Most Influential Sports Cities (football, basketball, baseball, coach)

[Caltex2]

And the meaning of the title is different than which cities have historically had the best teams or or been the most competitive. This thread is about which cities have changed the sport the most and evolved it by setting trends or revolutionizing the game through an innovation.

Also, it'll need to be more than one thing, like how El Paso' college team started 5 black starters in the championship game, won and now college basketball is desegregated. Which cities or even college programs have done the most? And please provide facts, especially if you call someone out. I'm thinkin in no particular order...


Los Angeles-I'll start with UCLA, which had dunking outlawed briefly, took part in the first televised game during the regular season (Game of the Century), had a trophy named after their most famous coach, and the football team plays in the Rose Bowl.
-That stadium and it's game were where the first bowl games were played and thus started the new years' tradition of bowl games (though it's not so new year's now). And notice I mentioned nothing about their titles.

-The Lakers and their historic rival, the Celtics, have brought a lot of popularity to the game with their rivalry. Also made going an NBA a celbrity event (though not in every city)

Houston-University of Houston was the team UCLA lost to in that ever important Game of the Century in 1968, a game that started the trend of big NCAA games being played in indoor football stadiums. UH also recruited black players in football and basketball, despite being a Southern school and helped seal what Texas Western had started. Phi Slama Jama ushered in a era of teh highlight dunk en masse and dunking was no longer frowned upon by the purist. The football team introduced the Veer offense to the college game and many copycatted of it. They also played in...

-The Astrodome, which introduced artificial turf and an indoor stadium to the world, for good or bad. And many cities copied the concept of having a stadium for football and baseball which led to the cookie cutter monstrosities.

Chicago-The Bulls were the first team to turn off their lights during strarting lineup introductions and afterwards, pretty much evryone else began to. Jordan began the trend of baggy shorts over short shorts, though Michigan's Fab Five gets some credit for it. I feel I'm forgetting something about the Cubs, but it's not a joke.

Jordan also proved that a big man was not needed to win an NBA title and influenced the way a whole generation of players played the game.

New York-Yankees were obviously the first to have pinstripes, a uniform trend for some teams. And the Yanks success has crossed over to so many different areas of culture and media.

-Madison Square Garden was the first real major arena and set the trend as far as arenas being centers for big events

Dallas-The Cowboys were branded America's team with their brash attitude, attractive cheerleaders, and on the field success. They also wore white at home and many Southern teams have copied it for Summer and Fall games since lighter colors trap less heat.

I could add more, but I'm kinda tired, feel free to add on.

[ogre]

Hmmm, can anyone please tell me how to do this multi-quote thing?

Not knowing how to do that, I won't quote passages individually, but I do have some additional thoughts on cities listed in the original post.

Los Angeles: To add to the visible interest in the NBA by celebrities, which really got going with the Lakers in the '80's, the Lakers also popularized the "Showtime" persona now favored by a number of teams, with glitzy pre-game introductions and a generally flashy image.

It's also notable that the personal association fans made between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird often gets credit for re-energizing interest in the NBA at a time when the league was at a low point in its popularity.

New York: It was when Branch Rickey was an executive with the Brooklyn Dodgers that he signed Jackie Robinson, and then more black players in subsequent years, re-integrating professional baseball after decades of segregation.

"The House That Ruth Built." Hmmm, I don't really know for sure, but I've long suspected that Yankee Stadium might more accurately be called The House Built for Ruth. Whether this is the case, the fact is that Yankee Stadium's shallow right field suited the Babe's left-handed power swing very nicely. Ruth himself was the key figure in turning baseball into a power-hitting game, but the configuration of Yankee Stadium enhanced the process.

The Jets were the first AFL team to win the Super Bowl. The merger between the NFL and the AFL was already arranged, so this event didn't lead to the establishment of the NFL as we know it today, but the Jets' championship helped establish that AFL teams were legitimately competitive with the NFL, thus likely helping enhance fan interest by easing any misgivings over the possibility that the merged league might have too much disparity between the teams of the formerly separate leagues.

Chicago: Not sure what may have been nagging at the OP about the Cubs, but one notable feature of their history is kind of notable in the reverse direction from pioneering new innovations in their sport. In the Cubs' case, they maintained an old tradition longer than other clubs, by staying entirely with day games into the 1980's.

The new Comiskey Park was the first retro park. Okay, so it's not as reminiscent of the way the genuine old parks ooze with character as places like Camden Yards or the Jake, to name a couple of examples of the better new parks, but still, the new Comiskey was the first park to move past the era of all-purpose stadiums with a return to a stadium configured for a particular sport.

[ogre]

Here are two more cities that deserve to be added to the list:

Boston:

The Boston Americans, later to become known as the Red Sox, won the first World Series, a significant first step toward establishing the American Leauge as a legitimate competitor to the National Leauge, eventually leading the two leagues to join in the formation of Major League Baseball as we know it today.

The combination of Babe Ruth's left-handed power and Yankee Stadium's short right field meant that the Babe took his greatest strides toward re-inventing baseball as a power-hitting game once he got to New York. But the Bambino first stopped being exclusively a pitcher, and began playing the outfield, in Boston, so it was in Beantown that the first inkling of the potential for this fundamental shift in the nature of the game became apparent.

In keeping with the OP's wishes, beyond this mention right here, I won't say anything more about all those championships the Celtics have won, but aside from that collection of banners hanging from the rafters, the Green have contributed substantially to the development of basketball itself, in several ways:

Bob Cousy established the value of the playmaking small man, as the prototype of players in the role now known as point guard. The star of the next generation of Celtics, Bill Russell, was a pioneer in proving the value of having a big center who emphasized defense. Russell's later years overlapped with the early seasons of John Havlicek, who pretty much single-handedly invented the roles of sixth man and small forward/tall guard.

In addition to the individual contributions of the above players in establishing new on-court roles, largely due to the innovativeness of Red Auerbach the Celtics as a team introduced new concepts in how to play the game. This was the team that developed the fast break. The Celtics also pioneered true team play, where basketball had previously been about passing the ball to your team's best shooter each time down the court.

The Celtics were the first NBA team to sign a black player, and the first team to have an all-black starting lineup.

In terms of team persona, the Celtics and Lakers are the yin to each other's yang (or is it the other way around). While the Lakers since the '80's have been the team of glitz and glamor, the Celtics have traditionally personified the idea of a blue-collar workhorse kind of team that doesn't have a lot of flash, but just keeps plugging away until the job is done. In the NBA, these two teams are the archetypes of the two basic images associated with athletes and teams alike.

Speaking of Celtics-Lakers connections, of course I've gotta point out that a guy named Larry was the Bird half of the Bird-Magic mythical tandem that "saved" the NBA when it had hit a low point in fan interest.

The Boston Bruins were the first NHL team based in a U.S. city (the NATION referred to in the name NATIONAL Hockey League is Canada). This was the first step of the expansion into large American markets, bigger cities than any in Canada other than Toronto and Montreal, which helped the NHL become a major North American sports league, rather than a collection of backwoods ruffians who played a funny little game for local teams in small towns scattered across the far north.

While starring for the Bruins in the '60's and '70's, Bobby Orr pioneered the versatile role of defenseman as both defensive player and high-scoring offensive machine.

Twin Cities metro area:

Until the '50's, basketball strategy had emphasized shooting and passing. Pass the ball around to your best shooter(s) and then let him(them) pop 'em in. Few players were of extraordinary height. In fact, many basketball strategists considered big men to be too slow and clumsy to play the game well. Then along came George Mikan, starring for the Minneapolis Lakers, establishing the role of big, dominting center, and fundamentally changing the way the game was played from then until now.

Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington was the first suburban stadium in major league sports. The Met's suburban setting also made it fitting to use the name "Minnesota" to refer to the home base of the Twins and Vikings, pioneering the use of state or regional, rather than principal city, location names for teams in major league sports.

[ogre]

Another way Chicago has been influential: It was a negative event, but the Black Sox scandal was influential in American sports, as it led to the appointment of the first Commissioner of Baseball, and so established the beginnings of the modern form of governance in major league professional sports.

Another city that has made more than one contribution to sports history is Kansas City. The Chiefs were the second AFL team to win the Super Bowl. It wasn't necessarily as stunning an upset as the Jets' win the year before, and it didn't feature a fun-lovin' good ol' boy of a quarterback brashly guaranteeing a win for the underdogs, but K.C.'s championship may have been even more important in making it clear that the merger between the NFL and the AFL was a legit partnering of basically equal leagues, since it proved that the AFL was for real, and the Jets' victory had not been a fluke.

Kansas City was also the site where the Negro National Leauge was founded, thus opening a notable chapter in the history of baseball, with several decades of high-level all-black leagues during an era when black players were excluded from the white major leagues.

Though the OP asked for cities that have influenced sports in several important ways, there are at least three cities that have each been influential in one way that is significant enough to be worth noting:

St. Louis: It was while Branch Rickey was an executive with the Cardinals that he organized the first group of minor league baseball clubs to be directly affiliated with and controlled by, and to develop players exclusively for, one major league club, thus beginning the modern farm system.

Cincinnati: the home of the first all-professional baseball club, the Red Stockings (which, despite popular belief to the contrary, were not the same club as the present-day Reds).

Springfield, MA: The origins of baseball, football, and hockey are obscure. We know that hockey-like games were popular in small towns in rural northern Canada before there were organized leagues, and that games involving bats and balls and bases, and kicking a ball around a field, were played locally in English towns a few hundred years ago, then moved to colonial America with English settlers, but no one knows exactly who devised the first of these games ever played, or when precisely they were played. Even pinning down the beginnings of each of these sports in its modern form is a matter of opinion as to exactly when an evolving game was different enough from anything of the same ilk which had come before, and similar enough to the present-day sport, to essentially BE the beginning of the modern sport. There's no such question with basketball. We know exactly who invented it, why he devised it, and when and where the first game was played. As the city where this sport that is now gigantically popular throughout the world was invented, Springfield deserves some credit, even if it is notable for nothing else related to sports.

[uglyblackjohn]

Orge- Don't forget that Robinson was from UCLA. Tiger is from Cerritos (LA). Venus and Serena are from LA. LA hosted the Olympics twice. Non traditional sports like surfing and skateboarding are huge with the younger generations.
Not that more couldn't be said of other towns, I'll just let those more familiar with them add to the thread.

[ogre]

Wow! It could get to be a long list if we're going to list the homes of all the great athletes. I do agree that being a major center of off-the-beaten-path, but still well known, participatory sports like surfing and the U-tube sports is another reason that SoCal and LA are notable. Another one too is that LA had the first major league pro team outside the Northeast and Midwest, when the Rams moved there from Cleveland in '46, as well as getting the Dodgers in '58, the same year the Giants moved to SF, so that the two California rivals share the status of being the first outside the country's northeastern quadrant to have MLB.