Rhode Island - Sports

Sports

Rhode Island has two professional sports teams, both of which are top-level minor league affiliates for teams in Boston. The Pawtucket Red Sox baseball team, of the Triple-A International League, are an affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. They play at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket and have won three league titles, the Governors' Cup, in 1973. 1984, and 2012. McCoy Stadium also has the distinction of being home to the longest professional baseball game ever played – 33 innings. The other professional minor league team is the Providence Bruins ice hockey team, of the American Hockey League, who are an affiliate of the Boston Bruins. They play in the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence and won the AHL's Calder Cup during the 1998–99 AHL season. Additionally, the Rhode Island Rebellion rugby league team are compete in the USA Rugby League. The National Football League's New England Patriots and Major League Soccer's New England Revolution play at Gillette Stadium in nearby Foxborough, Massachusetts, approximately 18 miles (29 km) north of Providence and 9 miles (14 km) from the State's border.

There are four NCAA Division I schools in Rhode Island. All four schools compete in different conferences. The Brown University Bears compete in the Ivy League, the Bryant University Bulldogs compete in the Northeast Conference, the Providence College Friars compete in the Big East Conference and the University of Rhode Island Rams compete in the Atlantic-10 Conference. Three of the schools' football teams compete in the Football Championship Subdivision, the second-highest level of college football in the United States. Brown plays FCS football in the Ivy League, Bryant plays FCS football in the Northeast Conference, and Rhode Island plays FCS football in the Colonial Athletic Association. All four of the Division I schools in the State compete in an intrastate all-sports competition known as the Ocean State Cup, with Bryant winning the most recent cup in 2011–12 academic year.

Rhode Island also has a long and storied history for athletics. Prior to the great expansion of athletic teams all over the country Providence and Rhode Island in general played a great role in supporting teams. The Providence Grays won the first World Championship in baseball history in 1884. The team played their home games at the old Messer Street Field in Providence. The Grays played in the National League from 1878 to 1885. They defeated the New York Metropolitans of the American Association in a best of five game series at the Polo Grounds in New York. Providence won three straight games to become the first champions in major league baseball history. Babe Ruth played for the minor league Providence Grays of 1914 and hit his only official minor league home run for that team before being recalled by the Grays parent club, the Boston Red Stockings.

A now-defunct professional football team, the Providence Steam Roller won the 1928 NFL title. They played in a 10,000 person stadium called the Cycledrome. A team by a similar name, the Providence Steamrollers, played in the Basketball Association of America; which would become the National Basketball Association.

From 1930 to 1983, America's Cup races were sailed off Newport, and the both extreme-sport X Games and Gravity Games were founded and hosted in the state's capital city.

The International Tennis Hall of Fame is in Newport at the Newport Casino, site of the first U.S. National Championships in 1881. The Hall of Fame and Museum were established in 1954 by James Van Alen as "a shrine to the ideals of the game." The Hall of Fame Museum encompasses over 20,000 square feet (1,900 m2) of tennis history, chronicling tennis excellence from the 12th century to today. The Hall of Fame has 13 grass courts, and is the site of the Hall of Fame Tennis Championships, the only professional tennis event played on grass courts in the United States. The first members of the Hall of Fame were inducted in 1955, and as of 2008, there are 207 players, contributors, and court tennis players in the Hall of Fame.