Simultaneous First Time Champions Notes

It is very likely (Isaiah Likely is a Baltimore Ravens player and they are seeking a third title) the song by the great “Seals and Croft,” which emits “we may never pass this way (again)’ is appropriate, as for just the second time in the annals (more details later), there are simultaneous first time major league baseball, NHL and NBA champions.

With an asterik (ode to Roger (Maris) and The Dick Van Dyke Show–please comment if you know), it is possible we can have an unprecedented four, if the longest shot remaining, the Detroit Lions win their next two games.

The Lions have won a title, in fact they have won four (not too many have more–rhyme), doing so with crowns in “The Year of Detroit, 1935), 1952, 1953 and 1957.

A technicality/asterik is that the Lions have never appeared in a Super Bowl, (the game for the NFL Title since 1970, and the “all the way” football crown starting in 1966), no less won one.

In fact Detroit is in just their second NFC Title Game/NFL semi-final game.

At the present time, the baseball Texas Rangers winning it all for the first time in their 62nd completed season, (1961-2023 with no completed season in 1994), having played in Washington D.C. and Texas, Denver Nuggets (they claimed a first title in their 56th season including the defunct ABA and 47th NBA season) and Las Vegas Golden Knights in just their 6th season (incredibly they made the NHL Final in their first season, losing to another first and still only time champion, the Washington Capitals, then in their 44th NHL season (’75-2019) with no NHL season in 2004-2005).

Once before did the sports world enter this round or the post baseball part of the NFL season with simultaneous first time champions in the other three major North American sports leagues.

The St. Louis Blues, with the late, great Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” as their inspirational song won their first NHL title (still the only, but as with all these first time winners–that is great/enough in itself, at least in most instances) in what was their 51st NHL season (’68-2019), (again no NHL season in 2004-2005).

That calendar 2019 year was also one in which the Toronto Raptors in their 24th (Willie (Mays) wore #24 and S.F. by the way the host team vs the Lions in tomorrow’s NFC Title tilt will have Willie Mays Day on the numbers configuring 2/4/24 or February 4, 2024 and stay tuned here for a confluence of greats regarding one of another great’s, Mickey Mantle’s home runs) season and the Washington Nationals in what was their fiftieth completed season (1969-2019 with no completed season in 1994) as both the Montreal Expos and Washington Nationals.

The 2019 year’s NFL “semis”/title tilt participants included the Tennessee Titans nee Houston Oilers, who had not and still have not won an NFL crown in then their 54th possibility (50 such, ’70-2019 in the NFC/AFC configuration with 4 more in seasons that culminated with NFL/AFL Championship/Super Bowl games (’66-’69) and what is now, (we will denote as), 58 such possibilities.

Playing as the Houston Oilers the Titans/nee Oilers franchise won the first two AFL crowns in 1960 and 1961. In 2019, the Kansas City Chiefs, who that season won their first AFC/NFC configuration Supe and certainly their first title in 50 years, “semi’d” the Titans in the earlier title game.

The later/late NFC Title game matched two teams that had won many crowns, the Green Bay Packers and again tomorrow’s NFC Title game hosts, the San Francisco 49ers. (S.F. prevailed vs Green Bay only to dissipate a 4th quarter double digit lead in the aforementioned Supe loss to the Chiefs).