On the occasion of Saturday night's ceremony honoring the Los Angeles Rams at the Coliseum, Daily News columnist Steve Dilbeck makes the case that the Rams were "the most significant team in American sports history.
That's right. Not just in L.A., but in all sports.
The first professional team to come to the West Coast. First professional team to integrate. To place an emblem on its helmet. To start a scouting system. To televise all its road games."
Meanwhile, as the Pasadena-based Baseball Reliquary gears up for its annual Shrine of the Eternals induction ceremony next Sunday, San Bernardino Sun columnist Paul Oberjuerge writes that author–historian-statistical analyst Bill James, one of the Shrine's three inductees (along with catcher Yogi Berra and pitcher-author Jim Brosnan), "may be the most influential baseball man most fans don't know.
Former teacher, soldier, and pork-and-beans cannery worker, James perhaps is most recognized as an incisive statistician and original thinker who almost single-handedly changed the way intelligent observers view the game."
James will speak at the ceremony, which takes place at the Pasadena Central Library at 2 p.m. (admission is free). I'll post my interview with Brosnan, who won't be able to attend the ceremony, later this week.
