HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — You walk around this city and there is something familiar about the way the locals strut, and swagger, and lead with their chests and their chins. It is that way in downtown Los Angeles, too, and over in Orange County from what I’ve been told, and in just about every locale that likes to identify itself with the “SoCal” tag.
Folks walk around with the swollen confidence of champions.
It’s funny how this happens, right? In basketball, it’s 12 guys (though really only about six or seven) who win a championship, yet once it’s won, it can transform millions upon millions of people, and can make all of them feel like they had a part in it. So up and down Highland Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard and the Sunset Strip, you see Angelinos in their Kobe jerseys and their purple-and-gold “2010 Champions” tees and their green “Boston [Stinks]” shirts, and it all feels . . . familiar.
It’s what New York City felt like last November, in the afterglow of a
27th Yankees championship. It’s what it felt like back in 1994, when the Rangers transformed Manhattan into Hockeytown USA for a few wonderful months. You suspect that’s what it will feel like if the Knicks ever do get around to winning that third NBA championship.
There are times when it seems like we go eons without winning a championship in New York, and of course that’s partly because we are as impatient a city as there is. When the Yankees can go nine years between championships and call it a “drought” with a straight face . . . well, that explains a lot. But the truth is, we know that strut and that swagger as well as anyone. If anyone else wants to try and bogart the title of Titletown, they will have to go a ways.
All it takes is a tour through the history books, after all. If you lump together all four of the current major team sports leagues (Stanley Cups since NHL began in 1917), these are the top 10 cities, all time, in terms of number of championships:
1. New York . . . 54
2. Boston . . . 33
3. Chicago . . . 26
4. Montreal . . . 25
5. Detroit . . . 21
6. Los Angeles . . . 20
7. Philadelphia . . . 16
8. Toronto . . . 15
9. Pittsburgh . . . 14
10. St. Louis . . . 12
San Fran./Oak . . . 12
Green Bay . . . 12
And if we wanted to, we could add three titles of the Devils to New York’s totals (since I graciously added Anaheim’s two titles to L.A.’s total) but there’s no point in running up the score, now, is there?
The fact is, walking around Southern California these past few days is a reminder, one more time, of what we keep coming back to in sports. Yes, we can talk about the moments — we can hang on every point of a Wimbledon match that takes three days to complete. We can talk about nationalistic pride — the U.S. is suddenly very much of a soccer nation on that level, and it’s fine to watch.
But at the end of the day sports, like politics, is local. And when a city wins a title, it may not lower taxes or raise property values or strengthen the schools. But take a walk around L.A. this week. Take a walk around New York, or Chicago, or New Orleans, the other reigning cities as we speak. They are fine, fun places to be. Sports makes them so.
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WHACK BACK AT VAC
David E. Schwartz: You want to give Joe Torre credit for turning things around, fine. But he is hardly among the greatest Yankee managers of all time. Notice how they hardly skipped a beat after his departure, winning a championship to go with the 22 others they somehow managed to win without his ingenious guidance.
Vac: I would argue they skipped a beat in 2008, but most readers agree with David:
Brian John Sharkey: Joe Torre is still playing you and your fellow sportswriters. He showed his true colors when he left that contract on the table and wrote his book. Joe was picked off the scrap heap by the Yankees and handed Buck’s team that was missing one piece: Tino. You and I could have managed the Yankees. It all went downhill after he lost Don Zimmer.
Vac: It stuns me how many Yankee fans have completely turned on Torre, and how few remember that it was the Yankees who interrupted the playoff streak by making the switch. Torre’s goes on, at discount prices.
Vinny Porreca: Mike, I’m a die-hard Met fan and we’ve heard regularly that the atmosphere in the Met clubhouse is the best it has been in years. It can’t just be because Jeff Franceour is a really nice guy. Is this code for Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner not being there? Where does Carlos Beltran fit? He always seemed like a pleasant fellow.
Vac: Put it this way: the two ex-Mets in question were, to put it nicely, “polarizing.” Beltran won’t be a problem. He always has been viewed as a terrific teammate.
Peter Buell: There is talk about the Mets adding a top-line starting pitcher, but waiting for the trade deadline. If you are contending and believe you have a good chance at the playoffs, why not get him now. Wouldn’t getting that pitcher now impact where they are at the trade deadline?
Vac: It’s an interesting question. The thought is that a pitcher who costs the player-equivalent of 10 bucks on July 31 is worth
$25 a month earlier, but as the Mets proved in 2007 and ‘08, it isn’t a bad idea to collect as many “extra” wins as you can along the way.
VAC’S WHACKS
* The YES Network is always treated like it’s state-run television around here, but SNY didn’t exactly put itself in line for any Peabody Awards by the way it ducked out of the way of most of the Johan Santana sexual-battery storyline the other night.
* I’m not sure if that 10-hour tennis match at Wimbledon was more of an indictment or an endorsement of tiebreakers in tennis and shootouts in soccer.
* YES’ Jack Curry and his wife, Pamela, are both good friends of the Whacks; Pamela has battled RSD — a neurological disorder that affects skin, muscles, joints and bones — the past year or so. This morning there is a walk in Central Park to raise funds and awareness, and if you miss that, you still can lend an assist at http://www.rsds.org.
* You know where you want to be on the one-year anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death? Downtown Hollywood, Calif.. The machine that measures freak quotient was blown to pieces Friday outside my window.