Some of Brett Abrams’ favorite stadiums never got built.

Abrams is a local historian and author of “Capital Sporting Grounds: A History of Stadium and Ballpark Construction in Washington, DC.”

Today he gave me a primer on the city’s sports architecture down through the years. We went to sites where stadiums and arenas used to be, and where coliseums still are.

And throughout our tour, Abrams filled me in on scads of buildings where local college and pro athletes never got to play in. The biggest venue that never made it past the planning stage was World War II Memorial Stadium, which, if built, would’ve meant the Redskins never would have played at RFK.

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Sad admission: About the only thing I knew about Trinidad before this morning is that Rayful Edmonds once ruled the roost there.

Now I also know a happier part of the neighborhood’s past, thanks to Brett Abrams: It’s the birthplace of interleague baseball.

Read More “Before Rayful Edmonds, Trinidad Had the Washington Senators” »

Brett Abrams is happy. Abrams is a local historian and author of “Capital Sporting Grounds: A History of Stadium and Ballpark Construction in Washington, DC.” Today he’s leading me on a tour of the city’s sports facilities, built and unbuilt, still standing and long gone.

But for a bit of our time together, I get to play tour guide. I take Abrams, who loves old sports buildings as much as I do, over to 3rd and M Streets N.E., to my favorite structure in town, the Washington Coliseum. He knows about its history. But he didn’t know about its present.

So until today he’s never been inside.

“The greatest thing about this building is: It’s still here!” says Abrams, walking among the rows of parked SUVs with a huge smile (pictured above). “That’s really something.”

Read More “Inside the Washington Coliseum with Brett Abrams: If You Can Keep the Whole Building, Keep the Whole Building” »

What do you save? That’s what Brett Abrams wants to know.

He’s a local historian and author of “Capital Sporting Grounds: A History of Stadium and Ballpark Construction in Washington, DC.” He loves old sports buildings even more than I do. Today he’s leading me on a tour of the city’s sports facilities, built and unbuilt, still standing and long gone.

Part of that tour finds us walking down W Street NW, between 13th and 14th Sts., trying to find something/anything that’ll match up with the Library of Congress image we have of Turner’s Arena. It’s one of the long goners.

But we know it was somewhere on this block. We’re not having any luck pinpointing the spot.

And that just seems wrong.

“They should have saved something,” Abrams says. “You have to save something with these places.”

Turner’s Arena was an important building. The wrestling empire known as WWE started there. Vincent J. McMahon, the father of the current rasslin’ impresario Vince McMahon, got huge in the 1950s by filming weekly shows and syndicating them throughout the Eastern Seaboard. A 1965 Washington Post article on the demolition of Turner’s Arena said that “every wrestler from Gorgeous George to Bruno Samartino” appeared there.

Read More “If You Can’t Keep a Whole Building, What Do You Keep?” »