October 17, 2006

Champions

Our beloved Detroit Tigers are back in the MLB World Series. Cause for joy indeed. One small complaint - all the facile sports announcers talking about how important it is for Detroit, as they haven't had a champion in 22 years. Well, sure if all you're talking about is baseball. Don't forget Detroit has won the NBA title in 1989, '90, and '94, and the NHL title in '97, '98, and '2002.

In fact, Detroit is one of the winningest cities in the United States:

city MLB NFL NHL NBA total
New York 34 3 8 2 47
Boston 7 3 5 16 31
Montreal 0 0 23 0 23
Detroit 4 0 10 3 17
Los Angeles 6 1 0 9 16
Chicago 5 1 3 6 15

Per capita, or per urban GDP, this is even more impressive. Full details at this Google spreadsheet . (N.B. that this tracks cities and not franchises, that is, Brooklyn Dodgers are a NY team while LA Dodgers are LA. Also, we gave the New England Patriots to Boston as a gesture of goodwill after the Red Sox placed 3rd (out of 5) in their division this year.) Posted by netrc at October 17, 2006 08:41 AM