New York Sports

Since the 1920s New York's teams and its athletes have played in the limelight of the world's media capital. First there was Babe Ruth (1895-1948), who came to the city in 1920 as a great ballplayer and in a few years became an immortal. The Babe's Yankees are, of course, the prime symbol of the city's dominance, but are only one of a total of nine professional sports teams in the four major sports—baseball, basketball, football and hockey.

BASEBALL
The very first baseball games were played in Manhattan in the 1840s by players such as Alexander Joy Cartwright who formal­ized the layout of the diamond and the rules of the game. In October 1845, he and others organized themselves as the New York Knickerbockers, the game'sfirstteam. The city entered the big leagues for good with the formation of the New York Giants in1883,and by 1924 the team had won 10 pennants in 20 years under manager John McGraw.

The Polo Grounds, their horse­shoe-shaped home in upper Manhattan (shared with the Yankees until Babe Ruth's popularity led McGraw to evict them), was the site of one of baseball's enduring moments: "the Catch," made by Willie Mays, running full speed, back turned to the plate, in the 1954 World Series. The Giants' nemesis, the Brooklyn Dodgers, lost when they were bad and lost in heart­breaking fashion when they were good.

No matter. Brooklynites flocked to Ebbets Field to root for "dem bums." In 1947 Jackie Robinson (1919-72) broke baseball's color line, heralding the Civil Rights movement. Robinson, Duke Snider and the Boys of Summer were the class of the league in the 1950s. Noted for their succession of strong arms (Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Dwight Gooden) at pitcher-friendly Shea Stadium, the expansion Mets are loved less for their dominance than for their underdog spirit.

The Yankees (who were, like Babe Ruth, born in Baltimore) moved to New York in 1903, their third season. In 100 years the team has won 39 American League pennants and 26 World Series. The team's pantheon of sluggers—the Babe, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson—have all achieved a fame that transcends the game. Since the 1996 arrival of manager Joe Torre and shortstop Derek Jeter, the latest Yankees dynasty has won seven pennants and four World Series. With the recent additions of Alex Rodriguez (2004) and Randy John­son (2005) to the lineup, the team appears poised to continue its dominance of major league baseball.

FOOTBALL
New Yorkers didn't catch football fever, until 1925, when Tim Mara started the Giants in the fledgling NFL. That year, 3,000 filled the Polo Grounds to see the earn take on Red Grange and the Chicago Bears. Season tickets to "Big Blue" games, at Yankee Stadium, and since 1976 at Giants Stadium in the Meadow-lands, have been handed down through the generations. The team's loss in the 2001 Super Bowl to the Baltimore Ravens evoked memories of the 1958 Champion­ship Game, "the Greatest Football Game Ever Played," a seesaw battle it lost in overtime to the Baltimore Colts. The underdog Jets' 1969 Super Bowl victory over, once again, the Colts, "guaranteed" by flamboyant quarterback "Broadway" Joe Namath, legitimized the upstart AFL and paved the way for the leagues' eventual merger.

BASKETBALL
New York basketball is first and foremost a street game. Only blizzards interrupt half-court games of "21." Not surprisingly, New York has sent a stream of flashy point guards to the pros, from Bob Cousy to Ste-phon Marbury. Atop the city's hoops world sits the Knicks, an original NBA franchise whose legendary early-1970s squad, led by Willis Reed, Walt "Clyde" Frazier, and "Dollar" Bill Bradley, twice won champion­ships. After a period of decline, the team rebounded with the hiring of Pat Riley as coach in 1991; fans flocked to Madison Square Garden to cheer (and boo) center Pat Ewing and the intimidating, defense-oriented Knicks. Born with the ABA in 1967, the Nets, featuring the gravity-defying "Dr. J,"Julius Erving, enjoyed early success and a few ABA titles. The team entered the NBA in 1976, then moved to New Jersey, where they remained on the periphery of the city's sports consciousness until 2002, when they rocketed to the NBA finals as the Knicks team disintegrated. The Nets returned to the NBA finals in 2003.

HOCKEY
One of the NHL's "original six" teams, the Rangers, and the team's intensely loyal fans, had suffered through a 54-year drought between championships when Mark Messier, exiled from Edmonton, led the squad to a Stanley Cup in 1994. The Islanders, an expansion team formed in 1972, quickly assembled a nucleus of eventual Hall of Famers (Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy, Denis Potvin) whose grace­ful play won four straight Stanley Cups in the early 1980s and helped transform the game's roughhouse image. In years since, hard times have befallen the Islanders faithful at Nassau Coliseum. The Devils moved to New Jersey from Colorado in 1982. Their tenacious defense, spear­headed by goalie Martin Brodeur, has brought them two championships and a sizable following.

BOXING
John L. Sullivan (1858-1918) fought at the first Madison Square Garden, located in, yes, Madison Square, in 1883. In subsequent years and incarnations, the Garden became the country's boxing mecca. The current Garden was the site of the famous 1971 Ali-Frazier fight. Yankee Stadium also hosted key bouts, including Joe Louis'(1914-81) vic­tory over German Max Schmeling, before 70,000 fans. The ascendance of Las Vegas and Atlantic City as boxing locales spelled the end of the city's preeminence.

OTHER
The Belmont Stakes, the third leg of thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown, is held at Belmont Park, on Long Island. The National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows hosts the US Open, a grand-slam event. Lifelong New Yorker John McEnroe, famous for his big mouth, short fuse and quirky, brilliant play, won the tournament four times, to the delight of local fans. Brazilian soccer legend Pele, playing for the Cosmos, electrified New York in the mid-1970s, though local enthusiasm, and the league itself, petered out a few years later. The famed New York City Marathon, held the first Sunday in November, draws some 30,000 runners and more than 2 million spectators.