CHICAGO – Say what you want about the teams battling for the World Series. Talk about their long and proud dance with futility as much as you’d like – and you could spend weeks and weeks talking about that, and about the mathematical improbability that a team that’s 0-for-43 can get paired with a team that’s 0-for-88.
Someone has to end that streak. Astros. White Sox. One of them is going to be the champions of baseball sometime soon. The idea of seeing “2005 World Series Champions” on any shirt containing the Sox logo or the Astro star is completely shocking.
But seeing Houston and Chicago in a big sporting event?
That makes perfect sense. Because as sports towns they are among the best in the United States of America. Spend some time among the locals, spend some time in their stadiums, and you’ll understand why. So in honor of Big Shoulders battling Big Hair for the Big Trophy, here’s one man’s pick for the 10 best sports towns in America. Gentlemen (and ladies), start your e-mail replies:
1. NEW YORK
OK, call this a parochial pick, call me a homer, call me whatever you like. But anyone who thinks New York isn’t in a class by itself in this subject has obviously never spent much time watching sports in New York. No city on earth hosts a big event better, and in so many places: Yankee Stadium in the fall, Madison Square Garden in the spring, the Meadowlands in the winter for a football playoff game. Other cities can recite longer sellout streaks, or more successful franchises, or more fans who choose to paint their faces and run around with their shirts off in sub-zero weather. That’s fine. Other cities know how to be sports cities. Only New York knows how to be the best sports city.
2. BOSTON
You know how they usually build sets for historical movies to 7/8th-scale to the originals? That’s what Boston is to New York. In many ways, Boston fans have every bit the passion, intensity and knowledge of their New York counterparts; it’s just a little bit smaller town, with a couple fewer teams, and a resulting number of fewer fans. That said, an afternoon at Gillette Stadium or an evening at Fenway Park is as splendid an experience as there is in sports, even if you don’t have a rooting interest for the home team. And Boston does get the edge in the sports-bar department – you can get just as much a feel at a favored saloon as you can at Fenway, Fleet, or Gillette.
3. ST. LOUIS
Granted, St. Louis makes it this high based almost solely on the devotion the locals have for the baseball Cardinals, even though the Rams’ run the past few years has turned that dome into an ear-bleeding experience most Sundays. But the Cardinals rule St. Louis, and St. Louis is consumed with the Cardinals, and it’s a remarkable thing to watch grown men and women in a pro town holding pep rallies before big baseball series.
4. PHILADELPHIA
We will try to make it through an entire paragraph about Philly sports without talking about how the locals once booed Santa Claus (ah, well, maybe next time). Nowhere do you find stadiums and arenas packed to the rafters with so many amateur columnists and talk-radio commentators. The line between being revered and reviled is thinner here than anywhere else on earth.
5. CHICAGO
All you need to know about how good a sports town Chicago is is this: back when Michael Jordan ruled the world, it still took the Bulls a few years to approach the devotion afforded the Bears or the baseball teams. And let’s face it: to support two ballclubs like the Sox and the Cubs, who have wielded heartbreak like a machete for so many years, earns you an automatic spot on any list such as this one. Easy.
6. CLEVELAND
Like St. Louis, it’s a town that qualifies for the list despite having teams in only three of the four main food groups. And although LeBron James has brought a measure of cache back to the Cavaliers, it’s really just a two-team town. And, well, the Indians have packed so much heartache during their 57-year run without a title. But the Browns – this incarnation, the last incarnation, all of them – set this city’s mood and perpetuate its status. Fans everywhere live and die with their teams in a figurative sense. In Cleveland, it’s literal.
7. DENVER
The way Denver fans have reacted and responded to the Broncos for the last 30 years, and to the Avalanche for the last 10, makes you wonder just how cool a fantasyland Coors Field could be if the Rockies could ever stop slipping on banana peels there. There has never been a more intimidating sound than when 70,000 people started banging their feet against the aluminum stands at old Mile High Stadium.
8. HOUSTON
The Astrodome looks like a quaint relic from a Stanley Kubrick movie now, but back in the day it was the first stadium that inspired people to take tours of the place even without a game to see. Minute Maid Park is the best home field in baseball now, and we will assume Reliant Stadium will become the same way if the Texans ever decide to play varsity football.
9. KANSAS CITY
Ask the Jets how much fun it is to play at Arrowhead Stadium when it’s covered in red. And this is still a wonderful baseball town when the baseball team isn’t trying to get by on a 76-cent payroll.
10. PITTSBURGH
And if Sidney Crosby can actually make the Penguins relevant again, watch out, because the Steel City has two of the best new stadiums of any constructed during the recent building boom.
(Mike Vaccaro’s e-mail address is WriteBackVac@aol.com. His Yankees-Red Sox book, “Emperors and Idiots,” is available in bookstores everywhere).
VAC’SWHACKS
Sure, hockey shootouts are a nice gimmick now. Talk to me again in 10 years, when they are deciding Game 7 of the World Series with a few rounds of “Home Run Derby,” and when the Masters is decided by closest-to-the-pin on No. 16, and let’s see how we feel about it then.
There is nothing funnier than reading a bunch of sportswriters telling NBA players or anyone else how to dress properly. Here’s the deal: they don’t tell us how to manage our Marriott points, we don’t tell them to put on a necktie.
Oh, and here’s another part of that contract: we don’t call fouls on golfers, no matter how much our conscience hurts. If Michael Bamberger is tired of writing for Sports Illiustrated, he can become an LPGA tour official. Either or.
Picking Country Joe West to be the crew chief for the World Series is like hiring Billy Joel to be your driver’s ed teacher.