The Honorables, Mentioned. Part I.

All right, for those who may have somehow missed the amazing, incredible, absolutely scintillating, seven-part, "The 10 Greatest Sports Dynasties!  Ever!" here again are the final results:

10. Chicago Cubs, 1906-1910.

9. Boston Red Sox, 1912-1918.

8. Los Angeles Lakers, 1980-1991.

7. New York Yankees, 1994-2003.

6. Green Bay Packers, 1960-1967.

5. Chicago Bulls, 1988-1998.

4. Montreal Canadiens, 1955-1979.

3. Boston Celtics, 1956-1969.

2. New England Patriots, 2001-2020.

1. New York Yankees, 1920-1964.


And as promised, I will name some honorable mentions, and why they didn't make the list.  Starting with...the teams I probably screwed the most:

New York Islanders, 1975-1984.  This was the team that, I think, Hammer wanted to see in the Top 10, and frankly, he's got a point.

The Islanders in this period won four,consecutive Stanley Cups—second only to the Canadiens run of five straight in 1955-1960—and lost a fifth in the final to one of Gretzky's great Edmonton Oilers teams in 1983-1984.  Which team they had just beaten the year before, stretching their consecutive winning streak in the NHL finals to 10 straight games.

Besides that, the Isles had just 1 season in these 10 when they played less-than-.600 puck, (1979-1980, when they were still brooding over their upset at the hands of the Rangers the year before—and  when they still rallied to finally win the Cup for the first time).  They won 5 division crowns, won over 50 games three times, won over 40 games nine times, and ran up 100 points or more eight times.

So...why didn't they grab, say, one of the bottom two slots on my list?

The reason is not just that I'm a Rangers fan (I don't say that for your pity, dammit!), or because of the Islanders' later trials and tribulations, including the infamous, Gorton's of Gloucester, "fish sticks" uniforms.

It's just that hockey has always been the red-headed stepchild of the "Big Four" North American sports.

Save for a brief boom in the late 1960s-early '70s, it's always ranked dead fourth in popularity.  By the time of the Islanders' dynasty, I don't think the sport even had a national (binational?) TV contract.

What's more, while the NHL was rapidly becoming internationalized during the Isles' heyday, it's far from clear that the very best teams in the world really were winning the Stanley Cup.  How would they have fared against a top Soviet team?  That's a question we'll have to leave to Strat-o-Matic Heaven.

And it's not just because I love baseball more than life itself that this list tips heavily to the Great Game.

For most of the last century—indeed, from the 1850s to the end of the 1950s—baseball really was the only pro game in town.  The only things that compared in popularity were horse racing and boxing, and that was mainly so American men could get their gambling jones on.

Football?  In the 1940s, Heisman Trophy winners were still turning down pro contracts.  Basketball?  A game for pituitary cases when it was too cold to play outside.  Hockey?  Something Canadians did.

Hence, even a team like the 1906-1910 Cubs, which got handed one championship because of the worst single umpiring call ever made, and lost another to a team called The Hitless Wonders, were really accomplishing something phenomenal in running up the best, regular-season record, ever, for 5 straight years (They actually went on to accomplish that for eight straight years, 1906-1913.)

Sorry, Fish Sticks, uh, Islanders.

San Francisco 49ers, 1981-1998.  So, then what about these Niners, who won 5 Super Bowls, made 5 other conference finals, won 13 division titles in 18 seasons, won 10 or more games in all 17, full seasons in this period; and won 12 or more games ten times?

They were playing in what had become absolutely the most popular pro sports league in America, in an NFL that was doing its very best to promote league-wide "parity," with unbalanced schedules.

Nonetheless, they not only won again and again, but transformed the very way the game was played.  What do I have to say to that?

To quote the poet:  "Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then, I contradict myself./ I am large./ I contain multitudes."

Great as they were, the reason the Bill Walsh/ George Seifert/ Steve Mariucci Band 49ers didn't make it onto my Top 10—even though I used to love watching them play—was that they got beat pretty often in big showdowns, by the other leading teams of their day. (and sometimes, even by the fair-to-middlin' teams of their day).

Consider:  they got beat 3 times by the Giants; two years in a row in 1985-1986, when they were shellacked by a combined total of 66-6 (and in that first year, 1985, the Giants went on to lose the conference final to the Bears by 21-0).

With a chance for a record-tying "three-peat" at the end of the 1990 season, they lost again to a Giants team that had lost its starting quarterback, and was playing Jeff Hostetler.

Later on, in three seasons when the Lombardi Trophy really should have been renamed the "Who's Got Deion Sanders?" Trophy, they were whipped twice in a row by Dallas—before getting Deion Sanders.

After that, they were eliminated three years in a row by Brett Favre's Packers, and finally beat Green Bay only on The Miracle of Terrell Owens (and after an outrageously bad call on a fumble, if I recall correctly).

San Francisco was also put out by the Redskins during this period, and even lost a division playoff game to the 8-7 Vikings—in a year when the 49ers themselves went 13-2.

For me, that's just a few too many big-game losses—even blowouts—to make the Top 10 of dynasties.

All right, enough from me.  But I'll be back soon to further dispel your winter doldrums (late spring doldrums? as it feels now?) with the other honorables.  You lucky dogs.