for me, the issue is not that one person dominates the event. I experience a profound visceral disgust at the nature of what's going on there. Whether it were a competition or just an exhibition (in the words of Letterman: "Please, no wagering"), I would hate it just as much.

I hope they use the full version this time.

I definitely have thoughts, none of which I can share by means of language that is appropriate for this forum.

In the coverage of the submersible that was built and operated by that "safety is a waste of time" fellow, there were clips of previous crews of the thing. And one of the people in those clips was wearing an Expos cap.

The league should say that its championship game will alternate annually between St. Louis and Washington. Those are the only places that can give it a big-time feel.

Right. I was rooting for New Orleans on account of Bethel-Thompson, whom I like because he's the oldest player in the league, and because he came from the CFL. But McGough's performance was absolutely masterful. Having enjoyed seeing the inspirational Luis Perez take over the Renegades and lead them to the XFL title, I have to acknowledge that McGough is operating on another level. He's likely to be league MVP, and for him to lead his team to another championship would be totally fitting. More generally, I agree with the idea that having a repeat champion would give the impression of stability for a new league. Leagues typically shoot for a degree of parity, so as to keep up the interest of fans of as many teams as possible. But what really does wonders for any league's identity is the emergence of an elite tier. So for that additional reason I hope that Birmingham beats Pittsburgh for the title. Finally, given the rumours that Pittsburgh will undergo a name change, for that team to be champions would be awkward. The act of "moving" the league champions would show the very opposite of stability for a new league. So all the more rationale for hoping that the Stallions win.

In the 1960 World Series, the Yankees outscored the Pirates 55-27, and lost the Series 4 games to 3.

Orlando Cepeda, Ray Sadecki, and Joe Torre completed a rare three-man circle of trades. During the 1966 season, the Giants traded Cepeda to the Cardinals for Sadecki (a trade that was very unpopular with Giant fans). In the spring of 1969, the Cardinals sent Cepeda to the Braves in return for Torre. Finally, when the Cardinals traded Joe Torre to the Mets after the 1974 season, the player they got in return was Sadecki.

That's true about the divisional rivalries. So get rid of interconference games, and have a third game against each divisional rival! That replaces three of the (I think) five interconference games that each team plays. The remaining two interconference games would be replaced by games against the teams that finished in the same standings position in two of the conference's other divisions. I know that the Super Bowl is already the most watched event in American sports. But what would make it even better would be if the teams that meet in the Super Bowl cannot have played each other during the season.

No one should ever compare O'Malley to Fisher. And that is why such a comparison is wrong. O'Malley fully intended to build a ballpark at the current site of the Nets' arena. But he ran into the immovable object of New York politics of the day, the unaccountable Robert Moses. If Fisher had been behaving like O'Malley, the A's new Oakland ballpark would have been built already. This is pure fiction. O'Malley did not leave Brooklyn of his own choosing. The only reason that Dodger Stadium is in Chavez Ravine rather than on Atlantic Avenue is the corruption in New York politics that allowed an unelected person to accumulate so much power. Robert Moses is sometimes referred to as the New York City parks commissioner; but that doesn't come close to capturing his power, which exceeded that of mayors and governors, and spanned generations. Moses was so entrenched, with multiple overlapping posts within the City and State government, that he had already given O'Malley a firm "no" on the idea of accumulating the land for the footprint of a privately-built Downtown Brooklyn stadium before anyone else in the New York City government even knew what was going on. By the time the actual elected government of New York City got wind of this fiasco, O'Malley had already built a relationship with a Los Angeles government that had embraced him and that was willing to provide him with everything that New York City (in the person of Moses) had refused to provide. All that New York City could offer at that point was a municipal stadium in Queens at the site where Shea Stadium was later built, an offer which is obviously inadequate. The important point is that O'Malley didn't abandon Brooklyn; rather, he was kicked out of Brooklyn by Moses. For the full story, read the excellent book The Dodgers Move West, by Neil Sullivan.

This take is so wrong it's almost comical. The Oakland mayor was legitimately blindsided by the Las Vegas announcement in April because the negotiations on the Howard Terminal stadium were near completion. By walking away from the negotiations after the A's pulled their double-crossing move, the mayor behaved shrewdly by not allowing the A's to use the nearly-done Howard Terminal plan as a pressuring device in their rushed presentations to the Nevada state legislature. Either way this works out, her move was the right one. If A's cannot fool enough of the Nevada legislators, then they have nowhere to go. While the mayor has confirmed that she would take a call from Fisher or Kaval to resume the negotiations, it's hard to imagine their doing that in such a weakened posure. More likely, if the Nevada legislature does its job, then the sale that all of yesterday's reverse-boycotters are demanding would likely occur, and the negotiations would resume with the new ownership. Indeed, the mayor has confirmed that a new ownership group could just step right in and bring the thing over the finish line. But if the A's snow job prevails and the legislature agrees to flush money down the toilet in a state whose education system is rated near the very bottom in the country, then the Oakland mayor retains her dignity. And Howard Terminal still gets improvments from federal money, even if there's no ballpark. Again, utterly wrong. Even if you want to denounce the Giants for holding the territorial rights to San Jose (that the A's granted them), the A's moving to San Jose is not a good outcome for Oakland. We should be glad that that never happened. (If we care about history, which too many people on this board adamantly do not.) An A's move from Oakland would leave me heartbroken. The 1972 A's are instrumental in setting for all time my aesthetic standards, a fact to which my excellent mustache attests. I can remember in 1978 when they were all but gone to Denver after Marvin Davis agreed to buy the team from Finley. I was about to cry. The only reason they didn't go is that they couldn't get out of the Collisseum lease. Still, if that terrible scenario comes to pass this time, the Oakland government — under both the current mayor and the previous one — can hold their heads high with dignity and can be secure in the knowledge that they did the right thing throughout, first by leveraging the team's stadium demands into an agreement to also build affordable housing for city residents, and eventually by refusing to be a pawn in a huckster's dishonest game.

I don't think that a whole European division is necessary. A single London team could stay at a U.S. base for the first eight or nine games of the season, and travel from there to road games. It would then go home to London for its home games. Each of the London team's visiting opponents would play on Thursday on the week before going to London; then each of those teams would have a bye on the week after its London game. In order not to disadvantage any team that would have to play in London on week 18 right before the playoffs, the London team would have its bye week during that week. And it would play on Thursday on the week of its last game in the U.S. during the front part of the season, and on Monday for its first home game. If the London team were to make the playoffs, then either it would have to travel to a U.S. city, or a U.S.-based team would have to travel to London, with no Thursdays, Mondays, or byes available. In that case, just suck it up.

The location name "Chesapeake" worked only because the nickname "Bayhawks" starts with "Bay", so the full name made "Chesapeake Bay". That wouldn't be true for any other nickname.

That's a good point. However, the Oakland mayor has stated that she would go back to the table even with the current ownership, if it approached her. So, if a new ownership came in and if it were willing to pick up the process right where the current ownership abandoned it in April with the "binding (ha!) agreement" announcement that caught the Oakland government by surprise, then there would be no need to start from scratch. (And, by the way, I stupidly wrote "exacerbated fans" when I meant "exasperated fans". I have corrected that error, which was one of the pitfalls of posting at work, while phones are ringing and other things are happening!)

I think that new ownership would be embraced by exasperated fans, especially if new owners returned to the table with the city and got the new ballpark at Howard Terminal done.

This ownership is done in Oakland. This ownership has figuratively nuked the bridge in Oakland. Even the most ardent A's fans are done with this ownership. As of this moment the team is not for sale. But, if the Vegas thing falls through, that could change very quickly. If Fisher sold right now, he'd come away with almost a billion in profit. And Lacob has already stated his willingness to buy the team at its current valuation. If Fisher didn't sell after a failed attempt at Las Vegas, the value of the team would plummet. I'm no capitalist, but the incentives seem clear here.

They are correcting the major flaw with the PLL. I wonder if, in light of the merger with the MLL, they will consider bringing back some of the longstanding MLL nicknames, particularly Lizards and Bayhawks.

If the USFL does indeed move up its season for that reason, then of course it would run concurrently with the XFL. In that case, the leagues really cannot have teams in the same city (even if the USFL's teams are still just nominally representing most of their cities). To counteract the effect of the dilution of fan attention, the leagues ought to work together to pump up some kind of league-versus-league rivalry that would benefit both. If they can figure this out, then that would probably make inevitable the establishment of an inter-league championship game.