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.

Abrams says talk began as the great war was ending that building a football stadium would be a suitable way to honor the troops who'd just saved the world. The Washington Board of Trade and the National Capital Planning Commission jumped on the idea, and in December 1944 Congress established a National Stadium Commission. Soon enough FDR jumped on that bandwagon.

"That was the first time a president of the United States had supported the construction of a stadium for the District," Abrams says.

Original plans had a 100,000-seater off East Capitol Street near Anacostia Park.

But, as is always the way in Washington, too many folks wanted to have a hand in the design, and things got out of hand. Some federal lawmakers felt the stadium had to be built in Lincoln Park and not the previously agreed-upon East Capitol site. Senator Theodore Bilbo, a card-carrying Klu Klux Klan member and chairman of the congressional stadium commission, demanded that an airfield be included adjacent to the stadium. Some folks only wanted to build the stadium if the Army-Navy game was moved here. A retractable roof was proposed. Sen. Bilbo decided that a stadium that only held 100,000 was "dinky," and didn't pay enough of a tribute.

"They wanted a stadium that would fit 200,000 people," Abrams says. (Who knew Dan Snyder was a congressman in 1944?)

The squabbling went on for years, and eventually killed the memorial stadium momentum. In 1957, another bill was introduced in Congress to build a 50,000-seat stadium adjacent to the DC Armory — but not as a WWII memorial, just as a stadium.

That one got built, and opened in 1961 as dinky ol' DC Stadium. And since it wasn't introduced as a tribute to honor our soldiers, the door was open in 1969 to turn it into a memorial to slain Robert F. Kennedy.

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.

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.

Among the goners, but not totally forgotten, is American League Park I, once located at the corner of Trinidad Avenue and Neal Lane N.E.

At the turn of the last century, as Abrams explains things, the National League and upstart American League were feuding. The AL wanted a DC team, and opted to set up shop off Florida Avenue NE in what was then a 25-minute rail commute from downtown. The stadium site had been the location of a rock quarry owned by the Washington Brick Company, a masonry firm that a year earlier had gone out of business. (So Edmunds wasn't the first guy making money selling rocks out of this neighborhood, it turns out.)

"Can you imagine turning a rock quarry into a baseball field, and the ditches they had to fill?" Abrams says.

They got the job done, and in 1901 a new team, the original major league club named the Washington Senators, began play there. The first game, on April 29, 1901, had the hometowners taking a 5-2 win over the Baltimore Orioles (who would end up a few years later as the New York Yankees.

The field's dimensions were, by today's standards, hilariously imbalanced: 295 feet to the left field fence, 555 feet to center, and 455 to right.

The stadium's most notable contribution: Baseball's first public address announcer gave the lineups to the American League Park crowd over a megaphone in 1901. The biggest game ever played in the park came in the spring of 1903, the team's last season in Trinidad, when the Philadelphia Phillies of the older and richer National League traveled to DC for an exhibition.

There had been bad blood between the leagues and the teams — the Senators had signed a handful of Phillies players during their inaugural season — to that point.

According to Abrams, the Senators/Phillies tilt was momentous: "The leagues had never played each other before," he says. "So even though it was an exhibition, it was important."

And in this first interleague game, the American League team won.

Judging by the current Red Sox/Nats series, some things about DC baseball haven't changed over the last century.

There used to be a ballpark here.

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."

Yes it is. The Coliseum, built in the 1940s by local icemaker Migiel “Mike” Uline to host shows from touring entertainment troupes like Ringling Brothers circus and the Ice Capades, had been on death row for decades. Its useful life as a sports arena and major concert hall ended when Abe Pollin opened the Capital Centre in Largo in 1973, and in the years since it has been abandoned, hosted occasional Chuck Brown go-gos, used as a trash dump from 1994 to 2003, and, for the last several years, served as a pay parking lot.

There's water damage all over the place from the years of inattention, and it's dark as hell inside. But that's nothing compared to the fact that you can drive or walk over the very floor where so many big, big things happened.

Rocky Marciano, the only heavyweight boxing champ ever to retire undefeated and stay retired, fought at the Coliseum. Red Aeurbach got his legendary pro basketball career started here, coaching the Washington Capitols of the Basketball Association of America, an NBA precursor, from 1946 to 1949. And, most famously, in February 1964, John, Paul, George and Ringo played their first US. show here on their way to taking over the world. A lot of seats from the arena's heyday remain in the upper levels and corners.

For a building with such a great resume, there's not much fanfare about the Coliseum. The most obvious sign that this ground is hallowed comes with a stenciled pair of brown beetles somebody painted outside the parking lot's entrance a few years ago. Most folks in DC don't even know the building still stands.

The coliseum is now owned by Doug Jemal, who is not only quite aware of his building's past, but has also said many times that he keeps that past in mind whenever any plans to develop the property are proposed.

You can't help but feel the history when you walk in the place.

"There's the walkways!" Abrams says pointing upstairs. "Still here!"

For some folks, including me and Abrams, that's, as he said, really something.

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.

Mrs. Harry Truman was a big fan of the shows the elder McMahon filmed at Turner's.

“The late Edward R. Murrow on his ‘Person to Person’ show once asked Mrs. Truman, upon her return to Independence, what she missed most in Washington," reads the Post's Turner's obit. "‘Wrestling on television,’ she replied.”

It was the site of some of the first big integrated basketball games in the city. Elgin Baylor and his all-black club team, Stonewall AC, trounced teams of white high school and college stars, including Maryland Terp and future NBA vet Gene Shue. Patsy Cline appeared there with Connie B. Gay's groundbreaking weekly country music revue show, "Town and Country Time Jamboree," which began on WMAL-TV in 1956, when the building was known as Capitol Arena. Turner's had the first black manager of a U.S. arena, James Dudley.

But, for all its history, there's nothing obvious to let Abrams and me know exactly where it was. We both agree Turner's Arena deserved more than to just disappear. I figure its disappearance is among the big reasons that Washington, DC gets none of the credit it deserves for being the home of modern professional wrestling. Sure, it was a niche form of entertainment back then. But, Nashville didn't just tear down the Ryman when it became obsolete, did it?

When the wrecking ball hit Turner's, they must have taken every brick off the premises. Finally, we match an alley in the Library of Congress photograph to an alley off W St. We match a building deep in the background of the photo to a structure that's still standing. A-ha! We guess that the western end of Turner's Arena was what is now the western end of the Anthony Bowen YMCA building now sits. But even that building is now surrounded by fencing and barbed wire; the YMCA is on its way out, too.

"So the sports building that replaced the sports building is already obsolete," Abrams says.

I feel stupid for feeling sad about a building that I never even saw when it was around. But I feel sadder than stupid.